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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmiel. This is Sunday drive to church for June, Father's Day, June 21st year by Lord 20:26. Third Sunday after Trinity, it's Luke 15 Sunday, which is kind of a. It's an interesting Sunday because remember Luke 15 has those three fantastic lost and found parables. The lost sheep and the lost coin are the official readings. And that's what we'll hear today.
[00:00:30] The Lost Sons. The Prodigal Sons is not one of the official readings, but it has so much draw that I and a handful of guys when I used to do the one year all the time back in Hope, and a number of us would. We would basically switch every other year so you get to hear the Prodigal Son. But this year we have Luke 15, 1:10.
[00:00:54] The tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to hear Jesus and the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling because this man receives sinners and eats with them. That's what Jesus does. And this is really Jesus, the friend of sinners. Sunday we'll pray.
[00:01:11] O God, the protector of all who trust in you, without whom nothing is strong and nothing is holy, multiply your mercy on us, that with you as our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:01:36] Amen.
[00:01:38] That's a colleague for the day. And I'm looking at the bulletin cover.
[00:01:43] It's the Prodigal Son sketch. There. This poor guy, so hungry, wanting to eat this pig food.
[00:01:52] Really phenomenal.
[00:01:54] Anyway, let's get into the text here. The opening Psalm is 103, the first 13 of the 22 verses.
[00:02:02] This Psalm is.
[00:02:04] Remember the four rules of reading the Psalms. You say, pastor, I thought there were six and then there was four. And you're changing and then there was three. You're always changing the.
[00:02:13] Well, I am. I think I have four now. Currently, the year of our Lord 2026. I have four important questions to ask when reading the Psalms. What's the structure? Who's talking to whom? What's the picture? And who's the bad guy? Those are my four psalm questions. And if you can answer those four questions after reading the psalm or looking and studying a psalm, then you've got a pretty good beat on what's going on. This one is one of the most interesting.
[00:02:41] For the second question, who's talking to whom? Because look at verse one. Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. So this is me talking to my soul.
[00:02:56] And me talking to my everything that's in me. Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all his benefits. And then at the end of the psalm, it expands who it's talking to.
[00:03:09] Bless the Lord. This is verse 20. We don't have this today. Bless the Lord. But you know you can read it on your own. Verse 20. Bless the Lord all you who is angels who excel in strength. Bless the Lord, verse 21. All his hosts, that's the angels. Bless the verse 22. Bless the Lord, all his works in all places of his dominion.
[00:03:30] Bless the Lord, O my soul. And then look at Psalm 104 starts the same way. Bless the Lord, O my soul.
[00:03:38] The.
[00:03:39] The Psalm 103 and Psalm 104 are probably the psalms that talk most about the angels.
[00:03:50] Where is it?
[00:03:51] His ministers are ministers of fire. That's somewhere right around here. And look at verse 30 of Psalm 100. Wow, I'm kind of getting carried away. But Psalm 30 of 104, you send forth your spirit, they are created anyhow. Our business today is the first 13 verses.
[00:04:15] I remember maybe the first time I used this psalm, ministering to someone who was sick and also had some depression going on, so both physical and internal distress.
[00:04:30] And I said, the first thing the Lord does when he comes to us is he forgives our sins and then he heals us, and then he redeems us, and then he cares for us. But it all comes from the forgiveness of sins. In fact, we had this Saturday morning at Men's Bible Study talking about in the Lord's Supper, the chief gift is the forgiveness of sins. And all the other gifts flow from that. Listen to what it says here. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. And look at the list of benefits.
[00:05:01] Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. That's the chesed who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord executes righteousness. He's merciful and gracious, slow to anger. He will not. Verse 9. He will not always strive with us, nor will he keep his anger forever.
[00:05:29] He might be striving with us for a little bit, but that wrestling with the Lord, when the Lord plays with us roughly, it doesn't last forever and ever. And then he's not dealt with us according to our sins or punished us according to our iniquities. Rather, as far as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. That is boundless. Now, how far is the east from the west? This is an interesting thing because the distance between the north and the south is different than the difference between the east and the west.
[00:06:08] I don't know. I don't know exactly. You can measure the distance from the North Pole to the South Pole. I don't know how, how far it is. And I guess if you go the long way on the surface of the earth versus going through the middle.
[00:06:21] But east and west are.
[00:06:23] Well, look, if you go east trying to get to the west, you'll never get there.
[00:06:29] But if you're going east and you turn around, then you're going west.
[00:06:34] I wonder if that's really how far our sins are from us. If we're facing the Lord, then our sins will never touch us. But if we turn away from the Lord, if we go the other direction, we're in it anyway. I don't know if that the point of the as far as east is. I don't know if that's what King David was talking about in Psalm 103. The point is as far as the east is from the west, it means far.
[00:06:56] The Lord does not just like, you know, throw your sins out the window, but they're sitting out there close by. He. He sends them away.
[00:07:07] The Old Testament lesson is the last few verses of the prophet Micah.
[00:07:12] Some of the most beautiful mercy filled verses in all of the small minor prophets. Minor meaning not, not important, but small.
[00:07:23] Here's the question, and this is.
[00:07:25] It starts with a question to the Lord and then it has a little. In fact, the question who's talking to whom here? Would be really helpful. It starts with a question, we're talking to the Lord. And then it's a little sermon.
[00:07:40] And then it goes back to a prayer. You so notice the pronouns. Who is a God like you?
[00:07:47] He, he, you, you.
[00:07:50] Let me read the. It's only three verses. I'll read the whole thing to you. It's a beautiful poem.
[00:07:54] Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance?
[00:08:02] He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love.
[00:08:08] He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham as you have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.
[00:08:29] So if the east is not far enough from the west, now the Lord has taken our sins and casting them into the depths of the sea.
[00:08:38] I mean, look, we are tempted to worry, are we not, that our sins are a little too close to us, that the Lord is going to overthrow us because of them. But here is the promise. East and west depths of the sea. You are not going to dredge them back up. Your sins are down there with the Titanic.
[00:09:00] Here's how Paul says it in first Timothy. This is grace upon grace upon grace upon grace upon grace. This is a great you. If you have friends that are burdened with guilt and shame, you should stop listening, call them up and say, you better get to church today.
[00:09:16] Here's Paul in First Timothy 1.
[00:09:20] There's a story of this. I think I've told you this story. When I was in.
[00:09:25] I dropped out of college when I was 19. I was backpacking in Israel, and Carrie and I would write letters back and forth. And I remember I would put a Bible verse on the back of the letter, and I wrote first Timothy 15 on the back. Big on the back of the envelope. It says, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of who I am the foremost. And Carrie got that letter and she didn't want to open it because she thought I'd done something terrible and I was going to be admitting to it. And.
[00:09:54] But this is what we all say about ourselves all the time.
[00:09:57] We know this of ourselves, that we are sinners.
[00:10:02] But listen to how Paul understands himself to be the recipient of the Lord's mercy, the object of the Lord's affection, the one whom the Lord loves. And this is who he is. This is who we are, dear saints. We are the ones that are sinners who are died for by the Lord Jesus and welcomed into his merciful presence.
[00:10:24] I thank him. This is Starting in verse 12, Paul says, I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service. Though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor and insolent opponent, but I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy, deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.
[00:10:58] But I received mercy for this reason that in me as the foremost Christ Jesus might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.
[00:11:12] To the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.
[00:11:18] Amen.
[00:11:20] In other words, Paul.
[00:11:21] And this is an amazing thing. Paul says, why did the Lord save me, the chief of sinners, the blaspheming murderer of Christians, the hater of God, why did he save me? To give an example of what he always wants to do.
[00:11:40] He always wants to save, he always wants to deliver, he always wants to rescue. He is always the good shepherd looking for that lost sheep. He is always the widow sweeping for the lost coin. He is always the father embracing his sons, giving them all that he has is yours. This is who he is. So that the example of Paul is not the exception. When we look at that, and this is the important thing, this is the difference between an example and an exception. When we look at Paul, we say, well, look, that was kind of a one time deal that the Lord took someone so miserable and so bad and called him to be a Christian. No, the Lord is always doing that.
[00:12:21] This is our confidence that the Lord wants to be known by us as the one who saves, as the one who delivers.
[00:12:29] We've mentioned the Luke 15 passage, but just maybe a couple of things. I just wrote a book about this if you guys want a cop. I think I got a couple hanging around on the prodigal son. It's an important note that we note the context that the Lord Jesus is telling these three parables. The lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost two sons. He's telling them to the Pharisees because they're lost. But Jesus also wants to rescue them.
[00:12:59] Jesus loves the Pharisees. He loves the proud. But he knows if we're proud that we're a bit of a harder nut to crack than if we have a humility of ourselves, if we have a despair, if we know that we're sinners in desperate need of the Lord's mercy and help, then we're more ready for the Gospel. But that's okay. The Lord can come and crush us also with the law and humble us and show us our great need for his mercy.
[00:13:29] There's another thing that I want to note because in these three parables, the lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost sons, we normally think that There would be great joy in being found.
[00:13:43] Like, the sheep would be really happy about being rescued.
[00:13:47] But it doesn't say anything about how the sheep feels or that the coin would be happy. I don't know how happy coins can be, but if a coin could be happy, it would be a lot happier to be found and be in the purse with his friends as nine other coins than sitting in the corner with all the dust.
[00:14:06] We don't know anything about how the coin feels.
[00:14:09] We are directed in these parables to the joy of the shepherd and the widow and the Father. Now, here's the amazing thing about that.
[00:14:20] God wants you to know that he is happy about your salvation.
[00:14:30] Think about that.
[00:14:34] We are normally taught to be happy about our own salvation. Fine. We should be. God be praised. But more interesting to God is that he is happy to save.
[00:14:49] And that, at least to me, is a great comfort.
[00:14:55] You know, I'm tempted to think that God loves me because he has to. Because he's God and he's love. And so he's kind of forced in it. He doesn't really have any options.
[00:15:06] That he sort of begrudgingly forgives my sins and puts them away and opens up a way for me to come to eternal life. It's kind of. There's some, well, sort of have to. He's kind of bound to it by his nature. This is not the case.
[00:15:24] He wants to save you. He really, really loves you. He likes you. He, like a bridegroom, rejoices over the bride.
[00:15:38] So will your God rejoice over you?
[00:15:43] That's how. That's how this goes.
[00:15:48] The example in the parable of the shepherd and the woman are kind of over the top.
[00:15:55] Like, the shepherd finds the lost sheep and he doesn't go back to the other sheep.
[00:16:00] He goes home and he throws a party.
[00:16:04] The woman who finds the lost. Have you ever lost something like your keys or your phone or something, and you finally find it and you're happy about it? Sure, you're happy about it. But do you throw a party to celebrate? This is kind of over the top.
[00:16:19] And this is how it is with God in you.
[00:16:26] I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
[00:16:33] There's something more. And I think I'll have to preach about this because this joy that the angels have is not joy over their salvation.
[00:16:40] It's this freedom from envy so that we can rejoice in the gifts that God gives to others.
[00:16:46] It's beautiful.
[00:16:48] All right. Hymn of the day is Lord, to you I make confession.
[00:16:52] Hymn 608, 1650 ish Johann Frank Lord, to you I make confession. I've sinned and gone astray. I've multiplied transgression, Chosen for myself my way led by you to see my errors. Lord, I tremble at your terrors. That's the wrath that comes from the law. Yet though conscience voice upon me, Father, I will seek your face.
[00:17:20] Though your child I dare not call me, yet receive me in your grace.
[00:17:25] Do not for my sins forsake me. Let your wrath not overtake me. For your son has suffered for me. And here is the source of God's mercy and grace towards us.
[00:17:36] Given himself to rescue me, died to save me and restore me Reconciled and set me free. Jesus, cross alone can vanquish these dark fears and soothe this anguish.
[00:17:50] Lord, on you I cast my burden. Sink it in the deepest sea. That's where it goes.
[00:17:57] Let me know your gracious pardon.
[00:18:00] Cleanse me from iniquity. Let your spirit leave me never.
[00:18:05] Make me only yours forever.
[00:18:09] So the Law shows our sin and the Gospel shows our Savior. Remember this repentance. It's the change of mind. And it's the change of mind first about ourselves, that we're not that good. In fact, we're sinners. And then it's a change of mind about God, who's not destroying us because of our sin, but has destroyed Christ because of our sin and gives us the hope of everlasting life. What an incredible Sunday. I hope. I can't wait to see you in a few minutes. Drive safe. God's peace be with you.
[00:18:43] See you soon.
