View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller. This is the Sunday Drive to church podcast for August 23rd, year of our Lord, 2026, 12th Sunday after Trinity. I've just been digging into this idea. You know, Trinity Sunday, the Trinity season is this long green season that extends from Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, all the way until the last Sunday of the church year, which normally comes at the very end of November. Remember, the church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which is the Sunday closest to St. Andrew's Day, November 20nint. So we've got this long stretch from like May, June all the way through November.
[00:00:37] And the ancient church, well, the sort of the old church, especially the Anglicans, some Lutherans divided up that Trinity season into different tides.
[00:00:48] I was just digging into this because Dr. Stuckwich has a nice article about it on his Indiana District webpage. It's a way of thinking thematically about the different chunks of the huge Trinity season.
[00:01:01] So there's five tides.
[00:01:04] Trinity Tide is the first one starts on Trinity Sunday and that especially focuses on the work of the Holy Spirit. And then you've got the Apostles tide that begins on June 29th right around there, that's at the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul.
[00:01:20] And then you have the Martyr's tide that begins on August 10, the commemoration of St. Lawrence martyr. And then you have the Angel's Tide that begins on St. Michael's Day, September 29th. And then All Saints tide, November 1st and the Sundays after that.
[00:01:38] And so we're in this big long stretch which goes from about Trinity 5 to Trinity 18 of the apostles tide, martyrs tide. There's a St. John tide in there which has to do with the right around the Nativity of John the Baptist gets in there also where we're thinking about the growth of the church through the apostolic ministry and the fact that we receive the Lord's gifts that sets us free from the fear of death.
[00:02:07] That's all the stuff that's happening in there. So that's, that's pretty interesting to think about in a way of dividing up these long summer, summer seasons, Sundays, because they kind of, they start to blend into one another. You have a miracle and a teaching and a miracle and a teaching. We're gonna have a big miracle, big time miracle today. Jesus healing the. The deaf man from Mark, chapter seven. So let's, let's pray.
[00:02:30] Almighty and merciful God, by your gift alone, your faithful people render true and laudable service.
[00:02:38] Help us steadfastly to live in this life, according to your promises, and finally attain your heavenly glory through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:02:55] It's beautiful. By the way, whenever we see in the Scriptures or the liturgy or like in this prayer, that word promises, it should immediately trigger that Lutheran distinction between law and gospel.
[00:03:08] Remember how that first gets expressed in our Lutheran Book of Concord, Melanchthon's writing, and he says the Scripture consists of two parts, and he doesn't say law and gospel. He says, command and promise, command and promise. And that's what it is. The law is God's commands, and the Gospel is God's promises. Specifically the promise of God of the forgiveness of sins and the hope of eternal life through the death of our Lord Jesus. But he gives more promises.
[00:03:36] In fact, the Gospel. This is important. The Gospel is a subset of the promises of God. It's his saving promises.
[00:03:41] But there's other promises too. Okay, now I got my hymnal marked here Psalm 146 and the hymn of the day, Psalm 146, our entrance Psalm. And we're going to notice this is pretty intentional. The entrance Psalm as well as the Old Testament match really well the theme of the Gospel. And that's almost always the case. It's a little bit of a stretch to figure out how the Epistle and the Gospel are connected, but the Old Testament and the Psalms are normally pretty good.
[00:04:15] It's Psalm 146, verse seven. Here it is.
[00:04:22] The Lord sets the prisoners free. He opens the eyes of the blind.
[00:04:26] The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down.
[00:04:29] The Lord loves the righteous. So these healing miracles that the Lord does, that's what's being emphasized here. But notice this, and you'll see it by the way, when you open your hymnal.
[00:04:40] Psalm 146.
[00:04:42] Let's get into the end of the Psalms. Look at that first word. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. O my soul. And then while you're there, just take a look at the first word of Psalm 147. Praise the Lord. Psalm 148. Praise the Lord. Psalment 149. Praise the Lord. Psalem 150. Praise the Lord. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise him. Praise Him. Praise him. Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Now remember that underneath that Praise the Lord is one of those Hebrew words that we all know. Alleluia.
[00:05:11] And so there's a name for this, something like the great Alleluia. And it's this, you can feel it now as the Book of Psalms is ending, that it's growing in this doxological praise.
[00:05:27] And Psalm 146 is that start. Praise the Lord. That's the first alleluia and then alleluia. It's this crescendo, this alleluia crescendo at the end of the Book of Psalms.
[00:05:38] Now that we praise the Lord, that should be in some ways all we need to know about life and death and life eternal, in fact, and creation and the fall and everything else. Praise the Lord that we were created by God so that we can praise Him. That means that not only can we know who he is, you can't praise the unknown, but that we can receive gifts from him so that there's exchange possible between us and God, that it comes from him to us, and that he's done good things for us. And that even though we are sinners, that fundamental fact which we know about ourselves, the Lord still comes to us with goodness. So our praise to him is in a profound way a confession of our salvation by grace alone, through faith alone. Otherwise, how can you praise the Lord?
[00:06:33] And that we are being made suitable to stand before him, to praise him into eternity also tells us everything we need to know about the life that is to come. We were made to praise the Lord, to thank him for his good gifts, to recognize and give thanks to him for who he is and that those things are also good for us. I'll praise the. Here's the how it goes. I'll praise the Lord as long as I live. I'll sing praises to my God while I have my being.
[00:07:03] Put not your trust in princes, in a Son of man in whom there's no salvation.
[00:07:07] As the midterms approach, remember this is the banner that we have to put across our tv. Trust not in princes. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth on the very day his plans perish.
[00:07:18] Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God. Remember how Luther defines worship or keeping the first commandment in the large catechism. Where do you look for help that tells you who your God is?
[00:07:36] We're blessed when our help is the God of Jacob who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that's in them, who keeps faith forever?
[00:07:44] He executes justice for the oppressed. He gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free. The Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. The Lord loves the righteous.
[00:07:55] The Lord watches over the sojourners. He upholds the widow and the fatherless. But the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. The Lord will reign forever. Olam. That's that other Hebrew word we should probably tuck away. Olam. World without end. That's the. It's the. It's a word that means all of it. And it kind of extends. Sometimes it's about space and sometimes it's about time. It's all of it. The Lord's got it all.
[00:08:21] Your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord. Alleluia.
[00:08:26] Psalm 146. That which could probably be enough for us. But we got. Look, we got more. Okay, so Isaiah 29 is one of these promises of the Messianic kingdom.
[00:08:37] And there's a theme that runs through Isaiah, and you're going to notice it here in this text. And it is the idea that it's going back to the garden. And there's always this contrast between the beautiful forest garden and the wilderness.
[00:08:56] And the wilderness is the place of the curse.
[00:08:59] It's the place of hunger, it's the place of limited resources. It's the place of jackals and fear and death.
[00:09:15] And then there's the forest, there's the garden forest, which is the place of abundance, the place of renewal, the place of life and peace.
[00:09:24] It's this place of restoration.
[00:09:27] And so the threats that come across in Isaiah is, is the Lord making us into a wilderness, or is the Lord building us up into a forest?
[00:09:36] So.
[00:09:37] So this runs through all the preaching of Isaiah. And I mean, a lot of the prophets have the same theme, but it's profound in Isaiah. So Isaiah 29, starting with verse 17, it is not yet a very little while until Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field, and the fruitful field shall be regarded as a forest in that day. The deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see. The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord. The poor among mankind shall exalt in the Holy One of Israel.
[00:10:14] The ruthless come to nothing. The scoffer cease. All who watch to do evil cut off by a word, make a man out to be an offender. Who by a word make a man out to be offender. Lay a snare for him who reproves in the gate with an empty plea, turn aside him who's in the right. Let's talk about those. All those rulers who were.
[00:10:33] Who had no concern for the Neighbor and were just given over to injustice.
[00:10:37] The Lord's going to go after him.
[00:10:40] Therefore, thus says the Lord who redeemed Abraham concerning the house of Jacob. Jacob shall no more be ashamed, no more shall his face grow pale. For when he sees his children the work of my hands in his midst, they will sanctify my name. They will sanctify the Holy One of Jacob. They'll stand in awe of the God of Israel.
[00:10:57] And those who go astray in spirit will come to understanding. And those who murmur will accept instruction. Beautiful.
[00:11:04] So this testimony of the New Testament. This is the church which is the Garden of Eden planted, but not yet fully come along, it's on the way. And the fullness of it will arrive at the resurrection. But the Lord has given such great and profound gifts in the church already, so that there's repentance, there's accepting of instruction by the Holy Spirit. I mean, only the Holy Spirit can humble us so that we can receive instruction from the word of God, the prophets and apostles, and even from each other. I mean, and look at how it's described is the deaf hear and the blind see and the meek are renewed.
[00:11:48] Cue Mark, chapter seven.
[00:11:52] So we'll come back to the Epistle because this sets us up perfectly for the Gospel. Jesus returned from the region of Tyre. Remember what he was doing up at Tyre is finding the Syrophoenician woman to rescue her daughter from the demon and to teach his disciples and us how to pray.
[00:12:12] How beautiful is that? That was our Gospel lesson on Wednesday night from the three year matched up perfectly.
[00:12:20] Oh, Lord, help me. She cries. She follows him into the house. Lord, help me.
[00:12:26] Great is your faith. Okay, so he's leaving there and he goes to the. He went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. The Decapolis, that means the ten cities.
[00:12:38] That was on the mostly eastern, I guess, sort of northeast, or maybe south. So just think the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. So Galilee, what we normally think about is the western side of the Sea of Galilee. The ten cities is on the eastern side. And it's a pretty pagan place. It was like a Roman province. They had settled these cities and built these cities and were.
[00:13:04] So he's going from one pagan place to another pagan place.
[00:13:09] And you can't help but think that Jesus is not. He's going for the people that are there, but he's going for a person that's there.
[00:13:19] Let's see, they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a Speech impediment. And they begged him to lay his hand on him.
[00:13:28] So I, at least as I read these, it seems like Jesus has this particular man and maybe even this particular miracle in mind. When he goes over there, he's hunting people down.
[00:13:40] And this is, you know, we have to be careful that we don't fall into this sort of evangelical or charismatic arrogance that insists that God has a unique and special word just for me.
[00:14:00] But we don't want to also fall off the path on the other side that thinks that God is far away from, from each one of us.
[00:14:10] No, he's at work in each of our lives, in my life, in your life. He's at work uniquely hearing our prayers, uniquely caring for each one of us, uniquely handing each of us the things that we need and beyond what we need more than we could ask for or imagine.
[00:14:32] He's teaching each one of us to trust in him and to hope in him and to love him, to love our neighbor.
[00:14:40] So that that doctrine of election is an individual doctrine. There's a danger now when we think about, because we talk so much about being elect in Christ that we think it's sort of a group deal, like if I'm on the team, I get 50% off at the buffet or something. No, the Lord knows each one of our names and he's caring for each of us. And when we see that, we get a little hint of that when the Lord goes over after this one deaf man.
[00:15:09] So Jesus takes him away from the crowd privately, puts his fingers in his ear, and after spitting, he touches his tongue and looking up to heaven, he sighs and says, ephphatha or Ephphatha, be opened. That's Arabic.
[00:15:26] Arabic, Aramaic. Sheesh, Aramaic. It's what probably Jesus normally spoke with his disciples.
[00:15:34] And it's Mark who gives us those Aramaic originals.
[00:15:38] Be opened.
[00:15:40] And his ears were opened, his tongue was released. He spoke plainly.
[00:15:44] Maybe his first words were Psalm 146.
[00:15:48] I don't know if he's pagan, maybe he doesn't know that. But Jesus charges them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, he's done all things well.
[00:16:00] He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.
[00:16:05] So Jesus is doing these miracles that underline for us his messianic resume. I mean, all these promises that belonged to the, to the renewal of the church and to the Messianic kingdom from Isaiah and all the prophets. Jesus is doing, but he's doing them in A place where they maybe wouldn't be immediately recognized as Messianic. Over in the Decapolis, maybe they haven't been studying Isaiah like they were in Jerusalem and so forth.
[00:16:36] And there's a strategy to it.
[00:16:39] Some people get kind of carried away with this. But in Mark it's really obvious that Jesus is trying to keep people quiet about the miracles.
[00:16:49] And the reason is because he mostly came to preach the kingdom and to die for sins and he can't help himself doing miracles. I mean, whenever anybody shows up who needs some help, he's going to help him. He can't stop himself from doing that. He is the man of compassion. His heart is overflowing with love for all people that are there. And so he's going to. He's going to give every single person that which is good and helpful to them, but even if it's not helpful to himself. So when he does a miracle, then now he's up all night doing miracles and everyone with every kind of disease and demon comes to him for help and he heals them. But it he then he doesn't get to preach.
[00:17:27] And while the healing benefits the person, the preaching benefits everybody. So there's something about that. The Messianic secret people call it. Now this, this matches up with the hymn of the day. The hymn of the day is a pretty new hymn. Word of God come down on earth.
[00:17:44] This is one of those hymns, at least as I read it, that was written for the three year Lectionary.
[00:17:53] Because the three year Lectionary had so many of these examples of the healing ministry of Jesus that we just needed a bunch of hymns for them. And this is pretty nice.
[00:18:03] Word eternal, this second stanza.
[00:18:05] Well, first Word of God come down on earth, Living rain from heaven descending. Beautiful, but Word eternal, second stanza, throned on high Word that brought to life creation. Word that came from heaven to die crucified for our salvation Saving word the word world restoring Speak to us your love outpouring. This is beautiful. So that Jesus is the Word that spoke and the world was created. He is that Word. Jesus is the Word that was incarnate so that he might die to save, to save us. And Jesus is the Word that is making the world new even now through the gospel until the last day by his proclamation of resurrection and recreation.
[00:18:47] Then three Word that caused blind eyes to see Speak and heal our mortal blindness Deaf we are our healer. Be loose our tongues to tell your kindness.
[00:18:57] That's that connection. Be our word in pity spoken Heal the world by sin now broken it's good. It's good. Whenever you hear, by the way, how we're broken by sin, that's good. It's true. It's not enough.
[00:19:12] We're not only broken, we're condemned.
[00:19:15] And so the word not only heals, it forgives.
[00:19:19] It's an important point to remember. But broken is not wrong. It's just not sufficient.
[00:19:25] Okay, now that brings us to the epistle, Second Corinthians 3. Second Corinthians is a wild book. If you haven't read through Second Corinthians lately, that's your homework this week.
[00:19:36] It's full of so many surprises.
[00:19:39] It's kind of hidden. I don't know why 2 Corinthians isn't. Maybe it's just me. Maybe you guys are like Second Corinthian experts. I don't know. But it's a favorite of mine. But it seems like it's. It kind of is easy to forget that it's there.
[00:19:57] Paul is contrasting the ministry of the letter versus the ministry of the Spirit.
[00:20:03] And he says, such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we're sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God.
[00:20:15] It's really interesting that that verse is about the ministry. The old Lutherans, I mean, from the Book of Concord all the way through that golden age of Lutheran orthodoxy, they used this verse as a proof for grace alone. And it's true.
[00:20:29] Not only is it about the ministry, that our sufficiency is from God. We aren't sufficient in ourselves. It's true for our saving faith. It's true for us as Christians. It's true for us as created. It's an absolute truth in a way. Our sufficiency is not in ourselves.
[00:20:46] Our sufficiency is from God, who made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant. Not of the letter, but the Spirit.
[00:20:55] The letter kills, the Spirit gives life. And here we have this beautiful distinction between law and gospel.
[00:21:01] If the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory?
[00:21:15] For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.
[00:21:29] For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent.
[00:21:36] How about that permanent, have glory.
[00:21:39] The Gospel is permanent because it. It sets us in life that will never end. And this contrast between the letter and the Spirit is really important.
[00:21:48] Okay.
[00:21:51] There's two dangers, again, for us to be wary of.
[00:21:55] On the one hand, there's the danger of seeing the Old Testament and the New Testament as totally different teachings.
[00:22:04] This is a kind of simplistic view of law and gospel. It's like, well, the Old Testament's law, the New Testament's Gospel. In the Old Testament, God was mean. In the New Testament, God is nice.
[00:22:15] In the Old Testament, it's wrath. In the New Testament, it's mercy. It's not true. It's the same God, Old Testament and New Testament, it's the same preaching, law and gospel, Old Testament and New Testament. And the theme that runs through all of it is the blood that's shed for the forgiving of sins.
[00:22:35] So we want to confess that clearly.
[00:22:38] But the danger then is we say, well, there's no difference between the ministry of Moses and the ministry of Jesus.
[00:22:45] That is not true. The ministry of Moses was a pointing toward ministry. The ministry of Jesus is the fulfillment of it.
[00:22:56] So while the Spirit was present in the Old Testament, I mean, we read about David saying, take not your Holy Spirit from me. The Spirit is. Is here in his fullness, restored to humanity by the ministry of Jesus.
[00:23:10] Remember that John 7 passage, that mysterious little thing where John says the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet ascended.
[00:23:19] So this gift of the fullness of the Spirit, which was lost by the fall, is partially recovered in the blood of the Old Testament, in the preaching of the blood of the Old Testament. But it is present in a different way now in the New Testament in a fuller way.
[00:23:42] And this is what Paul is talking about, this ministry of the letter. So the ministry of the Old Testament is chiefly in this.
[00:23:49] The letter which kills. But the ministry of the New Testament is chiefly the Spirit. Now, it's not the Spirit apart from the letter because the Spirit is present in the Word, but the Spirit now comes to, in a way, prepare us for the new heaven and the new earth which is being planted in us now and which will come into its fullness when the Lord returns.
[00:24:18] So this.
[00:24:19] This conversation from.
[00:24:21] From Paul is vitally important. And who knows, maybe we'll. Maybe we'll preach on that. All right, Sunday, drive home. Hope you're driving safe. Oh, Bible class, we're on it in Matthew finished the Sermon on the Mount, and we're on now to the miracles in Matthew, chapter eight. We're going to do a little work on scribes and Pharisees.
[00:24:43] I count this a miracle. Did not forget that I was supposed to do that homework.
[00:24:48] At least when I'm recording this on Saturday morning. I have not yet forgotten. Who knows by time we get to Sunday morning, if I will. But that'll be good. That'll be great. We'll see you soon. God's peace be with you.