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[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. Pastor Wolf Muller. And you are listening to the Sunday drive to church for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost. That's September 22, the year of our Lord 2024, where we continue to hear the gospel of Mark, where Jesus, he's trying to get away from the crowds so that he can teach his disciples about his death and resurrection, which they miss, and instead argue about who's the greatest. So he has to give a little correction. We'll get to that in a little bit, but we'll start with the collect, which is beautiful. It's built off of two corinthians, chapter twelve, verse nine. That's this verse where Paul says, well, Paul quotes Jesus, who is answering Paul's prayer that the Lord would take the thorn away from him, the thorn in the side. And the Lord replies, my strength is made perfect in weakness, which is beautiful. I mean, I think I've told you all the story. That's the when I went kind of loopy when I had Covid and I couldn't kind of think straight. That's the verse that echoed constantly in my mind. And it should be such a great comfort to us. My strength, the Lord says to you and to me, my strength is made perfect in weakness.
[00:01:18] So here's the collect we'll pray.
[00:01:21] O God, whose strength is made perfect in weakness, grant us humility and childlike faith, that we may please you in both will and deed, through Jesus Christ your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:01:42] Oh, God, someone was mentioning this old Sunday drive to church podcast the other day and said, I never really paid attention to the colics until the Sunday drive to church. Hey, that's kind of cool, remembering that the colics have this fivefold part to them. They have the address, the rationale, the petition, the doxology, and the conclusion. So here would be the address, O God, and then the rationale, whose strength is made perfect in weakness. And then the petition, grant us humility and childlike faith that we may please you in both will and deed. And then the doxology or conclusion, through Jesus Christ your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. And notice that it's always trinitarian that whoever is addressed in the petition is the other two persons of the Holy Trinity are mentioned. So because this petition is to God the Father, the Son, and the spirit are mentioned in the termination. And also notice how it's always through Jesus Christ our prayers are in the spirit through the Son to the father. And the blessings of God are from the Father through the Son in the spirit.
[00:02:47] That's that trinitarian life that we are wrapped into the midst of. Okay, we're into it. On the psalm is psalm 54. Oh, I moved my Bible.
[00:02:57] Psalm 54 is a short little seven verse psalm and.
[00:03:03] Yep, seven verses. And this psalm reminds us that we are in trouble. It's sometimes. And I, um. You know, this question is, if you just say, okay, who am I according to this psalm? Like, the Lord has given me the psalm to say. It'd be like, if we could play a game this way where, like, you start quoting movie lines. You could never play with Pastor Mitwoody. He would beat everybody. You start quoting movie lines and you have to figure out who you are according to these lines of a movie, where you start reading a piece of literature and you have to figure out who you are because you're in the thing. Well, I wonder if we could do that with the psalms. Because the Lord gives us these psalms and he says, pray these psalms. And we actually learn about ourselves and our lives and our blessings and our difficulties from reading the psalms. So we have to say, who am I according to this psalm? And look at what it says. Oh, God, save me by your name. Vindicate me by your might. So I am someone who needs saving.
[00:04:07] Look at verse three. Well, don't look cause you're driving. Keep your eye on the road. Just listen. For strangers have risen against me. Ruthless men seek my life. They don't set God before themselves.
[00:04:18] So that who I am, according to the psalms, is a man in trouble, a person who's at risk.
[00:04:28] I am a person with enemies. In fact, the psalms assume that we have enemies. And this might be strange to us because I think most of us would think, well, I don't actually have that many enemies in life. But then you can't read the psalms. Don't make any sense. So you do have enemies. Strangers have risen against me. Ruthless men. But behold, verse four. God is my helper. That word helper is so good. I think we might have mentioned it a few weeks ago. Eber. It's from. It's the.
[00:04:57] Well, it's when we sing. Come, thou fount of every blessing. Here I raise my Ebenezer. That Ebenezer. That comes from this word helper.
[00:05:08] Azar. We have to ask Dylan how to pronounce it right.
[00:05:12] This is who the Lord is.
[00:05:15] It's the same word used for Eve in the garden. I'll make a helper fit for him, and the Lord is our helper. Which reminds us of how Luther describes worship in the large catechism, who your God is is who you look to for help and who you cry out to in time of need.
[00:05:36] So here, God is my helper.
[00:05:39] The Lord is the upholder of my life. He will return evil to my enemies in your faithfulness, put an end to them.
[00:05:46] That's PsalM 54, this prayer in trouble. And it's reflected in the Old Testament passage, which is Jeremiah, chapter eleven, verses 18 to 20, which is a very interesting section. It's where it would have been good to have a little more context if our lectionary guys would have. They don't think you guys can endure hearing that much scripture. They want to cut it down for you. But if we would go back to verse nine of Jeremiah eleven, we would read. And the Lord said to me, a conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. So the Lord is coming to Jeremiah the prophet. And he says, I've uncovered a conspiracy. And that conspiracy is against the Lord. And particularly that conspiracy has to do with the men from anathoth, that's Jeremiah's hometown.
[00:06:41] He says, this is after our verse 21. Therefore, thus says the Lord God concerning the men of anathoth who seek your life, saying, do not prophesy in the name of the Lord lest you die by our hand.
[00:06:57] Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, behold, I will punish them so that there is a conspiracy to reject the Lord, to continue to worship the false gods, and to silence the preaching of Jeremiah the prophet by murdering him. This is big drama, and the Lord is going to reveal that to Jeremiah. And that's what our text is. The Lord made it known to me, and I knew then you showed me their deeds. But I was like a gentle lamb led to the slaughter. I didn't know. As against me, they devised schemes saying, let us destroy the tree with the fruit. Let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be remembered no more. But, o lord of hosts, who judges righteously, who test the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance upon them. For to you I have committed my cause.
[00:07:43] So this is Jeremiah's prayer to the lord. When the lord reveals to him that these guys from Jeremiah's hometown had plotted to murder him. It's pretty amazing text, and it has to do with our gospel lesson, because it's in the gospel lesson, Jesus is going to talk about the conspiracy to put him to death. Also in Jerusalem.
[00:08:07] Yeah, let's look at that. So the gospel is from Mark, chapter nine, verses 30 to 37. It starts with. It's a very interesting note here.
[00:08:17] The disciples went on from there, passed through Galilee, and Jesus didn't want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples. So they were taking the back roads. They were going around towns. They weren't. They were, they were trying to stay conspicuous. No, inconspicuous. They were trying what? They were trying to stay hidden. They didn't want. Jesus doesn't want the crowds coming out to him because he's trying to, he's really trying to lean in on the disciples now because they, above everything else, they have to know that he came to be crucified and raised, that he came to suffer, that he came to be the lamb of goddesse who would take away the sins of the world. They have to know that that is going to be what they are going to preach, and that preaching is what Jesus will use to establish his church. So you've got to understand this. So this is now the second of three times that Jesus is going to give his passion predictions. The other, the other, whoops. Knocked over all my stuff, reaching for the text here. The other two times are Mark, chapter eight, verses 31 to 33, and mark, chapter 1032 to 34. So we're right in the middle of that, mark 930, where Jesus is predicting for a second of three times his passion, that is his suffering, his cross, his crucifixion, and his resurrection. He says, the son of man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed after three days, he will rise. But just like the first time and just like the third time, they did not understand the saying and they were afraid to ask him.
[00:10:05] Now, the text goes on, and this is interesting to me, because while the disciples do not understand what Jesus is saying, they almost demonstrate their ignorance by changing the subject, seemingly.
[00:10:22] In fact, it looks at first like it's a disjointed thing, because it goes on to say they came to Capernaum and in the house, he says, what were you talking about on the way? But they didn't say anything because on the way, they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.
[00:10:38] And it seems when, you know, you're reading through the gospels and every time, and every time the gospel writers tell us about what the disciples are talking about, they're talking about who's the best disciple, who's, who's the greatest. They're having this argument probably. Remember this text is right after last week's text, which is the casting out of the rescuing of the boy with the demons. And probably Peter's telling the other disciples, well, look, if I would have been there, I probably could have cast out that demon. But I was up with Jesus at transfiguration. That's why I couldn't do it.
[00:11:12] They're having this conversation about who's the greatest, and we laughed, but we are the same. I mean, I don't know if you guys noticed that we're in a political cycle again, and this is the question, who's the greatest? Who are you gonna. Who are you gonna vote for? Who's gonna be the president? Who's gonna be the vice president? Who's gonna be the congresswoman or man? Who's gonna be the city council person or the. Who's gonna be the one that we elect? Who's the greatest? That's the political conversation. Who's the greatest? And it's probably because of the political conversation that the disciples cannot comprehend the theological point.
[00:11:55] In other words, it seems like their minds just cannot grasp the theological point of the necessity of the suffering and death of the Messiah.
[00:12:05] Oh, Jesus, you can't. You can't die. You can't go and suffer. I mean, it's almost like they can't even get to the resurrection part, rise in three days. Cause they can't get past the suffer and die part. They can't. They can't even imagine that. But it's because they think the Messiah is going to come and set up a kingdom. You got to rule on the throne. You got to have armies. You got to subdue the Romans, you got to conquer. You have to sit on the throne of David.
[00:12:31] In other words, because they understood the messiah in political terms, and therefore their own office in political terms, they could not understand the theological point that Jesus had to suffer to save.
[00:12:43] So what does jesus do? He sat down, and he called the twelve, and he said to them, if anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all. And he put a child in the midst of them. And taking him up in his arms, he said, whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me receives not me, but him who sent me. Now, this shouldn't be confused with Mark, chapter ten. So this, our verse is mark, chapter nine, verse 37, where he says, you have to receive a little child in my name. In mark ten, he says, you have to be like a child unless you receive the kingdom of God like a child, you will not enter it. So there's two illustrations with children, and one is, you should be like the child, and the other is you should receive the child, and that's this one. In other words, your part in the kingdom is not grasping, arguing, exalting, clamoring for place, but it you are called to serve, you must be last of all and servant of all.
[00:13:58] And there's no one who is below our dignity to serve. So that Jesus says, even this little child, you are to be its diaconos. That's the word for serve. There, deacon, you are to deaconate Diakonos, you are to minister, to serve even the least.
[00:14:19] That's the lesson from Jesus. How marvelous is that? Okay, James, let's talk about James. This is James, 313 to 410.
[00:14:31] There's probably three things to point out in this text. It's packed full, like all the epistles packed full. James continues this business of showing your faith through works, and he uses the contrast between worldly wisdom and heavenly wisdom to demonstrate it. So verse 15, don't boast in false truth. That's not the wisdom that comes down from above, rather, earthly, unspiritual and demonic wisdom. So there's an earthly wisdom, there's an earthly foolishness, but there's a heavenly wisdom. Jealousy and selfish ambition exist. There's disorder in every vile practice. But the wisdom from above is first, pure and peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
[00:15:26] How about that for instructions for us? But we don't have peace. We have all these fights. And he says, why? What causes quarrels? What causes fights among you? So now James is going to diagnose the root cause of all of the conflict that we have in our own lives and in the world. Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire you don't have, so you murder, you covet, you cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel you don't have because you don't ask, and you ask, and you don't receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people. Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
[00:16:01] This is amazing.
[00:16:03] So that James is diagnosing the source of our trouble, which is our concupiscence, our wanting the wrong stuff, our natural inclination, our sinful inclination of our nature towards those things that God has not given.
[00:16:22] Remember how we talk about this? We say lost lives in every commandment we normally think of lost in terms of 6th commandment, to want the person that you're not married to. But there's fifth commandment lust, which is anger. There's fourth commandment lust, rebellion. There's third commandment lust, which is godlessness. No concern for the sacred. There's 7th commandment lust, which is greed. There's 8th commandment lust, which is bitterness. There's 9th and 10th commandment lust, covetousness, wanting what's not yours. So that there's lust that lives in each commandments and that stirs up sin, which gives birth to sin and matures into death.
[00:17:01] But what's the solution? Well, here's some law. God opposes the proud, but here's the gospel. Gives grace to the humble. Submit yourself, therefore to God. Humble yourself under his mighty hand.
[00:17:13] That's the command. And then this verse, the third point, verse seven, resist the devil and he will flee from you.
[00:17:23] That's just. We talked about it a couple weeks ago. I just. You would not.
[00:17:28] I mean, it's right there. You might read it in the bulletin. And you're like, probably Pastor made those words up. I got to go check to see if it's in the real Bible. And you go and you look in your Bible, and there it is. Sure enough, it says it straight from God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
[00:17:46] Have I told you the story? I tell the kids the story when I go to chapel. It's kind of funny. One time I was in Australia.
[00:17:54] I don't know, we were driving around the outback, and we thought ourselves as wild pig hunters. But, you know, the big wild pigs are dangerous, but we chase after the little piglets. So one time we're driving through, and there's this paddock, this field, and there's some wild pigs out there, some babies. And the guy driving stops, says, oh, hey, wolfie. Which was me.
[00:18:13] Grab the piglet. So I tear off through the bush, chasing after this little piglet, and it's squealing and running away from me, and I'm getting closer to it, big, and I'm getting ready to jump on it, and I realize I'm terrified of this pig. I'm. No, there's no way. I'm. I wish. I'm like, how come he's not running faster? I don't want to actually catch him. And so I'm right there, kind of on top of him, but I'm not going to jump on him. And I think the pig realizes this guy is not going to make a move. So he turns around, he kind of jumps at me and squeals and tries to bite me and I jump out of the way and I start running away from him. So now this pig is chasing me for, I don't know, 10ft chasing, trying to bite my ankles. And then I think we both realize, wait a minute. And so the pig turns and runs away and I stop and I look and I start chasing after it again until I realized, this is stupid. I mean, I'm afraid of the pig, but as long as it's running from me, I will run after it. But as soon as it stands there and snaps at me, then I turn around and run from it. Now, the only problem with that story is that I'm the devil in Ithoodae.
[00:19:22] That's how it goes.
[00:19:24] We stand and the devil jumps up and runs away. He was never going to destroy us anyways. He's not authorized.
[00:19:31] What is he going to accuse you of? That Christ did not die for? What sin is he going to bring before the throne of God that is not already atoned and covered? What's he going to do to you? Destroy you? That's this business of to live as Christ. To die is gain.
[00:19:46] Unknowingly they lead us to bliss.
[00:19:49] It's going to destroy us and bring us to the place that we're longing to go to heaven itself.
[00:19:59] Resist the devil, he'll flee from you. That's glorious.
[00:20:03] Let's see the hymn, Lord of glory, you have bought us. That's him, 781. I got in trouble last week because I said that the person who wrote the hymn was pretty old. They were born in 1980. So I said something that got me in trouble about how the hymn writer was old because they were born in 1955.
[00:20:31] So I repent. I'm sure I did not mean it at all.
[00:20:35] This hymn. Sorry, I said the wrong number. 851. Lord of Glory, you have bought us is written by someone much older, Eliza Alderson, who this lady died in 1889, so probably not only a few of you remember her.
[00:20:57] Lord of Glory, you have bought us with your life blood as the price, never grudging for the lost ones, that tremendous sacrifice and that we and with that have freely given blessings countless as the sand to the unthankful and the evil with your own unsparing hand. So the Lord has been gracious to us. And then here's a bit of a mystery. It's an old english thing, but we can sort it out. Wondrous honor you have given to our humblest charity in your own mysterious sentence, you have done it all to me.
[00:21:33] Can it be, o gracious master, that you deign for alms to sue, saying, by your poor and needy give as I have given to you? Now? What that. What does that mean? You deign for alms to sue? That means you design to ask to sue, to request charity so that the Lord humbles himself to ask for help in the request of those who are in need to the Lord's people.
[00:22:02] So when. When someone who has need comes to us, then the Lord says, not only are you serving them, you're serving me through them. So that the Lord humbles himself to the point to where he himself is asking for help in the poor and lowly. That's the idea there. It's a really profound idea. So that in our serving and blessing and helping people, the Lord says, you're actually doing that for me?
[00:22:26] And we marvel that the Lord, who needs nothing, in fact, gives us the opportunity to bless him and serve him. That's what's going on.
[00:22:38] All right, Bible class. Hebrews, chapter eleven. We continue in the hall of faith.
[00:22:46] Start in verse eight with Abraham. By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called. And we'll talk about these three or four faithful acts of Saint Abraham in obedience to God and rejoice in what that means for us. We also give thanks to God this week for two births. Lawrence and Anna was born Monday. Lawrence was born on Tuesday. I believe we have a baptism scheduled for next. Wait a minute.
[00:23:11] Second and third Sundays in October, if I've got it right, working with the family. So some baptisms on the way. God we praise. Morgan and Riley are doing great, so they appreciate your prayers as well. And God we praise that he's gathering you right now in his name to rejoice in his word. We'll see you soon. God's peace be with.