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[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's pastor Wolf Mueller here. And this is the Sunday drive to church for Sept. Oh, Michael Moss, September 29, the year of our Lord, 2024. St. Michael's Day. It's his actual day today, St. Michael's Day, September 29. Always that year, that day. And so we'll celebrate that. So you'll see on the COVID this great picture of St. Michael demolishing the devil with what looks like a lightning bolt crushing him. It's fantastic.
[00:00:30] This is the content of a lot of fantastic art. St. Mike overthrowing the devil. Just really beautiful.
[00:00:39] And we'll celebrate that today in church. We'll hear the two texts from the Bible that mention St. Michael in Daniel and revelation. Hear the good news of the disciples who came back from their I, their mission, where they were sent by Jesus rejoicing that they trampled over the devil and the demons. Really great. So we'll get into that a little bit. Let's pray first, and then I'll tell you. I've always wondered why September 29 was St. Michael's day, because normally these days in the calendar, like St. Peter's Day, St. Paul's Day, or St. Timothy day, are the days where the bones of the guys were moved to a different place and a chapel was dedicated. So, like early middle ages, they were always all these little, well, not little. All these cities were fighting for the bones of all the apostles and saints. And so they would build a big basilica to house these, the bones. So, like, the St. Peter's Basilica has the bone skeleton of St. Peter, and St. Paul's in Rome has the bones of St. Paul. And there's another.
[00:01:41] Is it St. John's Lateran in Rome that has both of their skulls? So, you know, so Peter's body is in that one cathedral, but his skull is in a different one. We saw the skull of Titus in Crete. And so normally, the days of these saints are celebrated on the days when their bones got moved into a new fancy church. Normally. And I was thinking, well, how could you get St. Michael's Day on September 29? Because he doesn't have any bones to move anywhere. So I looked it up, and apparently there was a church outside of Rome dedicated to St. Michael on September 29, some big church that doesn't exist anymore. And so that's how saint. So they build a church. They just have any bones of St. Michael to put in there. But it's become an interesting day in the rhythm of christian cultures. Michael Moss. That's. Sometimes we call the time St. Michael's Day is Michael Moss, and then the time after Michael Moss. So, like, from now until the end of Trinity season or Pentecost season is like a chunk of this big of this time. So we enter now into Michaelmaste, and before this, we were in St. John tide. And if you divide up the long summer season into different mini seasons, St. Michael's Day marks the end, and it's really the end of the summer. There's a lot of harvest festivals connected to it. But for us, the benefit of this day is it brings us the texts of.
[00:03:21] Of Michael and the angels and lets us reflect on those, especially revelation twelve. Oh, what a thing. There is also, just by the sense we are talking about nerdy liturgical things, there is a certain way that you are supposed to decide if the day is celebrated instead of the Sunday. So in the old lectionary, this Sunday would have been, I cant remember, like Trinity 21 or something like that.
[00:03:52] And it's also on St. Michael's Day. So you have to figure out, do you celebrate the Trinity Sunday or do you celebrate St. Michael's Sunday? And they came up with a table of precedents that says that this feast is a feast of the first class and is always to be celebrated. And, in fact, it is to be moved to the nearest Sunday or celebrated on the day. And then there's other feasts which are to be moved to the Sunday to which they are closest. And there's other feasts that are to be celebrated if they fall on the Sunday. And then there's other Sundays that are always celebrated. There's a table of precedents which we don't have. So I always got to get look up my book of common prayer. So if you have a book of common prayer, the table of precedents is on the preface, page 50 and 51 llI, and it says, the feast of the first class holy days have pref has precedence over any other Sunday or holy day, and it lists them, and that's not St. Michael's. But then there are feasts of the second class. The following holy days have precedents of days not noted in the foregoing table, and these days include St. Stephen, St. John, holy innocence, circumcision of Christ, conversion of Paul, purification of Mary, John the Baptist, all feasts of apostles or evangelists, transfiguration of Christ, St. Michael, and all angels and all saints. On these holy days, the collect, epistle and gospel for the feast shall be used, but on Sundays, the collect for the feast shall be followed by the collect for the Sunday, etcetera. So there's a table of precedents that is used to figure this stuff out. This is like liturgical mathematics. You kind of have to have an aerospace engineering degree to figure it out. I mean, the next one has the table for finding the holy days and finding days for the feast of Easter. And it has these golden numbers with a chart. It goes all the way to the year 8400 in here. I don't know how to use it anyway. All right, back to St Michael's day. We'll pray to everlasting God. You have ordained and constituted the service of angels and men in a wonderful order.
[00:05:57] Mercifully grant that as your holy angels always serve and worship you in heaven, so by your appointment they may also help and defend us here on earth through your son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Our opening psalm. This is beautiful. Both the opening psalm as well as the gradual. Psalm 91. Now, the reason psalm 90, I mean, psalm 91 is one of the most beautiful psalms. It's the psalm that we were all praying in Covid, because it has the pestilence part. Where does it go? You will not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day, nor pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor destruction that wastes at noonday. That's verse five and six. This is a military victory psalm. A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
[00:06:53] You only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked, because you have made the Lord your dwelling place. The most high is my refuge. No evil shall be allowed to before you. No plague come near your tent. And then this verse eleven, which is what we use on the first Sunday at Lent and St Michael's day and all the others, because it talks about the angels, and specifically because this is the verse that the devil quotes.
[00:07:22] For he will command to the. To the Lord Jesus when he brings him to the top of the temple and says, why don't you jump off? Because of this promise, he'll command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hand, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. And then you will tread on the lion and the add or the young lion and the serpent. You'll trample underfoot. That's a reference to the devil being destroyed. It's an amazing thing. I mean, this text is highlighting how Jesus will crush the devil. It's an echo of that first promise of the gospel. Remember Genesis 315, that fountain from which the gospel flows where the Lord says to the devil. And how amazing is it already that the first preaching of the gospel is to the devil so that Adam and Eve can hear. I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, your seed and her seed. He'll crush your head, you'll crush his heel. So that this serpent being crushed by the heel of the Son of man is the, is the gospel promise that runs throughout the Old Testament. And here it's reflected in the text. Can you hear it? It says he will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent, you will trample underfoot, which must be the father talking to the son. So the devil is particularly interested in this passage. I mean, the devil. It's good for us to remember that the devil is a student of the scripture because he's trying to figure out a way to get out of it, to destroy the Lord and his kingdom. And he would have been especially interested in this text because this text is an echo of that first promise. So he's studying it and studying it. So it's no accident that the devil chooses this text to try to tempt Jesus with. And he does it by leaving out that part in all your ways.
[00:09:13] If you look at the text in Matthew three or in Mark and Luke, wherever we see the temptation, I guess the words aren't there in Mark. So you gotta look in Matthew or Luke and you see how the devil quotes the text. You see that he leaves out that little phrase in all your ways, which is the condition of this particular promise. And that is that when the Lord calls us to do something, he'll protect us as we do it. And it should not be understood that the Lord is going to protect us whenever we choose to do whatever we want. Like jump off a tower? No, the Lord has promised to protect us when we're doing what he's called us to do. So as we live our lives and our vocation, we have this great promise. But, but to go and, and demand the Lord's protection when we're just making stuff up, that is, as Jesus says, putting the Lord, our God, to the test.
[00:10:07] It's a beautiful, beautiful psalm. So we'll sing that together and we'll think about it, how the Lord is the one who protects us, keeps us in Christ. The Old Testament lesson. We're pulling verses from Daniel, chapter ten and chapter twelve. And this is, there's a double mention of Daniel, sorry, of Michael in Daniel. And so the first is in chapter ten, the second is chapter twelve. And they're both mentioned here. I think the amazing one is Daniel is praying and fasting and asking the Lord for the interpretation of a dream that he had. And he has to wait for weeks. And then finally an angel comes to him and says, here's the explanation. But he also says, sorry it took so long.
[00:10:57] And why is because when I was sent from heaven to answer your request, I was blocked by the prince of the kingdom of Persia for 21 days. So the best interpretation here is this prince of the kingdom of Persia is a demon who has this particular region under his authority by the demonic arrangement of things. And he blocks this angel from getting to Daniel until what happens is Michael comes.
[00:11:25] But the prince of kingdom Persia withstood me 21 days. But Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia. And he came to make you understand what is to happen your people in the latter days for the vision yet to come. So that the idea is that this angel is dispatched from heaven to tell Daniel what's going on in his dream, and he gets stopped by another angel. So the lord sends Michael to resist this prince of Persia, and he makes a way for him to get, for the message to get through.
[00:11:55] It's one of these texts where we're like, wow, I know a lot more about the demonic and angelic realms than I did before I read it.
[00:12:04] And then we read the beginning of chapter twelve. At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince, who has charge of your people. There shall be a time of trouble such as never has been seen since the nations at that time. But at that time, your people would be delivered so that Michael has this role in the work and delivery of the gospel. Marvelous.
[00:12:27] I wonder if we need to say more about this. Well, here's the third mention of Michael. We know two angel names, by the way, in the scriptures, Michael and Gabriel. And it's Gabriel who comes to announce to Mary that she will be pregnant by the Holy Spirit and not by a mandev with the Christ. So Gabriel is one named angel and Michael is the other.
[00:12:53] Raphael is a traditional name for the angels that comes from apocryphal books. Sometimes people will say that the devil's name is Lucifer, although that name means light bearer and refers to a title rather than a name. Although sometimes, I mean, you know, these words all mean things. Michael means something and Gabriel means something. And so they all have meanings like Lucifer. So maybe Lucifer was a name for the devil before his fall. But anyway, Michael and Gabriel, those are the two angel names that we know for sure. And Michael we hear most. The other time is in revelation twelve. Now, I don't want to spoil it because I'm going to preach on this. It's so good. This is one of the, this is one of the best spots in the Bible. I love revelation twelve because it starts with this vision of a woman with the twelve stars. That's Israel pregnant. That's this promise. Genesis 315, ready to have a baby and a dragon ready to eat the baby when it's born, which is gross or scary, but the baby survives and is caught up into heaven. And then this war breaks out in heaven. This is all a prophecy picture, a visionary picture of the, of the Old Testament Israel waiting for the birth of the Messiah. And then it has in one little verse the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. And then it hones in on the results of Jesus ascension when he brings into heaven his blood the evidence of his atoning sacrifice. And then the devil is removed.
[00:14:27] War breaks out in heaven in the heavenly court. And the reason war breaks out in heaven is because the devil has a place there where he can accuse, accuse, accuse us of all of our sins. But now when Jesus brings the evidence of his sacrifice into the heavenly court, there is no more accusation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So that everything the devil is doing now is out of order.
[00:14:56] And he, like a rowdy person doing illegal things in a courtroom, is held in contempt of court. And the bailiff, St. Michael, is authorized to remove him and throw him out. So he does. It's great. And he comes down to earth and he's chomping after us. And this test text tells us how he is overcome three things by the word of the testimony, by the blood of the lamb. They did not love their lives unto death.
[00:15:29] So good. Oh, all right. There's, I mean, more. This text, so good.
[00:15:37] Preach about it. The gradual I skipped over the gradual has the two chief verses on angels. In the psalms, psalm 91, he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. That highlights that text that the devil tried to remove Jonathan in this gradual that he composed is putting it into our minds so we never forget it. And then psalm 103, which is the great hymn to the angels, bless the Lord, o my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Oh, look, that doesn't even have the angel part in it. The angel part comes into psalm 103 a little bit later.
[00:16:18] Here. Bless the Lord.
[00:16:21] Psalm 103, verse 20. Bless the Lord, o you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all his hosts. That's angels. Whenever you see angel, whenever you see the word hosts, think angel armies. Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will.
[00:16:40] Bless the Lord, all his works in places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, o my soul.
[00:16:47] That verse 20 here is one of the best verses about who the angels are in the Bible.
[00:17:00] The gospel lesson is from Luke, chapter ten, the 72, starting with verse 17, the 72 return with joy, saying, lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I've given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, nothing shall hurt you, serpents and scorpions being a stand in for the demons there. But then Jesus says this, nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven so that our joy is not to be, that we are set to trample over the devil and his kingdom, which you would think that that would be something that would make us particularly joyful. We're not supposed to rejoice in that. Certainly not boast in it. We're to rejoice that we're saved because you see this, that we are fallen like the devil himself, and that the Lord decided in his mercy to rescue and save us is the. Is the thing that ought to bring us the chief joy.
[00:18:06] But we should know that we have this authority.
[00:18:10] It doesn't say power, by the way. Authority. There's a big difference between power and authority. Power has to do with intrinsic strength, like the power to lift 300 pounds or something like this. But authority means you speak and it goes. I remember my pastor Graff used to say, the best example of power versus authority is Gomer Pyle, who has no power, but he has authority. Put someone in jail. It's authority.
[00:18:37] The hymn is 522, the hymn of the day, which is an interesting hymn. Lord God to thee, we, we all give praise.
[00:18:47] It's a hymn about the angels and archangels, and it's written by none other than Philip Melanchthon himself.
[00:18:55] I thought that this was the only hymn that we had in the hymnal by Philip Melanchthon. You'll remember that Philip Melanchthon was like number two reformer. Philip Melanchthon was the classicist at Wittenberg and the chief partner of Martin Luther during the time of the Reformation, you'd see all the paintings of the Reformation, and it was Luther and Philip and Bugenhagen. He was the pastor there.
[00:19:22] Those three were the Wittenberg theologians. And for some accounts, Philip Melanchthon was even more popular than Martin Luther. That's why people were coming to the University of Wittenberg, to listen to Philip Melanchthon. It's a great theologian. Luther said about Philip Melanchthon that his loseye, his theological topics, it's kind of a dogmatic text, should have been appended to the scripture, because it did such a good job explaining the text. And Melanchthon is the author of the Augsburg Confession and the apology of the Augsburg Confession and the article against the power and primacy of the pope. Three documents in the Book of Concord, which has only ten documents, and that's as many as Luther.
[00:20:03] It's interesting that melanchthon, though, had some tendencies to try to be irenic, peaceful. He had a tendency to compromise. And when Luther died, that no one was holding him in check, and there arose a party, the Philippists, and it caused not a slight bit of controversy after the death of Luther. And some of the doctrines got muddled up by the Philippists, and the later concordists had to straighten things out. So a lot of the formula of Concord, that's what the men's group is studying on Saturday mornings. The formula of Concord is trying to wrangle in some of the errors of the Philippists so that we could make sure we get it right. Now, I thought. I thought so.
[00:20:52] Melanchthon is not a famous hymn writer, except for this one. Lord God, thee, we all give praise. That. That was the only one. But I looked it up just to be sure, and I found another one. It turns out that hymn 585, Lord Jesus Christ with us abide, was also written by Philip Melanchthon.
[00:21:08] What is his german name? The vicar will have to tell us. Schwartz. Something. Black dirt. Melancthon is the greek way to say black dirt. And these guys would change their names when they got their doctorates. Like, Luther was luder and he became Eleutherios. And he says, that's a little dainty. So he went back to. But instead of Luther, his parents were luder, but he became Luther. So melanchthon becomes melanchthon. So he wrote, Lord Jesus Christ with us abide, for round us falls even tide. But it turns out he only wrote stanza one of that verse, of that hymn.
[00:21:43] And then Selnacker wrote the rest of them. But this one, our angel hymn that we're singing today. Melanchthon wrote all of them. All eight verses. Lord God, to thee we all give praise. With grateful hearts our voices read the angel hosts thou didst create around thy glorious throne to wait. And then it talks about this spiritual warfare that we're all engaging. Is the ancient dragon is their foe his envy and his wrath? They know it always is his aim and pride. Thy christian people to divide as he of old deceived the world and into sin and death is hurled. So now he subtly will eyes and wait to undermine both church and state. Roaring lion, round he goes. But then. But what watchful is the angel band that follows Christ on every hand to guard his people where they go and break the counsel of the foe. For this now and in days to be our praise shall rise, o Lord, to thee, whom all the angel hosts adore, with grateful songs forevermore. This is a great. This hymn is a great reminder that we are in the midst of spiritual warfare. But the Lord Jesus has overcome the devil and sin and death and the world and our sinful flesh, and he has done it all for us.
[00:22:54] And that he now sends the angels to watch over and protect us so that every night we pray, let your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may have no power over me. God be praised for that. All right, if you're in late service, we got a great confirmation Sunday. Eight young adults being confirmed this week. Seven. Seven young men, one young lady. And they'll confess their faith and join us in the fellowship of the Lord's altar. Oh, God be praised for that. God be praised. And next week, baptism. Anna. Next week, baptism. After that. Hayes Smitherman.
[00:23:33] It's wonderful. I'll see you soon. Drive safe. God's peace be with.