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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. It's Pastor Wolfmuller. This is the Sunday Drive to Church podcast for the 14th Sunday after Trinity today, September 6th, Year of our Lord 2026. Let's pray the collect for today.
[00:00:13] I'm looking at the front of the bulletin.
[00:00:16] I wanted to point this out. The collect is there in the front of the bulletin. There's a bunch of prayers that we pray together in the divine service, and it's good to follow along. The collect is one on the front of the page and to keep that with you throughout the week. The other is the prayer of the church. These are listed especially the people that we're praying for are listed in that inside cover on the bulletin. And we just pray for people by their Christian name, their baptized first name, but it's good to see their last name and know who we're praying for there. So it's okay. I mean, you can close your eyes when we're praying, or you can read along, or you can look at the bulletin and see who we're praying for. That's also okay. Anyhow, don't close your eyes while you're driving. Let's pray.
[00:01:04] O Lord, keep your church with your perpetual mercy.
[00:01:09] And because of our frailty, we cannot but fall.
[00:01:12] Keep us ever, by your help, from all things hurtful and lead us to all things profitable, to our salvation through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.
[00:01:27] Amen.
[00:01:29] Amen. If you're listening, by the way, and you're not in Austin, you're hanging around, you're traveling somewhere and hope you're going to church this morning for your Memorial Day weekend. It's exciting that next week, really, things get cooking. We get into our normal Sunday school rhythm.
[00:01:46] We have our voters meeting. Don't forget, next Thursday.
[00:01:49] Sorry, Sunday, September 13th, we have our voters meeting and our special voters meeting to extend a call. Those candidates are published and you guys are supposed to be, you know, listening to their sermons and thinking about this. That's all great. Okay.
[00:02:06] To the liturgy. We're in the long Trinity season, divided up into different sections, but we're in this in section. Well, it'd be like the penultimate section. So getting into September, especially October, November, we start to get more festive stuff into September's into is St. Michael's Day.
[00:02:30] Then we have the Reformation stuff and All Saints and the end of the church year, that's all on the way. But we're still working through this long section of miracles that Jesus is going to do.
[00:02:42] And we have that again today with the healing of the 10 lepers from Luke 17. But we're on the way, so we're not there yet. The psalm is Psalm 119, 9, 16.
[00:02:55] And I know you guys are complaining, like, hey, why don't we just do all of the psalm? Why do we break it into sections? We would be there for a long time for Psalm 119. Remember, Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible. It's called the Great Torah Psalm.
[00:03:13] If you look at it, and this is pretty cool, when you look in your hymnal, you'll notice that that section, those eight verses, 9 to 16, are called Bethesda. And you're like, I wonder who that is, if Beth wrote this little section. Well, Beth, in fact, is not a person, it's a letter. And when you look at all the sections, you'll realize that they're named after all the Hebrew letters. 1 to 8, Aleph, 9 to 16, Beth, 17 to 24, Gimel, 25 to 32, Daleth, and so forth. And so this Psalm has.
[00:03:50] Has 22 sections of eight verses each.
[00:03:56] And it's because it's this great acrostic. So that's the. If you're wondering, hey, I Wonder what the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet are, you can just open your hymnal or your bible to Psalm 119, and it'll give them to you. Aleph, Beth, Gimel. That's the Alphabet. Because each of these verses starts with that letter in.
[00:04:15] In Hebrew. So if you were looking at Psalm 119 in Hebrew, the first eight verses would start with the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, Aleph. And then our eight verses would start with the Hebrew letter Beth, and so forth and so on.
[00:04:31] Hebrew poetry is not really built on meter and rhyme like our poetry used to be.
[00:04:38] It's built on.
[00:04:41] It's built on these kind of structural things. So there's a lot of acrostic poetry. There's a lot of parallelism.
[00:04:51] It's a different structure of poetry, which.
[00:04:55] I was thinking about this a couple years ago. It seems like the Lord chose his own poetry so that it would be able to be translated into other languages.
[00:05:04] Rhyme doesn't translate, metre doesn't translate, but parallelism does. But this doesn't. You can't see the Beth there. We can't. It would be absolutely impossible to translate. I wonder if. Well, I say that I wonder if anyone's ever tried to translate the acrostic poems and, like, start with the equivalent letter. I mean, we don't have all the same letters, but you could use B.
[00:05:32] Huh.
[00:05:34] That would be difficult.
[00:05:37] I never thought about that, actually. Trying to. Huh. I'll have to ask Pastor Smith about it. Anyway, the whole psalm is about the Bible, so that in every single verse of the 176 verses of this entire psalm, the word of God is mentioned, except for maybe one verse. And in a few verses, it's mentioned twice by different synonyms.
[00:05:58] So you'll see it in our text. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it against your word.
[00:06:04] With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments.
[00:06:08] I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord, teach me your statutes.
[00:06:16] So if you have your hymnal with you, which I would encourage, you know, bring your own hymnal, you could underline all the times that the word comes up in this particular text.
[00:06:27] It's really a great parallel also to our psalm. It was on.
[00:06:32] Sorry, our Old Testament lesson. It was on this Psalm 119, his preface to it, that Luther taught us the three things that make a theologian. Remember that beautiful teaching that it takes three things to make a theologian.
[00:06:47] Prayer, meditation, and suffering. Oof. Like Luther, could I, you know, could I sign up for the prayer and meditation and, you know, clap out of the suffering part? Nope, nope, nope. That's how it goes. Okay.
[00:07:04] Proverbs 4 is our old Testament lesson, so we don't get to read Proverbs too often in church. So it's nice that we get to hear from Solomon. Proverbs is probably his textbook that he wrote for his University of Jerusalem that he established, because remember, the kings and queens of all the different places were sending their kids over to Jerusalem to study under Solomon. He's the wisest man alive.
[00:07:36] And so you think about this as the textbook of the University of Jerusalem, or Wisdom 101 with Solomon. And this text really is a sort of prefatory text.
[00:07:50] It's setting before us who would be wise.
[00:07:56] Two paths.
[00:07:57] And this is one of the great features of wisdom literature. There's this way, which is the way that leads to life, and there's this other way, and that's the way that leads to death.
[00:08:08] And the way of wisdom, the way of the instruction of the fathers. That's the way that. That's walking in the light and leading to life.
[00:08:18] And then there's the way of sin, the way of evil that leads to death. So, for example, verse 14. Don't enter into the path of the wicked and don't walk in the way of the evil. Avoid it. Don't go on it. Turn away from it. Pass on.
[00:08:35] For they cannot sleep unless they've done wrong.
[00:08:40] They're robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.
[00:08:44] In other words, the evil are sitting there at night. Man, oh man, I didn't do enough wicked today.
[00:08:50] There's always plotting some sort of evil just sitting there. Ooh, there's more. I can make someone mess up.
[00:08:56] This is. By the way. You can tell that we think, who would ever be like that? But then all of a sudden, it sneaks in. When you're angry at someone and then you're sitting there brooding all night.
[00:09:11] For they eat the bread of wickedness, drink the wine of violence. But the path of the righteous.
[00:09:19] You kids can circle these in the bulletin. The word path and the word way. Take a look at that. The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
[00:09:32] The way of the wicked. It's like deep darkness.
[00:09:36] They don't even know over what they stumble.
[00:09:39] So, my son, be attentive to my words, incline your ears to my saying, let them not escape from your sight. Keep them within your heart, for they are life to those who find them and healing to all their flesh.
[00:09:50] Life and healing. The word is life, the word is light. The word is healing.
[00:09:55] So that we keep them in our heart.
[00:09:58] You know, there's the lost art of memorizing, well, anything, because it's so easy to look it up. You know, just ask Google. There it is, all this information and knowledge right there on your phone. So we don't. Because it takes work to inscribe something into your heart. But it's one of our Christian disciplines that we don't want to forget about that we're memorizing the scripture.
[00:10:26] A lot of you guys remember having the old memory verses. We're going to put that in the Sunday school curriculum this next year. So each week we'll have a memory verse and try to put these verses on our hearts so we carry them with us wherever we go.
[00:10:41] And then look at the last verse here. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
[00:10:51] So we should be worried about our. About our bodies, about our minds, about our guts, our feelings, but chiefly our heart.
[00:11:03] I suppose heart in the Old Testament means all of that inner life, so mind and soul and will and all of it.
[00:11:10] We gotta pay attention to that because out of that comes our life. Jesus says, out of the heart, the mouth speaks, etc. So we gotta give that attention to the shape of our hearts.
[00:11:24] It's a big part of our Christian life of sanctification. We're not just paying attention to what we do and what we say, but also that inner life. We're going to get a lot of that in the epistle in just a minute.
[00:11:36] This little verse 23 reminds me of what Jesus says in Luke 21, which is something I've been mulling over the last few days.
[00:11:46] Jesus says, talking about the end times, in patience, possess your soul.
[00:11:52] There's a little. There's a little mystery to think about.
[00:11:56] In other words, I don't know what Jesus is talking about. Does he mean that it's through patience and the patient affliction of suffering that we hold on to our souls and don't lose it?
[00:12:11] Or is Jesus saying, look, the thing that helps us to treasure the soul that's inside of us is not the.
[00:12:22] Is not the successes of life, but rather the afflictions of life.
[00:12:28] Or is it that when you're going through suffering, we're tempted to let go of our soul?
[00:12:35] So Jesus is saying, hold on to it.
[00:12:40] I don't. I can't.
[00:12:42] I don't know. But I think it has something to do with this verse also. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. Okay, The Epistle, Galatians 5. Last week we were in Galatians 3. Next week we're in Galatians. We had three weeks of Galatians.
[00:13:00] I say to you, and Paul's going to set it up here. Remember, in the very beginning of Galatians 5, he gave that great call to Christian freedom.
[00:13:12] Let no one draw you back into bondage.
[00:13:16] And he then talks about bondage as well as bondage to the flesh. That's at least how he's going to put it forth here.
[00:13:25] And in this verse, Paul is going to articulate so clearly that our Christian life is a life of flesh versus spirit, so that we have at the same time the sinful flesh, the old Adam with its lusts and wicked desires.
[00:13:45] And it's in us, and it's allied with the world and the devil, and it wants to bring forth the fruit of sin.
[00:13:52] You are born with this nature, and you'll have it until you die. And it wants to do the wrong thing. It's lazy, it's selfish, it's lustful, it's vengeful, it's idolatrous.
[00:14:07] And it's in you.
[00:14:09] You though, also have in you the spirit.
[00:14:13] Now you have a spirit. You can think of that like the heart's inner chamber. And in your spirit is the Holy Spirit. That's the gift of holy baptism. We were born and the demons were rolling around in that place, but the Lord's booted them out through the exorcism of the Word and baptism. And now the Holy Spirit dwells in you. And the Holy Spirit has enliven your spirit to fight against the flesh and to do those things which are good and holy and right.
[00:14:46] It's interesting in this text because I want to say, look, the flesh has its own set of desires and the spirit has its own set of desires.
[00:15:00] And it set. I'm going to show you. It says it in the English, but it's not in the Greek. And this is, I think, pretty important.
[00:15:06] Verse 16. This is Galatians 5. 16. I say walk by the Spirit, capitalized Holy Spirit, who's at work in our Spirit. And you will not gratify the desires, the lusts, the epithumi, the wants of the flesh.
[00:15:23] For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. They're opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that. That you want to do.
[00:15:34] Now there it is. You're like pastor, look. Desires of flesh, desires of spirit. But if you look in the Greek, it's not what it says. It says the desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.
[00:15:48] It doesn't apply that same word to the spirit.
[00:15:52] And it's because the spirit works in a different way.
[00:15:57] The spirit wants things.
[00:16:00] And so in a way, the spirit desires, but the spirit wants in a way that's under the.
[00:16:08] It's under the authority of the Word of God.
[00:16:12] The flesh wants its own lusts and desires to rule over the word of God.
[00:16:20] And that's the thing that's going on. And we have to realize that this fight is happening our entire lives. It's why the Christian life is so difficult. We're all only half Christian. We've got the flesh hanging around our neck. Remember this old Adam, which was drowned in baptism, but Luther reminds us, is a good swimmer, so that our whole life is like St. Paul says in Romans, making no provision for the flesh. We're not throwing any wood on that fire of the flesh's sinful desires. And lest we think that the flesh's sinful desires are just what we normally think of lust, he says, no, look, these are regarding every single commandment. Lust lives in every commandment.
[00:17:05] Sixth commandment, lust. We talk about you shall not commit adultery, but there's fifth commandment, lust, anger. There's fourth commandment, lust, rebellion, Seventh commandment, lust, greed, Eighth commandment, lust, bitterness, Second commandment, lust, which is probably magic and misuse of the Lord's name.
[00:17:24] First commandment, lust, idolatry, ninth and tenth commandment, lust is envy, jealousy, all that sort of stuff. And Paul's going to list it all.
[00:17:35] If you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh, well, we should probably say something about that. But here, v. 19, the works of the flesh are evident. Sexual immorality, sixth commandment, impurity, sensuality, sixth commandment, idolatry, first commandment, sorcery, second commandment, enmity, fifth commandment, strife, also fifth, jealousy, nine and ten, fits of anger, five rivalries, five, eight dissensions, probably eight divisions, envy, nine, ten, drunkenness, which destroys it all. Orgies, sixth commandment, and things like these.
[00:18:07] I warned you, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
[00:18:12] The kingdom of God is not for those who are led and driven, who are defined, who are captured, who are enslaved to the desires of the flesh.
[00:18:24] No, but the opposite is true for the Christian, the fruit of the spirit.
[00:18:32] So that while the flesh is trying to show up in all of these works, and I think it's not by accident that Paul calls it the works of the flesh, because he's fighting against works in the whole Epistle.
[00:18:48] These are sinful works, evil works Paul warns about. Even good works don't save us. But here it's the fruit of the spirit. And I just noticed this this morning, thinking about getting ready for here for the Drive to Church podcast.
[00:19:04] That fruit is singular.
[00:19:08] In my mind, it was plural, the fruits of the spirit, because you got nine fruits, so I thought it would be plural. And it. And I looked it up in the lexicon to see if it's one of those words that's plural, even though it's singular, like seed or something. No, it can be plural. But that's not what Paul says. Here. The fruit singular of the spirit is.
[00:19:34] So that all this list of nine things is really a description of. Of one thing, the spirit, fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.
[00:19:51] That's. How different is that?
[00:19:54] Against such things, there's no law.
[00:19:57] And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with Its passions and desires.
[00:20:04] Now, notice the call here.
[00:20:06] It's not to train the flesh.
[00:20:09] It's not to.
[00:20:12] What put. Send the. What is that? When the. Like you send the. The juvenile delinquents to the school and they're supposed to be, you know, they're supposed to be fixed up.
[00:20:23] There's a name for that. It's too early.
[00:20:26] This is not what we do to the flesh.
[00:20:28] We're not trying to.
[00:20:30] We're not trying to fix the flesh.
[00:20:33] The flesh has to be put to death.
[00:20:35] Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
[00:20:42] Blah.
[00:20:45] What is the verse that I skipped that I said I want to go back to? Oh, yeah.
[00:20:50] If you are led by the Spirit, you're not under the law.
[00:20:54] What Paul means there, and he'll talk about this in First Timothy 2, is that the law has a coercive effect, so it's keeping and a condemning effect.
[00:21:07] And as a Christian, we are no longer bound to the condemnation or the coercion of the law.
[00:21:15] Insofar as we're led by the Spirit, we actually want to do those things which are pleasing to God.
[00:21:22] And we're driven by love. And remember, love does no wrong to the neighbor. So love is the fulfillment of the law.
[00:21:29] So the Christian is still keeping the law, but not in its again condemning or coercive way. It's now the joy of the Christian, the delight of the Christian.
[00:21:44] How beautiful Christ is. The end of the law for those who believe is how Paul says it in Romans.
[00:21:55] Okay, Luke 17. This is our thanksgiving text. On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee.
[00:22:04] Galileans didn't want him. Samaritans didn't necessarily want him.
[00:22:09] He's headed to Jerusalem to die.
[00:22:13] And as he entered a village, so on the outskirts of a village, not sure which one, he was met by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and. And lifted up their voices, saying, jesus, master, have mercy on us.
[00:22:27] When he saw them, he said to them, go and show yourself to the priests.
[00:22:33] And as they went, they were cleansed.
[00:22:37] Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
[00:22:45] And he fell on his face at Jesus feet, giving him thanks.
[00:22:51] Now he was a Samaritan.
[00:22:53] Then Jesus answered, were not 10 cleansed? Where are the 9?
[00:22:58] Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner.
[00:23:03] And he said to him, rise and go your way.
[00:23:06] Your faith has made you well.
[00:23:11] Oh, I don't know how I I. I do not know.
[00:23:18] I do not know how to preach this text.
[00:23:24] There's hours of stuff here.
[00:23:27] What should we do?
[00:23:29] This is one here. We just. This text just needs to live in our hearts and imaginations. There's so many things that are just. I mean, first of all, to think about how the lepers remember the Jews and the Samaritans hated each other.
[00:23:48] But here was this group of 10 lepers and there was a Samaritan and presumably nine Jews.
[00:23:56] Maybe there's more Samaritan than Jews. They were all together.
[00:24:00] There's a certain way that sickness creates its own kind of fellowship. And there's a fellowship of sin, there's a fellowship of uncleanness.
[00:24:10] That's. It's just really interesting how the Jews and Samaritans would never hang around, but when you're exiled, then you don't mind each other.
[00:24:23] That's a small part of the text. But I remember one time there was this guy. I was in Cairns, Australia, of all places.
[00:24:30] I must have been 16 years old or something. And we were out at this seafood place and I saw a guy from my high school, I must have been a junior in high school and he was a senior in high school.
[00:24:41] And I didn't really like the guy. We didn't get along that well.
[00:24:46] And I saw him in Cairns, Australia, and we hung out like that whole afternoon evening because we were two Americans and we knew each other anyway. That's a bad illustration. But the point is the Jews and the Samaritans would never hang out unless you both got leprosy. Why not?
[00:25:04] You can't hang out with anybody else and you got to sit there on the outskirts yelling, unclean, unclean. That's the commandment of Moses. But look at how Jesus changes that prayer where they see Jesus and they lift up their voices saying mercy, mercy.
[00:25:23] And then Jesus doesn't say, you're cleansed. It's all these long distance miracles that are so interesting.
[00:25:30] He says, while they still have leprosy, he tells them to go show themselves to the priest, which is this incredible thing, that Jesus recognizes the authority of the priests and that they all go their way, presumably trusting the word of Jesus.
[00:25:51] They don't say, well, why don't you heal us now before we leave? They all are willing to go away, but then as they're going, they're all healed.
[00:26:03] That's what it must have sounded like.
[00:26:07] They're looking at their hands and their, their flesh is fixed and, and all this infection is gone and their sensation comes Back, their feeling comes back.
[00:26:20] And then they got. And we don't know what the nine did. All we know is what they didn't do. They didn't come back to Jesus. Maybe they.
[00:26:28] They hustled to the priest because it was the priest who would declare them clean so that they could re engage. They could go back home and go back to work and they could embrace their family again. That was the provision that Moses gave. But the Samaritan can't go into the temple, so there's something there.
[00:26:44] But the point is that when Jesus sees the Samaritan, what he does, he commends him.
[00:26:51] This is what all of all 10 of you should have done. You all should have come back and you should have thanked me.
[00:26:59] I think that when Paul is diagnosing the human condition in Romans chapter one and he goes back to the fountainhead and source of all wickedness and idolatry, I mean, this whole list of all this nonsense, where did it come from? And he says even though the invisible attributes of God were plainly known by creation, the pagan world, the unbelieving world did not recognize God as God or give thanks.
[00:27:28] I think Paul has this Samaritan in mind because look at what he does. He comes back and he praises God and he gives thanks.
[00:27:42] And that's what worship is, praising God and thanking him for the gifts that he's given to us.
[00:27:50] Receiving first those gifts and then thanking him for it.
[00:27:56] And that is also an indication of the divine nature of Jesus. He praises God with a loud voice and fell on his face at Jesus feet, giving him thanks.
[00:28:08] He's recognizing that Jesus is God and he worships Jesus and then Jesus commends him because of his faith.
[00:28:21] Rise. Go your way. Your faith has made you well. And Jesus wants to point out that this guy is the Samaritan, the one who's worshiping God as he's supposed to is not the nine healed Jewish lepers.
[00:28:39] How can.
[00:28:45] I'm thinking about writing a book about thanksgiving.
[00:28:49] Because, you know, we normally think of it as manners.
[00:28:54] This is what mom taught you got to say please and you got to say thank you. It's a magic word. Please and thank you. And so we think of please and thank you as good manners. But it's so much more than that.
[00:29:05] I mean, when Paul says, don't be anxious for anything, but with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your request known to God and the peace of God will guard your hearts and minds so that the thing that sets God's peace to do guard duty on our heart and on our mind is Thanksgiving.
[00:29:24] Petition with Thanksgiving.
[00:29:26] This is amazing. Or when Paul mentioning that Romans one text says that the fountainhead of pagan idolatry is a lack of thankfulness.
[00:29:38] This is significant.
[00:29:40] Every single one of Paul's letters, with Galatians and First Timothy being the two exceptions, he starts it out with Thanksgiving and he outlines his Thanksgiving. I thank God for your faith and for your love and for your hope.
[00:29:57] I thank God that your good deeds are heard of throughout the world.
[00:30:02] Romans starts like this. First, I give thanks. There's a primacy of thanksgiving, and this is the definitive worship of the Old Testament. Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good and his mercy endures forever. I was reading Wordsworth last night, and he says there's lots of prayers in Homer, but very few. Thanksgiving. Because the way the pagan prays is you have a petition and a sacrifice. If I give you this, could you do that?
[00:30:29] We need this. So what do you want from me? It's all a bargaining thing.
[00:30:33] There's no grace, there's no gifts. And therefore there's no Thanksgiving. Because Thanksgiving is what you do when a gift is given.
[00:30:42] It's a testimony of the grace of God, the kindness of God, the mercy of God, the generosity of God.
[00:30:50] Thanksgiving.
[00:30:52] Here's. You know, I wake up in the morning and I think of all the undone things that I need to do that day. Like, for example, got up this morning and think, well, still got to do the Sunday Drive to Church podcast. I mean, love it. I wouldn't want to wake up and do anything else, but, you know, wake up. And I think, me, not yet done.
[00:31:13] But Thanksgiving is the opposite.
[00:31:16] I'm not thinking about me. I'm thinking about God. And I'm not thinking about the undone, but the accomplished. And I'm not thinking about the future. I'm thinking about the past.
[00:31:27] It's a complete reversal of our.
[00:31:32] Of our. Of our heart's posture.
[00:31:36] It's no longer focused on me, but.
[00:31:39] But on God and his goodness.
[00:31:42] It's not. It's not focused on the not yet accomplished, but the already done. Ah, so that our hearts are to be living in Thanksgiving.
[00:31:55] That's what the Lord wants anyhow. There's so much there.
[00:32:01] I don't have to write the book now. I just told you guys, there's a huge. And I think I'll maybe, what, 32 minutes? I better stop.
[00:32:10] There's a big difference between gratitude and Thanksgiving.
[00:32:14] That's what we'll talk about, too. All right.
[00:32:17] Man, oh man.
[00:32:18] Better stop. Drive safe. See you soon. God's peace be with you.