Sunday Drive to Church (Feb 4, 2024)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: It's Sunday, February 4. This is Pastor Wolf Mueller, and you're listening to the Sunday drive to church. Hey, I'm, you know, I'm happy that you are right now driving to church. God be praised. I think, you know, St. Paul starts almost every single one of his epistles with Thanksgiving. And, and I think that's because he's thankful and he has the Holy Spirit. But he also knows that apart from the Holy Spirit, nobody would even be reading the letters that he wrote. I mean, apart from the Holy Spirit, he wouldn't believe or teach any of these things either. So I am also thankful for you that you're driving a church, that you're bringing your family to hear the word of God, that you're gathering with the Lord's people on this day and rejoicing in his gifts. It's a miracle that you're doing this, that you want to do this, that you believe these things. So God be praised for that. Some of you, I heard, by the way, some of you listen to this, even if you're not driving to church, if you're home sick or can't get to church or you've moved, that's all right. You have to pretend like you're driving to church. And by the way, we miss you and we'll come and see you. If you haven't been to church in a while, let us know if you need a visit. That's great. It's the fifth Sunday after epiphany. We're almost at the end of the epiphany season. So next Sunday will be the 11th or something. That'll be transfiguration Sunday, and it'll mark the end of the epiphany season. The one year lectionary, by the way, already finished epiphany. You'll remember that the historic one year lectionary has three Sundays before Lent, the pre lent season, the Gessima Sundays. So one year series over at the deaf church. We've been in the Gessimas getting ready for Lent, but St. Paul, we're on the three year, so we are still in epiphany again, getting ready for Lent. It's on the way. Here's the colic for the day. It jumps right into the petition. So remember, the colic that gathers together really all the thoughts and ideas for the Sunday has this address, rationale, petition, doxology, conclusion, this doesn't have a rationale. It just goes straight to the prayer. It's a beautiful one, though, that the Lord would keep his family so amazing that the Lord would be pleased to have us as his family. Here's the prayer. O Lord, keep your family, the church, continually in the true faith, relying on the hope of your heavenly grace, that we may ever be defended by your mighty power. Through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. Amen. By the know, when you look at the colics, it might not be obvious if the prayer is directed to the Father or God the Son or God the Holy Spirit. It says, just o Lord. I wonder if that is talking to Jesus or if it's talking to the Holy Spirit or talking to God the Father. We can figure it out by the end. It says, through Jesus Christ your son. Ah, it's addressed to the Father. Okay, I open. Oh, the art on the front of the bulletin. You'll want to notice this. It's another Jesus rescuing the man from a demon fresco. Oh, I looked up where Jonathan found this one. Oh, in fact, he's got a website link in the description of the hymn. So when you turn open the bulletin, you look at the prayers, and then under that acknowledgements, and then elders, under the acknowledgments, you'll see where Jonathan finds the painting. And this Sunday, he's got a bulletin in there. [00:03:37] Speaker B: This is the healing the possessed, Paul. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Jean and Herman de Lindborg, 1411 to 1416. Looks like it's in French. You can find that. But the thing to note is, here's a man who's collapsing, and it looks like there's a little devil that's flying out of him. That's what Jesus is doing. We'll read about that in the gospel lesson. Now, the overall theme for this Sunday is Jesus is a deliverer. Again, the Old Testament and the gospel fit in nicely. The psalm, in fact, fits really well. As well as the hymn of the day hailed to the Lord's anointed, the epistle kind of stands off to its side. The epistle is like, I don't know, the epistle is like the boys at the middle school dance. I mean, they're there, but they're not really there. They're kind of hugging the wall. And that's oftentimes what happens, especially during epiphany and the summer season. The three year lectionary will just kind of pick an epistle and work its way through it. So that's what we're doing in one corinthians. It's a beautiful text. It really has three things that Paul mentions one corinthians, chapter nine, verse 16 to 27. So let's talk about that. First, Paul starts about talking about his preaching. If I preach the gospel, that gives me no grounds for boasting. I'm entrusted with a stewardship. I preach the gospel free of charge. So he's talking about this obligation of the office to preach. It's beautiful. But then he says that the gospel is free, and I also am free. But I don't use my freedom to serve my own ends. I use the freedom that I have in the gospel to serve other people. This is verse 19. Though I am free from all, I've made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. This reminds me of two things anyways. The first is Luther's little couplet that he puts in the freedom of the Christian. The Christian is the most free of all, slave to none. The Christian is the most bound of all, slave to everyone. By faith we're free. By love we're bound. The Lord has set us free. Christ is the end of the law for all those who believe. We're free in Christ. And yet we don't use our freedom, as Peter warns, as a cloak for vice, but rather to serve one another, to bless one another. We're free. We're free from having to chase after our own desires, our own life, our own whatever, and to serve other people. So he says, look, I become a jew to the Jews, to those under the law, I become as one under the law to those outside the law. I become as one outside the law, not to be outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak, I become weak, that I might win the weak. I become all things to all people. By all means, I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them and its blessings. So this is Paul's stretching to join people so that he might bless them with the promise of the forgiveness of sins. Now, Paul uses language that we don't often use, that I might win some. This language is used mostly by our baptist friends and those in the revivalistic traditions. They talk about winning people for the gospel, but we should use the same language. It's the language of the Bible. It's what Paul says. We want to win some so that we're out there trying to win souls, trying to save souls. That's what Paul says he's doing. And just because the evangelicals are doing it in crazy and ridiculous and wrong ways, doesn't mean that we're not trying to do the same, especially the preacher, but also all the Lord's people are praying that the gospel would go forth to the winning of souls. So we'll pray for that, that the Lord would win more and more. And then he talks about, look, we're competing here. If you're running a race, you're competing, but you're trying to win the prize. You run like you can obtain it. And he talks about the picture of an athlete who's training hard for an imperishable wreath. You know, in the ancient world, you'd get like, I don't know, like some sort of little leafy crown. Now you get a gold medal, at least you get to hang it on the wall. Then you'd get this leafy crown if you won the race. And how long does that last? A couple of weeks. And then it's just all dried up. You got to throw it away. But we are not fighting for a perishable wreath, but an imperishable one. So look at what Paul says here. I don't run aimlessly. I'm not boxing like one beating the air. I discipline my body. I keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. So that he says, look, we practice discipline, self discipline, for the sake of the gospel. We see this all through the book of acts. We're studying the book of acts on Wednesday afternoons. Come and join us. It's great. And we see how I forgot what. How Paul has this freedom to. Sometimes he'll suffer, sometimes he'll stay in jail. Sometimes he'll claim his roman citizenship. Sometimes he does all these different things. He's free to do all these different things. And he does it all not for his own ends, but for the sake of the gospel. It's really great. Okay, now to the other texts. We'll start with psalm 147. I like to mark. I don't know if I should tell you this. Last week I had to use my glasses for the liturgy. I have my little portable hymnal, which is really nice, but can hardly see it without my reading glasses. I like to mark psalm 100. And I like to mark the psalm and the hymn of the day. So the psalm is 147, the first eleven verses. And by time we get to the end of the psalter, remember, the Book of Psalms has 150 psalms, and the last one is just. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. But that Alleluia is building, especially once you get to about the last seven or eight psalms, you just see it like, you can tell when a movie is coming to an end or a great orchestra piece is coming to an end. It's kind of building and building. Psalm 147 is building that hymn of praise. Praise the Lord. It's good to sing praises to our God. It's pleasant. And a song of praise is fitting. The Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcast of Israel. And then here's where it kicks into the theme of the Sunday. He heals the brokenhearted, binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the stars. He gives all of them their names. Can you believe it, that the Lord has named their stars? I saw this thing. This was years ago. I guess you can still. Where you could name a star after someone? I don't know. How do you do that? I don't know who you send it into some sort of person that's keeping a list of all the names of the stars. Sounds like kind of a tricky gig. But it was one of these romantic gifts. You could name a star. Well, you can't actually, according to psalm 147, because the Lord has already named them all. Each of the star. Can you imagine? Each of the stars has their names. Great is our Lord, abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure. The Lord lifts up the humble. He casts the wicked to the ground. Sing to the Lord with thanksgiving. Make melody to our God on the liar. So this is the Lord. His creative power is brought to bear for the benefit of the sinner. His strength is good news for the weak. Now, that is not 100% obvious. If you're walking down the dark alley and there's some huge, big monster thing there in the alley that is obviously so much stronger than you, it is not, apparently, good news. You have to know, is that strength for me or against me? Is that strength going to protect me or undo me? And so the strength of God is not yet good news until it's wrapped in his mercy, until it's directed by his love. And so that the Lord is strong is not yet the gospel. The gospel is the Lord is strong to save. And that's really how the old Testament lesson is going to teach us, too. Isaiah 40, verses 21 to 31. This is one of the first Bible verses I memorized, by the way. It was at t bar m. That's still a place down there by San Antonio. It was a sports camp, evangelical sports camp, at least when I went there back in the. Was always doing the adventure track. My budy was always doing the soccer track. And so he was out there running around and I was doing repelling and spelunking and everything. And I remember the verse of the week was Isaiah 40, verse 30 and 31. So this is one of the very first verses I memorized. Even the youths will faint and be weary, and young men will fall exhausted. But those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not be faint. Now, why is that? Because the Lord is strong to save. There's going to be these questions that are going to be in the sermon, verse 21. Do you not know, have you not heard, that comes back in verse 28. Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator, the ends of the earth. He doesn't faint or grow weary. He gives power to the faint. So the Lord is strong and he uses his strength to bless us. I think this picture of wings like an eagle is fantastic because just to contrast it with. Can you imagine if the Lord said this? He said, bless those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like chickens. You see the chicken and the feathers are flying and they have to get this run and start just to get like 3ft up on a fence pole. Chickens. No, that's not how we are. We're waiting on the Lord and so we're like eagles. I remember one time, can you imagine this? I was at the Grand Canyon and there was a buzard, I guess, a vulture or one of those kind of birds, you know, we call the buzzards around here are not really buzzards. They're turkey vultures. Someone was correcting me. I always call them buzards. Anyhow, you know what I'm talking about. The black birds that eat the armadillas. There was one of those in the canyon, in the Grand Canyon, and I was sitting there. It was way down in the canyon and it was circling and it was one of the heat vents or whatever, and it kept circling upward and upward and upward until it was even with us. And it kept going and going until it was climbing up into the clouds and this bird was heading up to heaven without once flapping its wings. That picture is astonishing. And that's the picture here for us, that those who wait on the Lord, we're like on the wings of an eagle. We're not flapping, we're not squawking. The Lord is lifting us up. He's doing the work to him who does not work but believes on him, who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness. The gospel lesson is, well, it's marked one still. We've been in mark one for a bit. Verses 29 to 39, ten verses. We'll remember that. Remember that two of the gospels were written by apostles Matthew and John, and two of the gospels were written by associates of the gospels of the apostles Mark and Luke. And Luke, remember, was a companion of Paul. So sometimes the gospel of Luke is called Paul's Gospel, and Mark was a companion of Paul on the first journey, didn't go so well, and then later he was with Peter. So Mark was with Peter in prison. And we think that for that reason, Peter is the one who's informing this gospel. Mark is sometimes called the Gospel of Peter. It's considered that it's under Peter's authority that it's published. And that makes sense of why we get the story here in chapter one of the healing of Peter's mother in law. They're still in Capernaum. Jesus preached in the synagogue. He healed the man with a demon, and he entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. And Simon's mother in law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her and she began to serve them. Beautiful picture of the healing of Jesus. And then he heals us, he redeems us, and then we begin to serve. Now, Simon, to have a mother in law, had to have a wife. So this is Simon's wife. So Peter was married. This, I think, could help inform things like can pastors be married? And what do we say about the pope, et cetera? Anyway, but then they have the summary statement which will come up often in the gospels. It's not an individual healing, but just a report of this massive healing. So the sun goes down and basically the whole city comes to visit Jesus. He heals the sick, he casts out demons. He seems like he's up all night taking care of people. By the way, it says here in verse 32, those who were oppressed by demons. Some verses say possessed by demons. The greek word is simply one word and it's demonized. And that's probably the better translation because it doesn't say possessed, it doesn't say oppressed. It just says demonized. And there's a whole level of kind of degrees at which the devil and the demons are able to trouble people. Obsession and oppression and possession and degrees of all of this. And it's just all covered by that word, demonized. So better to hear demonized when you hear it. Now, early in the morning, when it's still dark, Jesus leaves and he goes out and he prays, which is his custom. And it's good for us to remember that Jesus will often escape and get up early. It's called watching to skip sleep to pray. And Peter comes. They come and find him and say, everybody's looking for you. And he says, let's keep moving because I came to preach. I came to preach. And it seems like what happens is all the people will come to Jesus for healing and for miracles. And he doesn't get to preach. So he has to move around from town to town until finally he can't even stay in the towns. He's got to go out into the wilderness so that he can preach. That's why he came. He says, let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also for that's why I came. Now, it's interesting to think that Jesus didn't come to heal. It's almost like, and this is my own impression, so maybe do with it what you will. But it always seems to me like Jesus is reluctant to heal, not that he doesn't want to, but that he knows that once he starts healing, it's just going to be all healing all the time. And that he's not going to get to preach, and that he wants to preach because he wants not just to bless the people that are there, but also to bless us. His words continue to have this saving effect and that the schedule gets so full of healing that he has to just leave so that he can keep preaching. It's at least the impression that I get. The hymn of the day is this hail to the Lord's anointed hymn 398. It's by James Montgomery. And I looked this up. We have four hymns from Montgomery in our hymnal. Do you know that at the end of the hymnal there's all these different indexes, and so you can look up the hymn by first line, which is also their name. Every hymn is named after its first line. You can also look up the hymn by the tune, by the meter, by the tune name, by the composer, et cetera. On page 1000, you can find James Montgomery that he wrote. We have four other hymns in the hymnal, angels from the realms of glory, probably his most famous us, and then also come to Calvary's holy mountain and go to dark Gethsemane. That'd be a fun thing. If you read a hymn, you sing a hymn, and you're like, oh, man, I really like this words. I wonder if we have any other hymns by these guys. You can go and look it up on the same page. You can see that we have 1210 15, 2025 27 Luther hymns in there, but even more written by Latin means we don't know. Stephen Starkey. Boy, look at that. So you can go and see if all those hymns that are there. James Montgomery apparently wrote over 400 hymns. He was an english guy, so you see, it wasn't translated, it was written directly in English. And he was doing a lot of things, this James Montgomery. He was publishing newspapers. He got in trouble for. I guess he wrote an article against soldier or something like that. His biography said he was 1771 to 1854. He was also against slavery. And you can hear some of his antislavery ideas in the hymn, hail to the Lord's anointed, great David's greater son. Hail. In the time appointed, his reign on earth begun. He comes to break oppression, to set the captive free, to take away transgression and rule in equity. It's all about how when Jesus comes, he comes as king to bring his kingdom, and it's a good kingdom. He comes with rescue, speedy to those who suffer wrong, to help the poor and needy, and bid the weak be strong, to give them songs for sighing their darkness turn to light, whose souls, condemned and dying, were precious in his sight. It's beautiful. In the end, he's talking about the second coming. Kings shall fall down before him, and gold and incense bring all nations shall adore him, his praise all people sing to him shall prayer unceasing all daily vows ascend his kingdom still increasing, a kingdom without end or error. Foe victorious, he on his throne shall rest from age to age more glorious. All blessing and all blessed. Beautiful hymn. It's great. One more thing to note. Let me see how we're doing on time. You guys are probably almost there. Oh, yes, pretty good. 23 minutes in the gradual. We're going to be winding down, I think, the gradual, which is that song that we sing between the Old Testament and the epistle. These are called the intervening chants or intervening verses. So, Old Testament, gradual, epistle, verse, and then gospel. The verses oftentimes drawn from one of the readings. Today, the verse is the end of the gospel lesson, preaching in their synagogue and casting out demons. Mark one, but the gradual will keep for a season. These are written by none other, composed by none other than our own Jonathan Mueller, who. I think I told you this before. I had to force him to put his name in the bulletin under the acknowledgments. But I think it's important that you guys know what a talented gift to the church we have. And one of the things that he does with these graduals and the repetition of the gradual is he's trying to put this into your mind so that you have it, so that you memorize it. It's also the reason why the way we sing it is canter or choir and then congregation. So you hear it first, and then you repeat it. And that even the children who can't read yet can remember and can sing these verses. This gradual is psalm 117, the shortest chapter in the Bible, almost the whole thing. So you've memorized psalm 117. You don't even know it. You've memorized a whole chapter of the Bible, as well as a verse from psalm 96 coming to his courts. And so we'll sing the gradual this week. And I think next week for transfiguration, I think we'll have it as well. And then we'll put it away for a time and move on to the Linton gradual. But it's nice to know that these are being put into our minds. I was at a hospital bed a few weeks back. It was glorious because we were all there, and we didn't have hymnals to pass around. But we started singing, and we could all sing hymns together. Because everyone there had grown up in church and they knew it. [00:25:12] Speaker B: Lord, have mercy upon us. [00:25:13] Speaker A: Everyone starts singing. [00:25:15] Speaker B: Glory be to God on high holy, holy o Christ our lamb of God. [00:25:22] Speaker A: Everyone can just. You know all these hymns already, and you have them with you. It's great to remember that you have them with you to sing them every day. And here's another one that we have from the gradual. [00:25:33] Speaker B: Praise the Lord, all nations hextol him, all people. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Did you start singing with me? Oh, now I stopped and I messed it up. But I bet you did. I bet you guys here you can. We'll sing it together. [00:25:47] Speaker B: Praise the Lord, all nations hextole him all peoples for great is his steadfast love toward us and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever ascribe to the Lord the glory do his name bring an offering and come into his courts. Bum, bum bum bum bum bum bum. [00:26:16] Speaker A: Bum well, that's what you're doing. You are coming into his courts. You're driving to church. That's what that means. We'll see you soon. Thanks for listening, by the way. Thanks for listening. And if there's particularly helpful things I'm still appreciating the feedback. The good and the bad and the ugly. What's helpful, what's not. So appreciate that so you can give that to me when you see me. And look forward to seeing you very soon. Thank you. God be praised. See you soon. Bye.