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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. This is the Sunday drive to church for January 14, 2024, the second Sunday after Epiphany. I hope you're well. Last week I spent a bunch of time on the artwork on the COVID and someone said, pastor, we can't, we can't see it. And if we try to look at our phone, we're going to crash. So anyway, just a quick note about. So we're into the season of Epiphany, which is this reveal of Jesus to the Gentiles. So think of the visit of the wise men. Think of the baptism of Jesus turning water into wine and ending in transfiguration. That's the season of Epiphany is this season of revelation. Who is Jesus?
[00:00:41] We see him for who he is. He's making himself known to us. It's a beautiful thing to consider, right? We're coming out of the dark season of winter and the days are getting a little bit longer, reminding us that the day star is rising, the light is dawning in our hearts, as Peter says when he thinks about transfiguration. So that's the season of Epiphany. We have on the COVID this von, let me look at von Carrollsfeld, John Shoner, von Carlsfeld, woodcut. He did this beautiful Bible, illustrated Bible of woodcuts. I love these woodcuts. And this is the calling of Samuel. You see him in the temple and the rays coming down. Then old Eli is over in the shadows, not knowing what's going on.
[00:01:31] That's from the Old Testament lesson. We'll get there. But first the collect, which is a pretty basic collect. It's a collect for God's peace.
[00:01:41] It uses the word governs. I was thinking about this just as an aside. This came up in Sunday school last week, how the Calvinists, the reformed really lean into God's sovereignty. You don't see that word sovereignty too much in the lutheran tradition. But the word that you do see over and over. And I need to do a little research on this. Why is the word govern? We talk about how the Lord governs. And listen to this. I'll pray this prayer. It starts out with speaking to God as the one who governs and then praying that he would give us peace. Let's pray. Almighty and everlasting God, who governs all things in heaven and on earth, mercifully hear the prayers of your people and grant us your peace through all our days, through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
[00:02:38] All right, to the lessons. We have psalm 139, the first ten verses. We have the calling of Samuel. One Samuel, chapter three, verses one to 20. We have the Paul's warning about sexual immorality. One corinthians, chapter six, verses twelve to 20. And the calling of Philip and Nathaniel. John, chapter one, verses 43 to 51. The hymn of the day. Oh, the gradual is psalm 117. That's nice. The verse. Isaiah 49, the hymn of the day. Is this him? The only son from heaven?
[00:03:12] Him, 402. Let me mark my psalm, because this is. I was just looking into this. I learned some things I never knew before.
[00:03:22] This hymn is by a lady named Elizabeth Cruciger.
[00:03:28] Elizabeth Crusager, who was. She died when she was 35 years old. She lived from 1500 to 1535. She was from a royal family. She went into the nunnery Bougenhagen. Johann Bougenhagen, who was the preacher in Wittenberg, brought the reformation to that nunnery. She left the nunnery, went to Wittenberg, got married to a student at the seminary in Wittenberg, had two children, and one of them.
[00:04:00] Wait a minute.
[00:04:04] Hold on a minute. I might have got this mixed up. Aha. I know why I was confused.
[00:04:10] Elizabeth had a daughter named Elizabeth.
[00:04:15] So Elizabeth Kusiger's daughter was married, and her husband died. And then she actually married Johannes Luther, so that Elizabeth's daughter was married to Luther's son for a while. And her son, Elizabeth's son. The lady who wrote this hymn took over after Philip Malan retired at his post in Wittenberg. Anyhow, she was right there in the mix, this Elizabeth Krussiger, and she was a poet, and she wrote this hymn, the only son from heaven. It's a beautiful epiphany. Christmas hymn. Reflecting on that, Jesus has come to us.
[00:04:57] Listen to stanza three.
[00:04:59] O Lord, our hearts awaken to know and love you more in faith, to stand unshaken in spirit, to adore that we, through this world, moving each glimpse of heaven, proving may reap its fullness. There.
[00:05:18] Beautiful. It's a beautiful hymn, all right. The psalm that we're going to sing back and forth is psalm 139, the first ten verses. Psalm 139 is a hymn of God's omnipotence. I believe it's a psalm that David gives us. And remember, it's the hymn that we use, especially when we're considering pro life stuff, because it talks about how the Lord knit us together in the womb. But it's so much more than that. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, o Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in behind before you lay hand upon me.
[00:06:06] Where shall I go from your spirits if I ascend into heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in Shayol, you're there. Shayol is the place of the dead. Sometimes it means the grave, sometimes it means the pit, sometimes it means hell.
[00:06:19] It's where the dead go.
[00:06:22] You're there. The Lord is everywhere. We won't get to verse 13. You form my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it quite well. The marvelous thing about this psalm, if you can receive it, is that theology is our study of God, that we consider him and we consider all his works and we consider all his ways and we think of him and we think of who he is and what he does and we marvel at that in worship. Well, this psalm tells us that the Lord studies us.
[00:07:07] It's almost too much. O Lord, you've searched me and know me.
[00:07:12] So that the Lord is paying attention of all things he has to pay attention to. He pays attention to you. He knows you. He knows the number of hairs on your head.
[00:07:24] He knows your thoughts as you think them. He knows the words before you speak them. He knows these things and still he loves you.
[00:07:36] Amazing.
[00:07:38] The Old Testament lesson is first Samuel, chapter three. We remember that Samuel was born to Hannah who couldn't have children. She was crying and the Lord answered her prayer and gave her a baby Samuel. And Samuel then goes to serve in the temple.
[00:07:55] It's the ancient jewish historian Josephus who gives us the idea that Samuel was twelve years old when God called him. So if Samuel was born around 1070, that would make this text 1058 BC. It says, by the way, written by the prophet Samuel 970. I think that's wrong actually because Samuel wasn't around in 970. So I bet you I have given Jonathan wrong info on when the writing of first Samuel was.
[00:08:27] It must have been before that because we think Samuel died like in 1012, a couple of years before David became king. So I'm going to have to adjust that. But these events occurred around 1060 BC.
[00:08:43] 1058. And remember, Samuel is there in the temple and the Lord calls him Samuel and he goes and he says to Eli, yes. And he says, I didn't call you. Go back to bed. And the Lord does it again, Samuel. And he goes to Eli, oh, no. And it says here in verse seven, Samuel did not know the Lord and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. So the Lord called Samuel again a third time, and he arose and went to Eli, said, here I am, you called me. And Eli perceived that the Lord was calling him. And he says, go lie down. If calls you to say, speak, lord, your servant hears. So Eli says, I know what's going on here. The Lord's trying to get your attention, so go back and listen to him. And so the Lord calls Samuel into the office of prophet. It's pretty amazing, actually, because just like Moses is going to have a really unique role as the one who will deliver the people, receive the instructions for worship. He's a prophet, but he's more than that.
[00:09:38] And now Samuel is called, and he's really, in a way, a unique prophet. This is the sort of the beginning of the prophetic office in Israel. He's a priest, but he's a prophet. And he's going to be a king anointer. And he's going to set up schools of the prophets. He's going to contend with Saul, he's going to anoint king David. This is going to be Samuel's role. And it's a transitional thing because we're moving out of the time of judges. Remember before, when the lord would call someone like Gideon or Samson, he would call them to go and wreck house. Samuel is also a soldier. He does also fight, but he's different. So he has a really unique, Samuel's a really unique transitional figure in this transitional.
[00:10:26] And when the Lord calls, and this is an interesting thing, when the Lord calls someone directly, the scriptures will give that to us. So we think of the burning bush when Moses was called, or we think of Isaiah in the temple and it's filled with glory, and the Lord calls him. Or when the Lord comes to Amos, or the Lord comes to the prophets and calls them, and they then have this mantle that's given to them. It's really quite wonderful. Our gradual, which is between the Old Testament and the epistle, is psalm 117, the shortest psalm. And so if you memorize this gradual, you've memorized almost the entirety of psalm 117. Praise the Lord, all nations extol him, all peoples. That's the one for great is his steadfast love toward us. And the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever.
[00:11:20] And then it goes into psalm 96. Ascribe to the Lord the glory, do his name, bring an offering and come into his courts. Dun dun da da da da. Now that's it. Now, a couple of things to note about that. You might circle these two words. The first is steadfast love. That's the hebrew word chesed. And it's this way of grabing ahold of all of the goodness of God and kind of containing it in one word, it's all over, especially the psalms. When you see steadfast love or enduring mercy or the different translations give it in different ways, it's hard to get into English because it's such an explosive word. Chesed. And then the other one is the Lord endures forever. That word forever is also one of the key words of the Psalms. The word olam, it's the where we get world.
[00:12:15] It has to do with eternality and no borders. It's chronological and it's spatial. Olam, that word forever. So the Olam Hessid, the eternal mercy, the everlasting love, the never ending kindness, all of these things are being put forth before us in psalm 117. Absolutely beautiful.
[00:12:42] Connected to that is the gospel. So we'll come back to the epistle of one corinthians six, but the gospel is John one. This is the early days of the ministry of Jesus. Remember that there's kind of two phases of Jesus calling his disciples, and a lot of people get confused about this. I got confused for years and years because, remember, we have the calling of John and Andrew right at the beginning, and they go to the wedding at Cana, and then is connected to the ministry of John. And then we have the calling of John and James when they're fishing.
[00:13:19] The way we sort this out is that right after Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, and he came back to the Jordan river, to Perea, Bethany, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing, probably in this little stream that fed right into the Jordan River.
[00:13:38] John was there as the disciple of John, and Jesus called him Andrew. And then they go with Jesus up to Galilee, and he finds Nathaniel and Philip and Peter's there. And so there's this early gathering of five or six disciples, and at some point, Jesus is there at the wedding at Cana with them. He travels down to Jerusalem and cleanses the temple with them. He goes back to Galilee. And then it seems like there's a time where they go back to their work. They're fishing, they're back at home. Jesus is traveling around a little bit, maybe with one or two. And then he comes and calls them into permanent discipleship for a year and a half, for the last year and a half, maybe for the last two years of his ministry, and they're with him all the way through. So that's how we sort this out. So these are this early call to discipleship. And it's an amazing conversation that Jesus has with Nathaniel.
[00:14:42] So Philip goes and gets Nathaniel, and Jesus sees Nathaniel, and he says, look, here's an israelite where there's no deceit, no guile. And Nathaniel says, how do you know me? And he says, I saw you sitting under the fig tree. And he's amazed, rabbi, you're the son of God. You're the king of Israel. Nathaniel. Whoa. You're the one. And Jesus says, whoa, whoa.
[00:15:01] Because I said to you, I saw you under the fig tree. You believe you'll see greater things than these. And then he says to them all, truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the son of man.
[00:15:19] That's the vision of Jacob's ladder. Remember when Jacob in Bethel, was sleeping, his head on the rock, and he had the dream of the ladder and angels going up and down?
[00:15:30] And Jesus is saying to Nathaniel and to the others and to us that that vision will be fulfilled.
[00:15:40] In me, you'll see angels up and down. You'll see I am this bridge between God and man. There's a beautiful. Luther talks about this. I think it's Luther on the angels ascending and descending. He says, in the incarnation, the angels are a little confused because they're used to looking up into heaven's throne to see Jesus. But now they look down and see him in the manger, and they're up and down. Oh, he's there. He's there, he's there. He's there. Up and down. Where are we going to find him? And the angels find God with us.
[00:16:13] Amazing.
[00:16:15] Maybe a quick note on one corinthians six. In fact, this is a very important passage. It has to do with sexual morality. And here the church is really up against the world, because the way the world, I mean, now, especially in peak sexual revolution, the world is defining our humanity by our sexual choices, et cetera.
[00:16:41] Paul asks this question, or he makes this statement, the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord.
[00:16:52] Now, this is an amazing thing, because if you just ask this question, what is the body for?
[00:16:59] You might have a lot of different answers. And the way that the sexual we know this, the way the sexual revolution answers the question, well, the body is for my own pleasure. Paul says, no, no, you are misinformed. He goes on to define this. Verse 19. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?
[00:17:22] There's a lot of times that people will say, well, look, every sin is the same.
[00:17:27] One sin is the same as another. It's true that every sin equally condemns us before the face of God. Or to say it another way, every sin equally destroys the holiness that is required of us on Judgment Day. That's true.
[00:17:43] But every sin is not the same. Sins are very, very different.
[00:17:48] They have very, very different consequences, both for ourself and the people around us. I mean, this is pretty obvious.
[00:17:54] If you called me a fool versus if you put an ice pick in my back, there's very different consequences. And even though Jesus says both are murdered, I choose the first kind of murder than the second. So there are temporal consequences of sin, and there's spiritual consequences of sin. And Paul makes that point in this text. It says in verse 18, flee sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body.
[00:18:24] But the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
[00:18:30] And we notice this at least, that for whatever reason, part of the way the Lord designed us means that breaking the 6th commandment tears us up on the inside. It does damage to the conscience, perhaps more than any other sin aside from the first.
[00:18:51] So Paul is warning us. He's urging us, warning us, chastising us toward chastity. And he goes back to that foundational passage from Genesis. The two become one flesh. That is our doctrine of marriage, and that's the intent of the Lord. In the gift of marriage, the two become one flesh. Listen to how he ends it. Especially for the Christian, you are not your own. You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
[00:19:26] So with our body, our body, we glorify God.
[00:19:32] We don't just glorify him in our spirit, but every gift that the Lord gives comes in one way through our body. So we rejoice that we are bodily creature, that the Lord created us, and we use our body to glorify him. Our body is a temple of the spirit. That's what that means. So our body, it glorifies God. And it glorifies God in loving and serving the neighbor, and also in praising him and receiving from him the good gifts that he gives. It's a very important text to ponder. So we know what the body is meant for, and we know what the body is not meant for.
[00:20:05] This is very wonderful. All right, so there you go. There's a few thoughts.
[00:20:10] Sunday school. Pastor Leblanc is teaching Sunday school today. I'm going to go to the new member class and work on the Lord's prayer. So Pastor Leblanc has a. We'll have Sunday school, and that'll be really great. And just thinking about the announcements, we'll announce this. But we got our life magnified, our life event coming up in a couple of weeks, January 27 on Saturday. That'll be really great. Also today there's a dedication recital for our new piano. There's actually apparently a lot that goes into this. And the guy who restored the piano will be here at church at three to show everything that it took to get it up to snuff. And then Dr. Grippa from Concordia Seward, she made it through the snowstorm. She's in town, did a master class yesterday on Saturday for the conservatory kids, all the conservatory people. And then she'll be there to do a dedicatory recital. That'll be at 04:00 that'll be really wonderful. So if you can make it to that, that'll be great as well. Thanks, everyone. Drive safe. We'll see you in a few minutes. God's peace be with you. Bye.