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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You. Good morning, St. Paul Lutheran Church. This is the Sunday drive to church podcast. Pastor Wolfmiller here getting you ready for the third Sunday after the epiphany of our Lord Jesus. That's January 21, the year of our Lord 2024. Looking at the bulletin, Jonathan found a caravaggio.
[00:00:20] Jesus calling Peter and Andrew. There's Peter on the left. You'll have to look at this. Amazing Peter, Andrew are both the old grizzly men. Peter's holding a fish in his hand and they say, me? They're both like, what? Me and Jesus is just about to walk off the painting and you better follow or not. It's great. The collect is a beautiful collect that just gets right to the point. So we'll pray that together and then look at the texts and the hymn, almighty neverlasting God, mercifully look upon our infirmities and stretch forth the hand of your majesty to heal and defend us through Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
[00:01:04] Last week you'll remember we had the calling of. Who was it? John and Andrew and Philip and Bartholomew. Wait a minute, not Andrew, Nathaniel, Philip, Bartholomew, John. This week we go forward to the calling of the fishermen. So Simon and Andrew and John, this is going to be the second call of the apostles and it's going to be their permanent call into ministry. The first one is almost like they had an internship in the early ministry of Jesus. But now John the Baptist has died. Jesus sees a clear path to the end. He's going to call them. That's going to be mark, chapter one. I'll get to that in a minute. But the other texts that go with it, Jonah, chapter three. It's great. One corinthians seven. Interesting to see Paul's comment on marriage. And psalm 62 is the entrance psalm. The intro psalm. Now, psalm 62 has eleven, no, twelve verses.
[00:02:02] It has a very interesting structure.
[00:02:05] It has a verse that's going to be repeated almost verbatim, one. And then again, so kind of a stanza, a refrain. That's what we want to call it, a refrain. Verses one and two and verses five and six of the refrain with two meditations on the glory of God and the wickedness of man. And then right at the end, it flips over to a prayer. Let me give you the refrain. Verse one. For God alone, my soul waits in silence. From him comes my salvation. And then let me read you verse five. For God alone, o my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him so the first one is kind of saying, I'm waiting in silence. God's my salvation. And then verse five, it's almost like you're talking to your soul. Wait in the Lord in silence. My hope is in him. And then let me read you verses two and verses six. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be greatly shaken. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress. I shall not be shaken. So very, very close. So that's our refrain. It just has one or two little words that are different in it. And then the first meditation, verses three to four, talking about the sinfulness of man. How long will all have you attack a man and batter him like a leaning wall, like a tottering fence? They only plan to thrust him down from his high position. They take pleasure in falsehood. They bless with their mouth, inwardly they curse. This is a description of sinful man. But we trust in the Lord five and six. And that expands in verse seven. On God rest my salvation, my glory, my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Man is like a teetering wall, but God is a rock and a fortress. Trust in him at all times. O people, pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Those of low estate are like a breath. Those of high estate are a delusion.
[00:04:06] It doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, if you're powerful or weak. It doesn't matter if you're in office or out of political office. And the balances, they go up.
[00:04:17] You get the idea.
[00:04:19] There's no weight to them. Remember how the scale in the ancient world, you'd have a scale would be a balance. And you have to put something in one side, and then you put the weight in the other to see how much it weighs. Well, the writer here, the psalmist, says, you put all these important men in the balance, and they go up. They're lighter than breath, they're filled with helium.
[00:04:41] It's so great, they have no weight to them.
[00:04:44] Put no trust in extortion. Set no vain hopes on robbery. If riches increase, set not your heart on them. Once God has spoken twice, I've heard it. Power belongs to God. And then very last verse, verse twelve, the psalm switches to a prayer.
[00:05:00] You, O Lord. To you, O Lord, belongs Hessid, steadfast love you will render to a man according to his work. What, this psalm?
[00:05:10] It's beautiful, really starts psalm 62. So pay attention to the verses one and two and five and six. And see the parallel there. And you can see the structure of the psalm. It's really great. I don't recommend writing in the hymnal unless you write very lightly with pencil. But it's a great idea to bring your own hymnal, and especially in the psalms and the hymns to write notes in them. In fact, if you're driving to church, whoever's driving along with you, they can get out the hymnal and you can make notes in there. That's really great. Speaking of hymnals, let's go to the hymn of the day, which is 839. O Christ, our true and only light.
[00:05:54] Another old lutheran hymn, Johan Hereman, who lived from 1587 to 1647. So probably third generation Lutheran. The hymn is O Christ, our true and only light. It has that light theme, which is a great epiphany theme. But this is a beautiful prayer for the mission of the church. I was thinking as I was looking at this hymn this week that I probably will put it on a card. You know, we try to pause in the prayer of the church every week to name in our hearts those who do not know Christ, who have wandered from the church. That's the evangelistic prayer, thy kingdom come. We're praying for those who aren't christian, that they would become Christian. And we're naming those that we love, those in our family, those friends that we have, that the Lord would call them and pray for opportunity, that we could speak also the Lord's kindness to them. I think this hymn is a beautiful prayer that fits right in that place.
[00:07:03] I'll just read some of these stanzas and reflect on them. But to see how beautiful this is. O Christ, our true and only light. Enlighten those who sit in night. Let those afar now hear your voice and in your fold with us rejoice.
[00:07:19] That's beautiful.
[00:07:21] Fill with the radiance of your grace. The souls now lost in error's maze enlighten those whose inmost minds some dark delusion haunts and blinds. So a prayer that the Lord would shine his light in the soul of those who are lost in the mind of those who are deluded.
[00:07:40] Verse, stanza three. O gently call those gone astray, that they may find the saving way. Gently call. Let every conscience soar. Oppressed in you find peace and heavenly rest. What a prayer. Shine on the darkened and the cold. Recall the wanderers to your fold. Unite all those who walk apart. Confirm the weak and doubting heart. So here we pray for those who have left the church, who have wandered away from the church, whose hearts who used to be warmed by the light and heat of the gospel, are now grown cold, that the Lord would restore them. And then finally, that they with us may evermore such grace with wandering. Thanks, adore and endless praise to you be given by all your church, in earth, in heaven. So bring them also to us. This is so important that it's with us that they would join together with us. This is what, when we pray for the lost, and we pray for the airing, when we pray for our enemies, we're always praying that the Lord would restore them so that they would rejoice with us, so that we pray that the lost would not only be brought to the Lord, but also would be restored to us, brought back to us, that we would all be together, rejoicing in the Lord's mercy. It's important, as we think about those who do not know Jesus, that we do not come to them from above as those who are better, those who have achieved something they have not. Those who have accomplished something have managed by our strength of mind or will to become christians. No, but we come alongside of them, even from below. We know that we are desperate sinners, that if the Lord were to forsake us for a moment, we would be also lost. So we come alongside. And so when we're praying for the lost, we're praying for them to come alongside of us in the glory of the Lord's grace. So it's a humbling prayer.
[00:09:51] The three texts, I think, capture this idea of the gospel going forth, at least the two, Jonah and Mark.
[00:09:58] So let's look at those, and then we'll come, circle back around to the epistle. Jonah, chapter three. Remember Jonah, chapter one. The Lord calls Jonah. Jonah, chapter two. Jonah ran away. And so the fish redirects Jonah and spits him out back on the shore. Okay, let's try this again. So Jonah, three, picks up the story there, and we get five verses and then verse ten. Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you. So Jonah says, okay, fine.
[00:10:34] It's the last thing Jonah didn't want to do. But Jonah's a prophet. He doesn't get to choose.
[00:10:39] So Jonah arose, went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord. Now, Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days journey in breadth. Can you imagine that it would take you three days to walk from one side of Nineveh to the other? That's a huge city. I mean, and especially for the ancient world, Jonah began to go into the city going a day's journey. And he called out, yet 40 days and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast. They put on sackcloth from the greatest of them to the least of them. So here's this godless city and Jonah. I just have to think that Jonah's preaching was something like, repent.
[00:11:20] You're going to be destroyed.
[00:11:22] Repent. I mean, I don't think his heart was in it. He doesn't want God to rescue them, but God does. When God saw what they did, this is verse ten. We skip a few verses, how they turned from their evil way. God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. That word relented is the hebrew word shuff, to turn to repent. It's the Hebrew God repented. And this is really at the heart of the gospel, that the Lord, because of the law, is going to lower the boom on us.
[00:11:54] But because of what Christ has done, the Lord relents of that disaster and treats us with kindness and mercy and love and gentleness and forgives our sins. And so he does with Nineveh.
[00:12:04] He grants them grace. He forgives their sins. He doesn't destroy them. And that gets Jonah. Remember how he's all worked up? I knew you would do this. I knew you wouldn't really destroy them. You're too kind. Oh, boy. Jonah.
[00:12:20] To that end, the Lord Jesus calls his disciples. So this takes us to Mark chapter one, starting with verse 14, after John was arrested. It's amazing that the arrest of John the Baptist, which is a key event in the chronology of the life of Jesus, it's already in chapter one, verse 14 of the Gospel of Mark. So that gives you an idea of Mark's gospel. He really skips the first year and a half of Jesus ministry, remembering that Jesus ministry is three and a half years and is divided in sections. And the major section that we get in most of the gospels is the middle to late galilean period. John fills in some of the early parts, but John is arrested maybe a year and a half, a year and three months into the ministry of.
[00:13:12] And Jesus, it seems like, understands that this marks a different time in his own ministry. So we have the arrest of John the Baptist, then we have the death of John the Baptist. And Jesus is paying very attention, very close attention to what's happening to John because these things are also going to happen to him.
[00:13:39] There's a parallel between John and Jesus, remember, John is born of a barren old woman. Jesus is born of a virgin. John suffers under Herod. Jesus suffers under Pontius Pilate. John's beheaded. Jesus is crucified. So that there's a parallel track. The things that happen to John are worse to Jesus, but he's really paying attention. So after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee.
[00:14:09] John was arrested probably down south in Judea on the east side of the Jordan river, where Herod had a palace over there. So Jesus kind of goes the other direction, and he's going to stay up in Galilee for quite a while.
[00:14:22] And he says, jesus preaches. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. That's a summary of the preaching of Jesus. It's the same words that John was preaching. So Mark wants us to know that the same preaching of John is taken up by Jesus. And then passing alongside the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon, that's Peter, and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea. For they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.
[00:14:51] And immediately they left their nets and followed him. Going on a little farther, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, who were in the boat mending their nets. And immediately he called them. And they left their father, Zebedee, in the boat with the hired servants and followed him. Now we're astonished. And you've heard sermons about this, and I've heard sermons about this too. How there they are. It's like they're in the middle of the job. You almost get Peter, like in the middle. He throws out the net and Jesus says, follow me. And he just lets the net float out into the sea and he follows him immediately. It's good for us to remember that Jesus had talked to these guys. Jesus knew these guys before. This was not the first time they met. And they were in some ways already his pre disciples. He had called them earlier, and they had spent some time with Jesus before they went back to work. And now Jesus is calling them into full time ministry.
[00:15:46] That astonishment at them dropping their nets is maybe a little bit dramatic because of the background that they had. They'd been talking about Jesus and thinking about him for a long time, John and James. We know James and John already believed in Jesus as well as Andrew, because the wedding at Cana, they were there already. And when Jesus turned water into wine, he says, john says his disciples believed in him, so they were ready for this. And now it's time. And so they take up their full time ministry. It's interesting also to note that Zebedee, this dad of. He must have been a kind of exciting character. Sometimes they're called the sons of thunder. So Zebedee is, his nickname was thunder. And he had boats on the Sea of Galilee. So he had a fleet there. He also had a house in Jerusalem. And remember, he was well known to the high priests. So that Zebedee must have been quite a businessman to have this fleet of fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee, but to also have a home, maybe a store in Jerusalem, and to be known by the high society in Jerusalem. He would have been part of the elite culture, I suppose, there in Jerusalem, so that John can get access to the high priest's house. Because he was known, he would have gone to the high priest all the time. So that gives us a little also a different picture because we normally think of the fishermen as poor and kind of day laborers. But we know that Peter had a house in Capernaum where his wife and mother in law lived, so that he had a home there in the village. And Zebedee would have been probably a wealthy man, have a home up in Galilee, a home in Jerusalem, to have servants and boats and all these sorts of things. He was a businessman. And that helps us also understand Barnabas, who helps fund the early missionaries. And he was probably a cousin of John. Maybe his uncle was Zebedee. If we can connect all the families. Right. So that's just some interesting background. The epistle. Last thing that we're going to look at here. How are we doing on time? Are you guys almost to church yet?
[00:18:06] Is one corinthians seven? Last week we were looking at one corinthians six. Especially in the sermon where Paul says, your body is not meant for sexual immorality. Well, what is it meant for? It's meant for the Lord. But then he's going to go on to talk about marriage, and he talks about marriage in two ways.
[00:18:28] Number one, as an enduring gift of God, and not only for the purpose of having children and serving the other, but also as a hedge against sin.
[00:18:41] It's better to marry than to burn with lust. So for those to support our life of sanctification, the Lord gives the gift of marriage.
[00:18:51] But Paul also is going to say, but if you're not married, that's fine. In fact, it's good, because if you're not married, you don't have to have a divided mind. You don't have to be worried about domestic affairs and also church stuff. You can focus just on church. So here's how Paul says it. This is what I meant, brothers, the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods. Those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
[00:19:29] We have a light touch in this world because we know that Jesus is returning and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, so that while we are still here below, we are interacting with this world and living a normal life. But we're doing it in a different way.
[00:19:44] We know that we are citizens of heaven and that our true home is in the resurrection.
[00:19:53] Paul says, continues, I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. So if you can be single, or if the Lord has appointed that for you, then God be praised. You can focus on the things of the Lord. You don't have to be too worried about domestic things.
[00:20:35] If, on the other hand, the Lord has given you a spouse, then praise the Lord. We live together with joy and peace and honor, rejoicing that this is the Lord's gift. So this is Paul's. It's important. Maybe this too. I was thinking about this a few years ago. This occurred to me that when you look at the lutheran church, you see mostly families, and when you look at the evangelical church, you see a lot of singles. And I was thinking about that for a few years, and I was wondering about it.
[00:21:12] And it occurred to me that in our lives, in our goings arounds, and in our interactions with one another, we have assumptions. We have assumptions about what are the most meaningful relationships that we have in our lives. And this happens to all of us naturally.
[00:21:33] Do you remember if some of you were the first of your friends to get married? Some of you were the last of your friends to get married or never got married. But you've gone through that transition. You either got married and your relationship with your friends changed, or your friends got married and your relationship with them changed, and you're like, hey, what's going on? How come you don't come around as much anymore? How come you're not hanging around with us? Well, when you get married now, that expectation of your closest relationship shifts from friends to family.
[00:22:05] When you're not married, the most important relationships that you have are your friends. And there's a big transition that we go through in this life when we go from being children. And those relationships that are most definitional are our family, our parents, and our brothers and sisters. And then we grow up, we become teenagers, and then our friends, those relationships seem to be the most influential. And then if the Lord grants a family, it kind of shifts back to the family. Your spouse and your own children become those chief relationships. Well, I think a church absorbs those assumptions, and you all can help me think about this, because I think each church has, and it's not even necessarily stated, but we have an assumption about what are the most important relationships that we have in our lives. And I think in general, the lutheran church assumes that those most important relationships are with our family, and the evangelical church assumes that those most important relationships are with our friends and coworkers and such. And those assumptions of the most important relationships actually shape the way we think about life, the way we talk about life, et cetera, et cetera. And the result is, well, I'll tell you a story that happened one time back when I was in Colorado. We had some visitors come to church. One was a family with two young kids, and one was a single young man, I believe. And so they were leaving church, and I was greeting them, and the family came up to me and said, your church is the most welcoming and warm church we've ever been to. Wow, thanks. They get that from their pastor, I said, and then down the line, the young man who was visiting came up and says, your church is kind of cold to visitors, isn't it? And I thought about that for a long time. How did two people have such a completely different experience of the warmth of the place? And I think it has to do with this, this assumption of the most vital relationships, and it kind of shapes the air.
[00:24:15] Now, Paul, in this text, is giving us a caution.
[00:24:22] It's something like this. If we're married, God be praised. If we're single, God be praised. If we're widows, or widowers. God be praised. If we're orphans, if we're part of a huge family, if we're grandparents, if we're grandchildren, God be praised. In every state, the Lord is with us and we rejoice in marriage as God's gift. We also rejoice in singleness and chastity as God's gift, recognizing that both different states bring different challenges and they bring different gifts. So it's a nice warning and corrective for us as well. So anyway, I'd love your thoughts about that. That should do it. You guys should be there now. So we'll see you in a few minutes. God's peace be with you. That's Sunday. Drive to church. Bye.
