Preparing for Worship - April 6, 2025

The Old Testament lesson for this 5th Sunday of Lent, Isaiah 43:16-21, speaks of God’s mercy for His people, who have been “blind” and “deaf” toward Him at times. He, the Creator of Israel, their Redeemer and King, will rescue them from serious troubles for their sins, coming at the hands of the Babylonians. (See Isaiah 43:1, 8, 14-15.) As the Lord rescued His people from slavery in Egypt and extinguished their enemies in the Red Sea, so the Lord will care again for His chosen people in wilderness and desert times, that they may declare His praise. They should focus not just on the things of old but the new things the Lord will do for them. (See similar messages about past and future events in Isaiah 46:8-13 and Isaiah 48:14-16.) Ultimately, as Colossians 2:17 says in the New Testament, “The past things are only a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” when He came.

The Psalm is Psalm 126. God’s people had joy and laughter, and their dreams were fulfilled, as the Lord did great things for His people again, in bringing numbers of His people back to the promised land after the Babylonian captivity. Their enemies, who had said, “Where is their God?” could no longer mock them. (See Psalm 42:10, 79:10, and 115:1-2 and the reason for this trouble in Ezekiel 36:19-22 and v.6-7.) They would still face difficult times and pray for the Lord to restore their fortunes. In what they did, they would still sow with tears but would reap a harvest with shouts of joy. (See again how this is spoken of in Psalm 30:4-5 and remembered by God’s New Testament people, ultimately blessed by Christ Jesus, in Luke 6:21-23, Acts 14:21-22, and Revelation 7:14-17.) A psalm we looked at for Sunday, March 23, Psalm 85, spoke of God’s Old Testament people asking the Lord again to restore their fortunes and revive them and have mercy upon them, with the Lord’s promise to do so, with the coming of the Savior, Jesus, with righteousness and peace for them. There was also the warning, though: “Let His people not turn back to folly” (Psalm 85:8).

In our Gospel lesson, Luke 20:9-20, we see the Jewish religious leaders challenging the authority of Jesus and His preaching and teaching (Luke 20:1-8). Jesus then told a parable using a picture image familiar from the Old Testament. God had chosen and planted His people for Himself as a fruitful vineyard. (See Isaiah 5:1-7.) Unfortunately, when God sent His servants, the prophets, to gather some of the fruit from the vineyard, the chosen people treated them badly and sent them away empty-handed. (See, for example, Amos 3:1-2, 7-8, 10-11.) This happened again and again, as too often, God’s people rejected their Lord and His will. Finally, the owner, the Lord, said, “I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.” They did not do so. They killed the owner’s son, wanting to have total control and do only as they pleased. The Owner of the vineyard finally had to wipe out “those tenants of the vineyard and give the vineyard to others.” The Jewish leaders and others listening to Jesus cried out, “Surely not!” for they realized that Jesus was talking about them and their treatment of Him and coming rejection and killing of Him.

We hear Jesus looking directly at these leaders and others and quoting  Old Testament Scripture, which predicted: “The Stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” and the salvation for the new people of God. This One “shall not die, but shall live” (Psalm 118:21-24 and v.16, and Isaiah 28:16). Jesus would die in payment for the sins of the world, but He would live again and rise in victory. In contrast, if people stumble and fall over this Stone, or if it falls on them, they will be broken to pieces and crushed. (This is a reference to other Old Testament prophecies of the Lord as a Stone that people can stumble and fall over and be crushed by if they reject Him. See Isaiah 18:13-15 and Daniel 2:34-35 and 44-45 and the promise of a new and everlasting kingdom.)

The scribes and chief priests wanted to seize Jesus then for speaking so badly of them in this parable. They feared the people who respected Him, though. So they watched Him and sent spies pretending to be sincerely interested in Him but really wanted to catch Him saying something that they could accuse Him of before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. This opposition to Jesus only continued what was already happening and would keep happening from most of the Jewish leaders and people. (See Luke 6:7, 16:14-15; 19:47-48, and Mark 12:13-24 as examples of this.) This parable predicts the eventual fall of the Jewish nation and many of its people to the Romans in 70 AD.

The Epistle lesson is from Philippians 3:(4b-7), 8-14. Since many Jews rejected Jesus, the Good News of Jesus as Lord and Savior spread on to non-Jewish people, the Gentiles, since Christ has died for all. Paul was a perfect person for sharing this Gospel of Christ, since he was a Jewish Pharisee who was brought to faith in Jesus. (Clearly, God did not forget His chosen people, the Jews, and numbers of them came to faith in Christ, though many more rejected Him as Savior and still do, even in our own time.) Paul had strong Jewish credentials, as he explains in this passage, and lived as blamelessly as he could, according to the Jewish standards of his day, even persecuting Christians, himself. Paul was also a Roman citizen because of his place of birth. He was very successful in Jewish and worldly terms until coming to faith in Jesus and being baptized and called to be a witness for Christ Jesus. He then realized by God’s grace that his old life was “rubbish” compared with the gifts of God given to him in his new life in Jesus. He no longer trusted his own righteousness, but only the righteousness that came from God to him earned by Christ Jesus Himself through His suffering, death, and resurrection, and the gift of faith in Christ worked in him (through the Holy Spirit.) Christ Jesus had made Paul His own, but Paul knew that he was far from perfect and pressed on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ. That call especially was sharing the Good News of God’s love in Christ with as many more people as possible, both Gentiles and Jews. As Paul wrote in Romans 1:17, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel (of Christ), for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (and all others). For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed (in and through Christ) from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’ or, ‘he who through faith is righteous shall live.’" (See Habakkuk 2:2-4 and Habakkuk’s faith and trust in the Lord that he too was brought to by His Lord in Habakkuk 3:17-18 after questioning God in Habakkuk 1:1-2:1.) May we all continue to trust in that grace of God won for us by Christ our Savior, too!