Preparing for Worship - August 25, 2024

The Psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 14, another psalm of David. The Lord looks down from heaven and sees no one who is doing good. Fools deny that there is any God. No one understands and seeks God as he should. Again, David speaks God’s verdict. “There is none who does good, not even one.” This is the reality of sinful human nature ever since the fall into sin by Adam and Eve. (See Genesis 6:5,12.) There are some, though, who are counted righteous in God’s eyes by His grace and forgiveness and who “walk with God by faith.” (See Genesis 6:9, 15:6.) God’s Old Testament people were chosen and called to be part of that “righteous” group, but many of them also fell away and needed to be “restored.” David prays that “salvation for Israel would come out of Zion,” from among God’s place of rule, and that the Lord would be the “Refuge” for His “poor” people. (The Lord inspires David to repeat this same message in Psalm 53, with almost the same words, except for the promise that God would eventually defeat all those “encamped against” Him and His believers (Psalm 53:5).

Unfortunately, many of God’s Old Testament chosen people would continue to drift away from the Lord and be “blind” and “drunk” and spiritually “asleep.” (See Isaiah 29: 9-10.) The Lord then sends the message through the prophet Isaiah that we hear in the Old Testament lesson, Isaiah 29:11-19. The message from God would seem to be “sealed” to them, and people would draw near to Him only with their “lips” and not with their “hearts.” “The wisdom of their wise men would perish,” and they “would turn things upside down.” People would act like “clay,” trying to deny the Lord, who was their “Potter” and their “Creator,” and they would reject His truth and “understanding.” They would develop their own human “commandments” and follow them instead of the Lord and His Word. But again, a time was coming when “the deaf” and “the blind” would “hear and see, out of their gloom and darkness.” Those who were “meek” and spiritually “poor” before the Lord would “obtain fresh joy in the Lord” and “exult in the Holy One of Israel,” the Promised Savior, and His salvation for them.

Jesus was that "Promised Savior,” and in the Gospel lesson, Mark 7:1-13, we see Him challenging those who wanted to condemn Him with their human commandments. Jesus quotes from our Old Testament lesson (Isaiah 29:13) and says that they, the religious leaders and others, were the ones leaving the true commandments of God and holding to the traditions of men. He used the example of the 4th Commandment, “Honor your father and your mother.” The elders and priests had made up a rule called “Corban” that if people pledged to give a certain amount to the priests and the temple, they must do so, even if that meant neglecting the genuine needs of their parents. It also became a way of avoiding giving help to their parents and others if they just did not want to help them for purely selfish reasons. The true Word of God was being ignored by human ideas and rules that were not good. Jesus also said that the people were doing many other things against God’s will and failing to do things that they really should have done. (Jesus was doing what the first two readings this week were also doing - showing us and all people that we are sinners who fall far short of God’s will and need repentance and forgiveness and the new life of trust in Him that Jesus was earning for us and the world as He went to the cross and the empty tomb for us. He alone was and is the Savior that we need.)

The Epistle lesson continues readings from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians - this week, from Ephesians 5:22-33. Paul had been writing about our new life of faith in Christ, by whom we are saved, and calling us in thanks and gratitude to be “submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21). This is also expressed in other Scriptures like Galatians 5:13. Paul writes, “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh (for your own sinful desires and wishes), but through love serve one another.” In the Ephesians reading, Paul says that husbands are to be the “head” of the family, and wives are to be submissive. This is not a power play for husbands, though. The pattern is Christ as the head of the church, His body, and its Savior. He loved the church and was willing to die for it so that we could be sanctified through baptism (the washing of water with His Word and promises) and counted “holy and without blemish” in His eyes. Husbands have a great responsibility, too, as head of their family. They are to “love their wives, as Christ loved the church,” in a sacrificial way and “nourish and cherish them, as Christ does the church.” It was the Lord Himself who instituted marriage in Genesis 2 and calls husbands to love their wives as part of them, and wives are to respect their husbands. This is a very high calling from the Lord, and we live in it only by the grace and love and forgiveness Christ bestows first upon us,