Preparing for Worship - August 6, 2023

The Psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 136:1-9 (23-26). The psalmist calls upon people to “give thanks to the Lord,” who alone is Lord and God. He is the Creator of heaven and earth and all things. Above all, “His steadfast love endures forever,” as every verse of the psalm says. He remembers people in their “lowly” situations in life and “rescues” them and even provides “food for all flesh.”

In the Old Testament lesson, Isaiah 55:1-5, the Lord calls everyone who is hungry and thirsty to come to Him  for the spiritual food He provides. What we ourselves can do and buy will never “satisfy” us. The Lord’s gifts are gifts of grace, given “without money and without price,” as we “incline our ears” and “come to hear” and “listen diligently to Him.” In Him “our souls will live,” in His “steadfast, sure love.” Even “unknown nations” will be called and come to Him, through “the Holy One of Israel,” the Son of David, our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Gospel lesson, Matthew 14:13-21, we see “a great crowd” of people coming to Jesus to hear Him and receive His gifts. He has “compassion” upon the people and helps them and even provides bread and fish in a miraculous way, free to all, so that “all ate and were satisfied” - “about five thousand men, besides women and children.”

In the Epistle lesson, Romans 9:1-5, Paul has “great sorrow” and “anguish” that many of his own people, the Israelites chosen by God in the Old Testament, were rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, “the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever.” Paul almost wishes that he “could be cut off from Christ” if that would somehow help more of his fellow Jews come to faith. He knows, of course, that that would do no good. His people had so many blessings that he lists in this passage; but so sadly, they were not listening to “Jesus Christ, the faithful witness” (Revelation 1:5). (See also John 18:37, where Jesus tells Pilate, the Roman governor, “For this purpose I have come into the world - to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” Pilate cynically rejected Jesus, too, saying, “What is truth?” Yet Jesus died for that truth and to pay for our sins and the sins of the world, including Pilate and Paul and his fellow Jews.) “It is not as though the Word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.”