Preparing for Worship - July 30, 2023

In the Old Testament lesson this week, Deuteronomy 7:6-9, God speaks of His great love for His “chosen” people, His “treasured possession” out of all nations. They are His, not because they are “greater in numbers” or (if you read the next few chapters of Deuteronomy) for a variety of other qualities within themselves. God is faithful to them because He loves them and has redeemed them from slavery in Egypt and will keep His “oath” and “covenant” and promises. It is purely by His grace, His undeserved “steadfast love” that they are His.

The psalm, Psalm 125, says much the same thing. As “mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His (chosen) people” who “trust” in Him. They “cannot be moved.” The Lord wishes that “peace be upon Israel.” However, there is the warning that “those who turn aside,” away from the Lord, “to their own crooked ways” - those people “the Lord will lead away with evildoers!” Those people would be “stretching out their hands to do wrong.” It is the same kind of warning given right after the Old Testament lesson, in Deuteronomy 7:10. The Lord “repays to their face those who hate Him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates Him.”

In the Gospel lesson, Matthew 13:44-53, Jesus tells parables of “a treasure hidden in a field” and “a pearl of great price.” These treasures represent the Lord Himself and His blessings coming through Jesus and His saving work, by which people are now redeemed and forgiven and counted “good and righteous” and brought to trust in Him as Lord, above everything else. Such believers are “trained” by the promises of the Old Testament and the fulfillment in Christ of the New Testament. They will enter “the Kingdom of heaven,” through His love, unlike those who reject the Lord and His Word and end up “in the fiery furnace,” in hell, where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

In the Epistle lesson, Romans 8:28-39, Paul reminds us again that our future hope is not in ourselves but only in God and His love for us, as He works for our good, now and forever. He knew us from eternity and “called” us to be His own through His Word and baptism, and “justified” us by His grace in Christ, and will one day bring us to “glory” in eternal life. “If the Father “did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all,” and the Son willingly came to make such a sacrifice for us, simply in His “love” for us sinners, and the Spirit prays for and strengthens us, what is there that can separate us from that continuing love?  Nothing can, whatever we face in this life, as we keep hanging onto “the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”