Preparing for Worship - July 7, 2024

In our Scriptures this week, we see people being challenged about their faith and how they respond and how the Lord guides and helps them.

The Old Testament lesson is Ezekiel 2:1-5. Ezekiel was one of those Jews carried away into captivity in the land of Babylon after Jerusalem was destroyed in 587-586 BC. In these verses, the Lord calls him to be His prophet to His people in captivity. His work would be very difficult because God’s own people had been so rebellious against their Lord, and their descendants continued to be impudent and stubborn and transgressed against the Lord. (That is why the captivity happened, because of great sinfulness and rejection of God.) Whether the people would now hear or refuse to hear, Ezekiel was to keep speaking God’s Word to them, saying, “Thus says the Lord God,” as he is led by the Holy Spirit.

The Psalm is Psalm 123. This is called “a song of ascents,” which means that it was a song sung when people went up to Jerusalem, especially for one of the Jewish festivals of the Old Testament. Many think this psalm was used first in post-exilic times, after the Babylonian captivity, because the psalmist is trusting in the Lord’s mercy for His people, His servants, as they return to Jerusalem, even though many people living in the land of Israel and in Jerusalem at that time were not Jews and had scorn and contempt for them and did not want them coming back to reclaim and rebuild their holy city, destroyed by the Babylonians. See, for example, the reception Nehemiah received, when he went back to help his people in Jerusalem at that time. Read Nehemiah 2:10,19-20, and 4:1, and the opposition he and others received, yet they still sought to do the Lord’s will.

In the Gospel lesson, Mark 6:1-13, even when God’s own Son, Jesus, came into the world to do His saving work and reached out to fellow Jews in Nazareth, where He had grown up, many people took offense at Him and did not believe in Him. That included members of His own family at that point. He did not give up, though, and kept teaching God’s Word in other villages and sent out His disciples, two by two, to call people to repent and with power to battle evil spirits and do some healings through Him. He warns them that there would be people who would not listen, though, and to keep sharing God’s message, regardless.

The Epistle lesson includes one more reading from 2 Corinthians 12:1-10. The church at Corinth was being troubled by what Paul calls “super-apostles,” who challenged what Paul taught and spoke of another Jesus and a different Spirit. (See 11:3-5, for example.) Paul does not want to brag, but he points out, indirectly, that he had received much teaching and many revelations from Jesus Himself and had even had glimpses of heaven. He, therefore, knew that he was speaking the true Word of God. To keep him from being proud, however, the Lord had also given him many troubles and a ”thorn in the flesh” that continued to bother him, though he prayed and prayed that it would go away. He was taught in this way that God’s power would be clearest even through his (Paul’s) own weaknesses. Through his weaknesses, God’s power and glory would shine through, and he would be shown to be strong only in and through the Lord. God’s power and His saving Word and work in Christ are alone what is important, in what he, Paul, proclaims.