Preparing for Worship - June 22, 2025

We have now completed the Festival half of the Church Year, where we have focused upon the saving work of our Lord Jesus, in His life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit to bring us to faith in Jesus through the Word of God and baptism. We don’t forget about our Triune God, at work for us, but we think in a more general way of what all that means for us and our life as believers.

The psalm is Psalm 3, written by David, at a time when he was overthrown by his own son and many of the Israelites. They were out to kill him, and said that there was "no hope or salvation for him in God.” He had fled from Jerusalem, but still trusted that the Lord would be his “shield” and “lift his head.” He cried out to the Lord to “arise” and “save” him. The Lord sustained him in these very difficult days and helped him to “sleep” and “not be afraid” until he saw "salvation” from the Lord and continued “blessings” for him and his “faithful people,” as he returned to be king again.

The Old Testament lesson is from Isaiah 65:1-9. The Lord warns through Isaiah that His people should not continue to be rebellious against Him and His will, as David’s son, Absalom, and so many others had been. They were still “following their own devices” and desires, worshiping false gods in “secret places” and “provoking God to His face continually” with their “iniquities.” Judgment was coming for them, and the Lord would then be “found” by new “nations not called by His Name,” and by some of His “chosen servants” who would return to Him and be “blessed” with “new wine.”

Jesus is the ultimate Servant of God, the Son of God sent from God to be a true Jewish man, battling the forces of evil and reaching out to other nations, as well as His own people. In the Gospel lesson, Luke 8:26-39, Jesus and His disciples travel across the Sea of Galilee to a largely non-Jewish, Gentile area. Jesus is immediately met by a man possessed by many evil spirits. As a result, this man had lost control of himself and went about naked and living in graveyards, and had such strength that no one could control him. Jesus immediately realized the situation and commanded “the unclean spirit” to come out of him. The man was actually controlled by a “legion” of “demons,” who spoke and recognized Jesus right away as “Son of the Most High God” and knew they were in trouble and asked Jesus not to torment them. They especially did not want to be sent to “the abyss,” to “hell.” (See Revelation 9:11 and the angel of “destruction“ there.) Jesus allows them to go into a herd of pigs, and the herd was destroyed by them. In contrast, the formerly possessed man was now “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” The herdsmen and other people of this area just wanted Jesus to leave, out of fear of Jesus and what else he might do, and probably because of their economic loss of the pigs. The healed man wants to go with Jesus, but Jesus sends him home, as a witness to “how much God had done for him.” The man went away “proclaiming everywhere how much Jesus had done for him.” He realized that Jesus was God and had done this great healing for him. He became a powerful witness for Jesus in this Gentile area, as people would have known what the man was like before and after the healing. The power of Jesus was clear, as well, and that He had come to defeat the power of Satan and his forces, as He did again and again and finally at the cross and in His resurrection from the dead. (There are questions about this story that we cannot answer. Why did Jesus allow the destruction of the pigs? Did the evil spirits have to go to hell anyway, once the herd was dead? Good came out of this, for sure, though.)

The Epistle lesson is from Galatians 3:23-4:7. Paul says that we were all imprisoned by the Law and its judgments, being unable to keep the Law, but we are set free and justified by God’s grace through faith in Jesus and become children of God through Him. We were baptized and now live in Christ, with His robe of righteousness. It does not matter who we are or have been. We are all one through faith in Christ. Through the promises of God, beginning with Abraham (and before) we are all Abraham’s heirs, as we are adopted into God’s family as children of Abraham, through the redemption earned for us us by Christ. “In the fullness of time,” at the right time, “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem us.” We are now also children of God the Father by faith, through the Son and the Holy Spirit, who now live in our hearts. Our future is secure, as we stay in Christ, and to God be the glory for it all!