Preparing for Worship - March 8, 2026

The Third Sunday in Lent in the One Year Series of readings is known as Oculi Sunday. We are to keep our “eyes” upon our Lord and His Word and will for us, especially in Christ our Savior, in this Lenten season. We are also caused to “see” that the Lord has His eyes on us, too, and knows our sins and calls us to repentance, but still looks upon us with His love and mercy and forgiveness in Christ.

There are two choices for a psalm. Psalm 4 is a psalm of David. He knows that the Lord has given him relief when he was in distress, in a tight spot, in the past. He prays again for the Lord to be gracious to him, when others are trying to shame him with vain words and lies. He has learned from the Lord what to try to do. He is angry, but he is not to attack others and sin against them, but to trust in the Lord, as he ponders in silence what is going on. (Paul quotes this passage in the New Testament in Ephesians 4:26-27, telling us not to let the sun go down on our anger, and not give the devil an opportunity by doing something harmful and foolish in return to others.) In Psalm 4, David says to offer “right sacrifices.” In Psalm 51:17, David calls these sacrifices “a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart,” confessing our own sins, failings, and weaknesses, and asking God’s forgiveness. The Lord then shows us the light of His mercy and forgiveness, especially in Christ, renews our joy, and gives us peace in Him. Only then can we also be more patient and understanding and forgiving of the weaknesses of others, too, and show them God’s goodness and mercy. David knows that only in the Lord can he finally dwell in safety, as the Lord knows best. (A side comment on v.7: someone has said that a true “happy hour” for us is not in “abounding wine” and other drinks at the end of a day, but in joy in our hearts in the Lord and His continuing mercy and love for us.)

The alternate Psalm is Psalm 136:1-16. The psalmist calls upon us again and again to “give thanks to the Lord.” Every verse ends by calling us to see that “His steadfast love endures forever.” It can be seen in His creating a marvelous universe for us. It can be seen in His continuing care for a now fallen world, caught up in sin and slavery to evil, and His keeping His promises to rescue His people of Israel and bring them through the wilderness to a promised land. Above all, as we see in the New Testament, the Lord kept His promise to bring blessings available to all people through the gift of His own Son, our Savior Jesus.

There are also two possible readings for the Old Testament lesson this week. The first is in Jeremiah 26:1-15, where God called the prophet Jeremiah to speak to all the people of Judah, calling them to “turn from their evil ways” and listen to “God’s servants the prophets” and to “walk again” in the Lord’s way. If they continued to refuse to listen and went their own way, judgment would come upon Judah and the city of Jerusalem, as “cursed among all the nations of the earth.” The reaction of the priests and other prophets and many of the people was that they “laid hold of Jeremiah” and said that he must die for speaking against the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Other officials of Judah were called to sit in judgment of Jeremiah for what he said. Jeremiah said again that he was speaking only what the Lord told him to say and called the people to “mend their ways and deeds” and “obey the voice of the Lord their God.” Only then could they escape “the disaster that the Lord was pronouncing against them.” Jeremiah also warned them that they would be shedding “innocent blood” if they killed him, for he was sent to “speak all these words into their ears.” The threats against Jeremiah were prophetic of what later happened to our Lord Jesus, when He also came and spoke God’s Word to people. Jeremiah was spared for a while, but Jesus was put to death as an innocent man, bearing our sins in payment for them in His saving work for us.

The alternative Old Testament reading is Exodus 8:16-24, when God spoke through Moses, warning Pharaoh and the Egyptians of more plagues coming upon them, of gnats and then of flies, if they would not set God’s people free. Pharaoh’s magicians had been able with the earlier plagues to do something like what God had sent, but they could not produce gnats and flies, as God did. The magicians now had to tell Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God” - something that only God could do. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, though, and he would not listen to Moses and his warnings from God. When the swarms of flies came, they troubled all of Egypt, but not Goshen, where the Israelites lived. There was a clear division between what happened to the Egyptians and what happened to the Israelites.

As the Gospel lesson begins in Luke 11:14-28, a demon possessed a man, leaving him unable to speak. Jesus cast out the demon, and the man could speak again, and the people marveled. Some people, however, claimed that Jesus was using the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, to cast out demons. (This alludes to a story in the Old Testament in 2 Kings 1, when King Ahaziah had an accident, and instead of asking God about his illness, he sent messengers to ask advice from “Baalzebub,” the false god of Ekron. This greatly displeased the Lord, and Ahaziah died.) Other people wanted to test Jesus about where his power really came from and kept demanding that he give them a sign or proof of its origin. (See Matthew 9:34 and Mark 8:11, where it is clear that Pharisees were stirring up such challenges to Jesus and demanding proof of the source of His power.) Jesus simply points out that any divided kingdom or household would fall. Why would Satan use his own power to work against himself? There were also some Jews, allies of the religious leaders, who claimed to cast out demons. Jesus asked where their power came from. Then Jesus used the phrase used in our Old Testament Exodus passage. Even “the finger of God” was powerful enough to do great things. (See Exodus 8:19 and Exodus 31:19 and Psalm 8:3-4 and Romans 1:20.) Jesus then said that He was casting out demons by “the finger of God” and that was a sure sign that “the kingdom of God had come,” in Him. Satan was a strong one who had brought great evil and chaos into the world, but Jesus was the stronger one, who would eventually attack and overcome him. It would look as if Jesus were defeated when He suffered and died. But He would win the victory over Satan through His mighty resurrection, and the forgiveness He earned for us and the world, in being sacrificed for us. We receive that victory in our own baptism and new life in Christ, as we are brought to faith in Him. (See that victory described in Colossians 2:9-15, and the realization that Jesus was really calling Himself equal with God, in passages like John 5:5-18.) In the Gospel lesson, then, in Luke 11:23, Jesus says that there is now no longer any neutral ground in the world. Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” That’s why Jesus wants to bring everyone possible to faith in Him, in victory over Satan’s control of them. People can resist and reject Jesus, of course, and Jesus also warns that Satan would like to try to lure people back into his evil kingdom and take control of them again, as described in Luke 11:24-26 and in Matthew 12:43-45. (Remember also the parable of the sower and the seed that we heard in Luke 8:11-15. Some hear and begin to believe, but then fall away for various reasons.) Coming to faith in Jesus and continuing in that faith, by God’s grace and power, through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, is so important. That is indicated in the final verses of this Gospel, Luke 11:27-28. A woman cries out from the crowd about how blessed the mother of Jesus was. Mary was blessed to give birth to and help raise Jesus, by the miracle of God’s grace, but she cannot save or help us. Jesus said. “Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep it,” in faith in Jesus, by God’s grace, and stay in that faith. (See also Luke 8:19-21 and Mark 3:20-21 and 3:31-35 and James 1:17-18, 21-22, and 2:1.)

Finally, the Epistle lesson is Ephesians 5:1-9. Paul reminds us that we are now the beloved children of God, by faith in Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross for us, offered in payment for our sins. As little children like to imitate their parents, we are to seek to imitate our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus, in His true love. As we heard last week, Paul again warns about the serious danger of sexual immorality being practiced in much of the world around us. Even filthy and foolish talk and crude joking are dangerous, he says (along with pornography and immoral books and movies and what we can see and hear with our phones and on the internet these days). These can tempt us to desire and covet what is impure and unhelpful to us. Once we were all in the darkness of sin. Now, though, we are children of light, with light in the Lord, and “the fruit of Christ, our Light and the Light of the World (John 8:12) is found in all that is good and right and true, according to God’s standard in His Word and in Christ. As we close this study, do remember that we are not saved by finally getting all this straightened out in our lives in a perfect way. We try, but none of us come close to what God wishes for us. That is why Christ had to come to be our Savior and to show us “the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us.” Paul says, as we hear so often, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." But then he adds that as believers we are now “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:7-10). What an exciting future we have ahead in Christ, with His guidance, and a perfect future in eternal life!