Preparing for Worship - September 15, 2024

The Scripture readings for this week speak of challenges that God’s people and even Jesus faced, and yet how the Lord’s care carried them through. The psalm is Psalm 116:1-9. We don’t know who the psalmist was, but he was “brought low” and was near to death, with “distress and anguish.” He called upon the Lord to deliver him, and the Lord heard his pleas for mercy and saved him. He learned to keep calling upon the Lord as long as he lived, for the Lord had delivered him from “tears and stumbling and death.” The Lord would preserve him as He knew best and would one day take him to the land of the living in eternal life.

The Old Testament lesson is one of the “Servant Songs” of the promised Savior, our Lord Jesus, in Isaiah’s prophesy. In this passage, the Servant knew that His tongue had been taught by the Lord God Himself, His Heavenly Father. The Servant could, therefore, sustain the weary with the Words He would speak, and He keeps hearing the Lord’s Word and will in His ear, morning by morning. (See the way that Jesus speaks in John 5:19-36 about His ministry as the Son, Who listens to and sees His Father and does His will. Believers would eventually honor Him, the Son, just as they honor the Father (and eventually the Holy Spirit) as the one true Triune God at work for them. See how Jesus also reached out to the weary and heavy laden, as well as to children, in Matthew 9:25-30. He could bring them all rest and peace.)

Jesus is also not rebellious at the Lord’s will, even though it would mean much suffering and disgrace at the hands of His enemies in this world. A number of things He experienced on the way to the cross are predicted by Him here, in Isaiah 50:6. (See Mark 15:15 and Mark 14:64-65 and Matthew 26:66-68.) Yet Jesus “set His face like a flint” to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die. (See Luke 9:51.) He knew that the Lord His God would help Him, even when He faced His adversaries who would declare Him guilty. (See Matthew 26:62-66.) Jesus knew, as he says twice, that the Lord God would help Him, and He would win the victory over sin and Satan and evil and death. (See Romans 8:31-38.)

Finally, as the Old Testament lesson ends, the Servant says, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the voice of His servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the Lord and rely on His God.” In the darkest of days, we are called to trust our Lord, as Jesus did, and listen to His voice, and not try to produce our own light with our own ideas and schemes and thinking (Isaiah 50:10-11). What we try to do and produce on our own will end up being “moth-eaten” (Isaiah 50:9), as Jesus says a number of times in His teaching. (See Matthew 6:19-20, Luke 12:33, and James 5:2.)

As our Gospel lesson begins, in Mark 9:14-29, Jesus and His disciples had just seen the great glory and light of His transfiguration (Matthew 9:2-9), but Jesus then began to speak about suffering and dying and rising again - things they did not understand (Matthew 9:9-13). Jesus also found His other disciples having difficulty because they could not cast out an unclean, evil spirit from a boy brought to them. Jesus was frustrated and spoke of how “faithless” His own generation was and how hard it was to put up with their lack of faith and understanding. Jesus called for faith and trust in Him, and the boy’s father cried out and said, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” He knew that he needed the Lord’s help to believe as he should - as we all do! Jesus then quickly cast the evil spirit out of the boy, and Jesus lifted up the boy to good health. The disciples asked why they could not heal this boy when earlier they were able to “cast out many evil spirits” (Mark 6:7-13). Jesus simply said, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.” This response of Jesus makes us wonder if the disciples forgot where their own power to cast out demons had come from. Jesus had given them this power. It was not in their own ability or strength. They may have even forgotten to pray to the Lord their God and to ask Jesus Himself for His strength and power for them to help this boy. (Do we do the same? When some difficulty comes, do we try first to do what we think to do and only later lean upon the Lord and His strength and His power to heal? We forget Jesus and His promise to be with us always and help us through. See Matthew 28:20, Psalm 50:15, Proverbs 3:5, etc.)

The Epistle lesson continues readings from James. This week, we hear in James 3:1-12 of the power of the human tongue, particularly for evil, and how hard it is to control. That is why it is hard to be a teacher and use our tongues in a positive way. We all stumble much and are not in any way close to being perfect. In fact, James says that “no human being can tame the tongue.” It is “a restless evil” and “set on fire by hell,” going all the way back to the fall of Adam and Eve into sin through the influence of Satan. Out of every mouth comes both good and evil, and it should not be so. (By the way, this makes it clear that James did not teach salvation by works, for we are all poor, miserable sinners, even with our tongues.) Only that Servant sent from God, God’s own Son, had a tongue that was taught and sustained by God. Only He was always listening to His Father and doing His will and fulfilling all righteousness for us (Matthew 3:15) and finally paying for all our sins (2 Corinthians 5:21), suffering the fires of hell for us, God-forsaken, on the cross, so that we might be forgiven and saved and brought to Him in baptism and faith. Now, by His grace, we “hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory.” (The battle with our tongues is spoken of in so many other Scriptures, too. Here are some examples: Matthew 12:34-37, Matthew 15:10-11, Proverbs 16:27-28, Psalm 140:1-3,9-10, Luke 6:27-28, Romans 12:14, Matthew 5:21-22, etc. and etc.) James says, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of it all.” Our tongues alone condemn us. Our only hope is, as James says, that “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13). It is only by God’s mercy for us, earned by Christ, that we can be and are forgiven and saved. Thanks be to God, Who alone gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57) - even in our battle with our tongues!