Preparing for Worship - September 21, 2025

The Psalm for this Sunday is Psalm 113, calling upon us all to “praise the Lord” and “bless” and honor His Name. He is high above all nations and sees what is going on in the heavens and on the earth. He cares about all people, including the “poor and needy” in lowly circumstances, and can lift them up, even as He cares for “the princes of His people.” He can even help “barren women” and bring them joy and even the gift of children, at times, as he did with Sarah (Genesis 21:1-7) and Hannah (1 Samual 1-2) and Elizabeth (Luke 1), who were important in the history of God’s people, leading up to the coming of our Savior, Jesus.

As God cares for people in varied circumstances, He calls upon His own people to care for the poor and needy, too. In Amos 8:4-7, He speaks to His people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, through the prophet Amos, condemning them for “trampling on the needy,” hardly able to wait for the Sabbath to be over, so that they could cheat them in transactions, giving them less than they deserved with false scales, and mixing in chaff with wheat that they sold to them. The Lord “does not forget their evil deeds,” and the end is coming soon for this very sinful people (Amos 8:2).

In the Gospel lesson, Luke 16:1-15, Jesus gives a similar warning to His people and to us, with a very unusual parable - a story of a dishonest manager, who has been wasting his owner’s possessions. He is caught and is about to be fired. He doesn’t want to do manual labor or become a beggar, so he changes the records and lowers what people actually owed the master, hoping that they, in turn, would be grateful and help out the manager when he lost his job. The owner then complimented the dishonest manager for his shrewdness in his bad situation in an evil generation. Jesus then says that “the sons of light,” His own followers, should be wise and prudent in the right way, using the gifts God has given them to be a blessing for themselves, but also for the sake of others and their physical and spiritual needs, as well. Three times, Jesus uses the word “mammon,” in verses 9,11, and 13. The word means not just our money, but all that we are and possess. We can use our “mammon” in the wrong way, so that it becomes our “god” and we serve it instead of our Lord and other people, to whom we can be a blessing. The Pharisees themselves tended to be “lovers of money” and their possessions, and used them for the wrong reasons, to justify themselves before men and make themselves look good in the eyes of others. That will never work for us, as God knows and sees us and what we are really thinking about our money and possessions.

What God really wishes is described in our Epistle lesson, continuing readings from Paul’s first letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy 2:1-15. “God our Savior desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” - the truth that Christ Jesus came into this world to be the only “Mediator between God and us” and “gave Himself as a ransom for us all,” that we might be forgiven and counted right and acceptable before God, “in faith and truth” and trust in Him. Therefore, we are called to “pray and give thanks for all people” - that as many as possible might come to faith in Christ. Our gifts can help with sharing Christ, too. We pray for kings and others in authority, as well, so that they may lead wisely and we might therefore be able to “lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified.” Paul goes on to speak of the role of men and women, too. Men are to be spiritual leaders in the family and in the church. Women are to learn quietly with submissiveness and are not to teach or exercise spiritual authority over men. That means only male pastors, as we have in our conservative Lutheran churches. Women can teach other women and children and serve in many other ways, of course, and women have unique abilities that only women have - bearing children, for example, as Paul mentions. God chose to create a male and female, in His own divine plan; and we try to listen to what He says about all this in His Word, in spite of what culture and society and human opinions are, at any given time.