Preparing for Worship - September 3, 2023

The Scriptures this week encourage us to seek to follow our Lord and seek to do His will, not to earn God’s favor, but as a reflection of our love for and our trust in Him and as a witness for our Lord to others, for what He has already done for us, especially in Christ.

The Old Testament lesson is from Jeremiah 15:15-21. God had said that His people had been so sinful and rebellious that even if the great prophets Moses and Samuel pleaded on their behalf, God would not listen (Jeremiah 15:1). What could Jeremiah then do? He asks the Lord to “remember and visit” him. God’s Words have been a “joy and delight for his heart,” and he has “sat alone” and avoided evil “revelers” and had disgust (indignation) toward their behaviors. Yet why was His “pain unceasing” in his miserable life? Was God being “deceptive” to him, like “a brook” that dries up and is gone? The Lord calls Jeremiah to repent and “return” to Him and speak His “precious” Word. Then Jeremiah would be like “a fortified wall of bronze” and God would “save and deliver” him from “the wicked.”

In the psalm, Psalm 26, David, too, speaks of his “trust in the Lord” and his attempts to “walk in God’s faithfulness.” He has tried to avoid “false men and hypocrites, evildoers, and the wicked.” He “loves” to be in “God’s house” and to “tell of His wondrous deeds.” Yet he fears “bloodthirsty men with “evil devices” and “full of bribes.” He prays for God to “be gracious to him and redeem him,” for he is trying to “walk in integrity,” in a very “sin-filled” world.

In the Gospel lesson, Matthew 16:21-28, Jesus is telling His disciples that He too must “take up His cross” and “suffer many things” and “be killed” and only then “be raised from the dead,” in order to forgive the sins of people and “save” their “souls.” Peter, who had just recently confessed that Jesus was the Christ (Matthew 16:16), was then “rebuking” Jesus and saying that “such terrible things would never happen to Him.” Jesus tells Peter that he was serving “Satan” by trying to oppose “the things of God,” which included Jesus “losing His life” for the salvation of the world. Jesus predicts, though, that “some standing with Him” would get to see a glimpse of Him in “His glory” in His “coming kingdom.” (See Matthew 17:1-8, the Transfiguration of Jesus.)

In the Epistle lesson, then, in Romans 12:9-21, after the death and resurrection of Jesus, Paul calls upon Christians to show to others the “genuine love” with which Christ Jesus first loved them, “serving the Lord” and helping with the needs of others, even their “persecutors.” Paul gives a long list of what they could and should do, summarized with the words, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” They do these “acts of mercy with cheerfulness” (Romans 12:8) in gratitude for the mercy and eternal “hope” already given them in Christ their Savior.