The lutheransermons's Podcast

Preparing for Worship - April 7, 2024

This Sunday is the Second Sunday of our Easter celebration. Note that we do not have reading from the Old Testament during the Easter season, but rather from the Book of Acts and the history of the early Christian church.

The First lesson is from Acts 4:32-35. The most important part of this passage is that the apostles were giving powerful testimony to the resurrection of Jesus, and that great grace of God was upon them all. They were united and willing to sacrifice what they had to help others in need. They “had everything in common” at first, but that did not last, as the events of Acts 5 and 6 tell, and there was lying and deceiving and complaining, too. In a sinful world, there is no utopia, even among Christians. The Word of the Lord continued to be spread and increased, though, and the Lord grew His church (Acts 6:7).

Psalm 148 calls everyone and everything to praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the highest heavens and the starry skies. Praise the Lord from the earth and all that is in it, including kings and all the peoples. Praise the Lord for His Name that is above all names. Praise the Lord for the “Horn” that He has raised for the people near to Him. That Horn of salvation was and is Jesus, our Redeemer. (See Luke 1:68-69.)

The Gospel is John 20:19-31. Thomas missed Jesus's Easter Sunday appearances and seemed to be unable to believe that Jesus was really alive again. Jesus appeared again about a week later, and Thomas saw Jesus and believed and called Jesus “My Lord and My God.” Jesus said, “Blessed are those, also, who have not seen Me but have believed.” He is talking about us, who have come to faith through the written Word of God, and the many who testify about Jesus to us through that Word, also. In Christ, we have “life,” now and forever.

The Apostle John was one of those witnesses to Christ Himself, as one of His 12 original disciples. John writes in 1 John 1:1-2:2 of his certainty in Christ, Who was with God the Father and came to be the Light of our world and to cleanse us from all sin. We are all sinners who need to be brought to confess those sins and trust in Jesus, Who is the Righteous One for us and our Advocate before the Father. John is absolutely sure of all this because he has seen and heard and touched and proclaimed Jesus as “the Word of Life” for us and our “Eternal life,” risen from the dead for us.

Bible Study - Additional Thoughts on Maundy Thursday Sermon

I preached a sermon a few days ago on Maundy Thursday. If you would like to listen to it or read it, you can find it here. It is called “Participation in Christ’s Body and Blood,” based on Mark 14:12-26 and 1 Corinthians 10:16-17, and is about Christ’s love and concern for His disciples, especially in transforming the Passover into a new meal of the New Covenant, in the Lord’s Supper He instituted that Maundy Thursday evening.

There is so much richness in God’s Word, and as happens often, I cannot fit into one sermon all that I think about or would like to say. Some things are also just interesting historical information that doesn’t really fit into a sermon and might not be of general interest.

I will start with a Biblical question. Some of our prayers describe the Lord’s Supper as “a foretaste of the feast to come” and also mention “the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end.” (You can find this in the third possible Past-Communion Collect on p. 166 in our hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book. If you have the Lutheran Study Bible, you can also find a discussion of “The Heavenly Banquet” on p. 1689 of the LSB, with a number of parables of Jesus and other Scriptures to look at and think about.)

We also hear, in Exodus 24:1, 9-11, that the Lord invited Moses and Aaron and other leaders of God’s people to come up and meet Him as part of sealing the Old Covenant. Based on other Scriptures, the people could only get the slightest glimpse of Him, but this passage says that they “ate and drank” with Him.

We also have the prophecy in Isaiah 25:6-9, which we heard on Easter Sunday. Once Jesus had died and risen from the dead and won His victory over sin and Satan and “swallowed up death forevermore,” there would be a joyous celebration, “a feast of rich foods” for all who reach eternal life through faith in Him. Jesus speaks of this in some of His parables, too, sometimes with the picture image of a wedding feast. See Luke 12:35-38 and Revelation 3:20-21 and the description of the “marriage feast of the Lamb” in Revelation 19:6-9, where the holy Christian church, all believers, are called “the bride” of the Lamb.

We don’t know what all of this means or exactly what heaven will be like, but we do know that there is only peace and joy with the Lord in heaven for all those who live and die in faith in Christ. There is no hunger or thirst, no tears or any troubles or sorrows. There is only joy and blessing and celebrating with the Lord, a great feast or banquet, with all the praise going to our great Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All we need to know will be answered when we reach eternal life ourselves, in heaven with the Lord.

I’ll move on now to some history. At the end of the Maundy Thursday sermon, I quoted from a Communion hymn in our hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book, #639. I had not noticed before that this hymn was written in German by Pastor Wilhelm Loehe, and then translated into English by a Lutheran, Herman Stuempfle, who has other hymns and translations in the LSB.

Rev. Loehe was never in the U.S. but was influential in helping the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in its earliest days, in the 1840s and 1850s. He was a Lutheran pastor in Bavaria and heard of German Lutheran immigrants who were coming to the U.S. but had very few pastors who knew German and could serve them. Loehe started a training program for future pastors and helped send them to the U.S. and other countries. He also helped support one of our seminaries in its very early years in Fort Wayne and provided a few of its pastors, who started Lutheran churches there and in other places, including in Frankenmuth, Michigan, along with ministry to native Americans.

The seminary I attended was the seminary Loehe helped start. It had moved to Springfield, Illinois when I attended from 1969-73, and then was moved back to Fort Wayne, and still is there, as Concordia Theological Seminary. There were and still are halls or areas named after Rev. Loehe, and some of those whom he recruited, including Pastors Wyneken, Sihler, and Craemer, as far as I remember. Pastor Loehe still benefits our churches through his hymns and other things he wrote, as well as his part in our Synod’s history.

I will stop my ramblings now. A blessed Easter season, in Christ’s name.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday - March 28, 2024

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

March 28, 2024

“Participation in Christ’s Body and Blood”

Mark 14:12-26 and 1 Corinthians 10:16-17

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)

The text for our meditation tonight is the Gospel lesson, along with some thoughts from our Epistle. (All quotations are from the ESV translation, except for a few from my own self-translation. The hymn quoted is Hymn 639, “Wide Open Stand the Gates,” stanzas 2-3, from the Lutheran Service Book. Text by Wilhelm Loehe, Translation by Herman Stuempfle, (c) 2002, GIA Publications. Lutheran Service Builder (c) 2024, CPH.)

It is Thursday of Holy Week in our text, and the arrest and suffering and death of Jesus is drawing very close. But He is not thinking about Himself, but about doing His Father’s will and helping His disciples and providing gifts that are a blessing to them and to you and me to this very day.

First, Jesus made sure that He and His disciples properly celebrated the remembrance of the Passover, when God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt almost 1500 years earlier. Old Testament Law said, in Deuteronomy 16:2-3, “You shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, from the flock or the herd, at the place the Lord will choose, to make His Name dwell there. You shall eat no leavened bread with it.”

That is exactly what Jesus made sure happened. He sent out two of His disciples to find, following His directions, the place for eating the Passover meal. They then had to purchase an unblemished lamb and have it properly sacrificed at the Temple and the proper Passover meal prepared. This was all part of Jesus’ saving work for us here on earth. He was like a second Adam, perfectly following His Father’s will, unlike the first Adam and Eve, and unlike the Old Testament people of God, who so often broke the Old Covenant (Jeremiah 31:32) will of God too - and as we all still do, too often.

The sacrifice of the lamb was also prophetic of what Jesus would soon do. John the Baptist had earlier said of Jesus, “Behold, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29,36). By His perfect life in our place, and by His sacrificial death and shedding of His blood, instead of ours or an animal’s, Jesus would forgive all our sins and count us acceptable to God through the gift of faith. He would also free us from Old Testament rituals, like Passover, to follow His New Covenant, as we will hear.

At the Passover meal, Jesus showed His continuing care for His disciples, too - and even for Judas. We hear that while they were eating, Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me, one who is eating with Me.” Then, a bit later, Jesus said, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the dish with Me.” The other disciples do not seem to realize who it is, but Judas certainly knows that Jesus is aware of what he, Judas, plans to do. Jesus then gives a very serious warning to Judas. “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” Jesus is giving Judas a chance to wake up and repent of what he is planning.

But Judas does not care. John’s Gospel tells us that Judas was a thief and had stolen from the disciples’ money bag before (John 12:6). Maybe he just wanted the thirty pieces of silver promised him more than he cared about Jesus or anything else. Other Gospels tell us that Judas soon left the Passover meal to prepare for betraying Jesus. Jesus’ attempt to help him fell on deaf ears.

It is also interesting that when Jesus brought up a betrayal coming, the other disciples began to be sorrowful and to say, one after another, “Is it I? Is it I?” They seemed to have a guilty conscience, too, as if they all had let Jesus down before and might be capable of failing Him again. And, of course, a little later on that evening, when Jesus was seized by the religious authorities and led to the Garden of Gethsemane by Judas, Mark tells us that all the disciples left Jesus and ran away. Jesus had warned them, too, with the prophetic words of the Old Testament, “Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered” (Zechariah 13:7 and Mark 14:27). But the disciples did not heed Jesus’ warning, either, and they all fled from Jesus in that dangerous situation, so fearful for them.

But even with their weaknesses and failings, John’s Gospel tells us (John 13:1), “Having loved His own who were in the world, Jesus loved these disciples to the end.” And he did so that Thursday evening in one more very special way, even before He and the disciples went out to the Garden of Gethsemane, and He went to His suffering and death and resurrection, for them and for us.

While they were still eating the Passover meal, we hear that Jesus took some of the elements of that meal and transformed it into a whole new meal of the New Covenant, the New Testament He was bringing in, the meal of love and forgiveness and strengthening that we now know of as the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion. Other Scriptures give us more detail, including Jesus saying, “Do this, in remembrance of Me.”

But it was much more than just a remembrance of Jesus. Our text tells us that Jesus “took bread” - some of that flat unleavened bread used at Passover - “and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to them and said, ‘Take; this is My Body.’ And He took a cup’ (a cup of the wine used at Passover) and when he had given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, ‘This is My Blood of the (New) Covenant, which is poured out for many'" (for the forgiveness of sins).

We also know that Jesus later promised, before He returned to heaven, “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). As true God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, He is “omnipresent,” always present with us as well as with those in heaven.

But the Lord’s Supper is a very special, personal way He comes to us. We can’t understand it, but we believe that when we receive the bread and wine, we also receive Christ Himself, His Body and Blood. Jesus didn’t say, “This is a symbol, This is a representation.” He said, “This is My Body! This is My Blood! Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

And these were not just gifts for those disciples on Maundy Thursday. Jesus said, “Keep on doing this.” And decades later, Paul wrote to Christians in Corinth in our Epistle lesson for tonight, and for us still today, with very similar words. “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the Blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a participation in the Body of Christ?” The word for “participation” is the same word translated as “communion” or “fellowship” or a “closing sharing” in and with Christ Himself and His Body and Blood in this Holy Communion.

This is also why the Scriptures stress the importance of proper preparation for the Lord’s Supper. We don’t just say, “You all come” to everyone who is present, as some churches do. There is the need for baptism and faith and instruction, in what we call Confirmation of the faith. For Paul also warns, soon after the words we just heard, that “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the Body and Blood of the Lord and not discerning the Body" (1 Corinthians 11: 27-29).

That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect people to receive the Lord’s Supper. None of us are or could come close to that. In fact, our sins are the reason why we need God’s Word and the Lord’s Supper again and again. And when we do come, repentant for our sins and trusting in Christ’s love and promises, we do really receive forgiveness of our sins, through that Body and Blood sacrificed on the cross for us; and we receive strength to carry on with our lives, in Him, whatever we face.

I was working on this sermon on Tuesday when I heard of a bomb threat and a possible shooter at one of our local high schools. Thankfully, none of it turned out to be true, but we do live in very troubled times, and how much we need that strength and assurance in Christ that we receive in the Lord’s Supper.

Receiving Holy Communion builds our unity with one another, too. Paul also writes, in our Epistle lesson, “Because there is one Bread, we who are many are one body, for all partake of the one Bread,” which is Christ. United in that way in Christ, we have more strength at least to try to be more patient and understanding and caring and forgiving to one another, as Jesus has already been with us.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus closed the giving of the Lord’s Supper with these words, “I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new in the Kingdom of God,” in heaven. That is where Jesus is now, in glory, after having been raised from the dead and returning to His Father in heaven. And with Him are all of our loved ones and friends who lived and died in faith in Him. They now enjoy His presence and blessings in a perfect way, in heaven.

And some suggest that when we are united with Christ in the special closeness of His presence in the Lord’s Supper and are united with fellow believers, we are also united with our loved ones, through Christ, in some of the closest unity we can have with them, until we reach heaven ourselves. They are with Jesus, and so are we, in this very special gift of the Lord’s Supper. We are all united in Christ.

Jesus and His disciples sang a hymn before they went to the garden of Gethsemane, and there’s a hymn in our hymnal, #639, that suggests that closeness that I’d like to read in closing:

“(Christ) speaks the Word the bread and wine to bless.
       ‘This is My Flesh and Blood.’
     He bids us eat and drink with thankfulness
        The gift of holy food.
     All human thought must falter -
         Our God stoops low to heal.
     Now present on the altar, for us
         Both Host and Meal.

     The cherubim, their faces veiled from light,
          While saints in wonder kneel,
      Sing praise to Him Whose Face with glory bright,
          No earthly masks conceal.
      This sacrament God gives us.
           Binds us in unity,
       Joins earth with heaven beyond us,
           Time with eternity.”
 
Let us pray: “Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe, in Christ Jesus. Amen. (Philippians 4:7)

Preparing for Worship - March 31, 2024

This Sunday is Easter Sunday when we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. There are a number of possible readings since there can be a Sunrise Service and others. I will include here the one you will most likely hear.

The Old Testament lesson is from Isaiah 25:6-9. It is a prophecy of the heavenly joy for all believers in the Promised Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ. The veil of sorrow and death that covers all people will be taken away, along with all tears and reproach. It will happen on the mountain of the Lord as Jesus suffers and dies and rise again in victory. He dies and rises for all people, but the heavenly blessings come only to those who are brought to trust in Him and wait with joy for His salvation. The celebration in heaven is pictured as a great feast and celebration.

In Psalm 16, David knows that he has no good apart from the Lord. He praises the Lord for the cup of blessing and the beautiful inheritance he will have from the Lord. In v.9-10, David prophesies of the Holy One, Jesus, his coming Savior, who will die but not see corruption. He will rise and make known the path to eternal life through Him and provide joy and pleasures forevermore in His presence in heaven.

In Mark 16:1-8, women come to the tomb of Jesus on the Sunday after His death on the cross. They come to anoint the body of Jesus with spices but find the stone rolled away from the tomb, the grave empty, and a young man (an angel) announcing that Jesus has risen from the dead. They are to tell the disciples and Peter to go to Galilee, where they will see Jesus alive again, just as he had said (Mark 14:28). The women flee from the tomb, and at first, in fear and trembling, they tell no one. That quickly changes, the other Gospels tell us. (What scholars think are the earliest manuscripts of Mark do not have verses 9-20, but these verses simply affirm what is said in other Scriptures. Some think that the abrupt ending in verse 8 may be a way of saying that Jesus did rise and the tomb was empty. Eyewitnesses tell us that. What ending will you put on this for yourself? Will you believe in what all the Scriptures affirm - that Jesus died and rose also for you, that you may have eternal life? See also, for example, John 20:19-31.)

The Epistle lesson is from 1 Corinthians 15:1-11. Paul affirms that Jesus died and was buried but rose again on the third day. Paul mentions many people who saw Jesus alive again. Paul himself was one of those people, a strong unbeliever and persecutor of Christians until Jesus appeared alive to him. He turned his life around to faith in Him by God’s grace. Paul was now a preacher of the Good News of Jesus because he knew it was all true. Paul also says that as he wrote this letter to the Corinthians, there were many others still alive who had seen the Risen Lord and were eyewitnesses to Him.

Preparing for Worship - March 24, 2024

This Sunday is the 6th Sunday in Lent and can be celebrated as Palm Sunday, remembering Jesus riding into Jerusalem, or as The Sunday of the Passion, remembering, in one long reading of two chapters, the Passion story of our Lord, with many of the events of Holy Week, including Jesus’ suffering and death. There is no way to comment on all of the Passion story here. I will mention all of the possible readings but focus just on the shorter ones.

The Old Testament lesson is from Zechariah 9:9-12. Verse 9 is quoted in Matthew 21:5 as a prophecy now fulfilled in the coming of Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey on the Sunday before His death. Instead of an animal sacrifice, the blood of Jesus would be shed on the cross to bring in the New Covenant promised in Jeremiah 31:31-34. Jesus would thus set free those imprisoned by sin and give them hope and peace. This would be Good News for all nations, to the end of the earth, through Christ Jesus.

The Epistle, Philippians 2:5-11, gives a summary of this saving work of Jesus, who was the Son of God and yet was willing to give it all up to become a man. He humbled Himself and was willing even to die on a cross to serve us and pay the penalty for our sins. He was then raised from the dead and highly exalted and returned to His heavenly glory. He is our Lord, together with the Father (and the Holy Spirit). Believers bow before Him now, and on the last day, every person will have to recognize who He is.

In the Gospel lesson, John 12:20-43, we hear that some Greeks, non-Jews, were attracted to Jesus, but many of His own Jewish people would not believe in Him as the Savior. Some wanted to believe but wanted their place and honor among fellow Jews more than following God’s plan. See my sermon on this podcast site for Wed., March 13, 2024, for more detail on John 12:23-36, too - especially the call to believe in Jesus, who is the Light of the world. The alternative Gospel reading is Mark 14:1-15:47, to get a fuller picture of the story of Christ’s suffering and death.

There are two possible psalm readings, too. Psalm 118:19-29 fits best with the Palm Sunday story and expresses the joy of the coming of the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem, but also the sorrow of the rejection of Jesus. He would be rejected by many of His own people and yet would be the Cornerstone for the Christian faith through what he would do for us. Some people sang “Hosannah” on Palm Sunday, quoting v.25, “Save us, we pray, O Lord," and that is what Jesus came to do and did do. The alternative psalm is Psalm 31:9-16, a prophetic psalm of David. David suffered many things in his life, and they predicted the sorrows of Jesus and His suffering. See the mention of those plotting to take the life of Jesus and how His friends fled from Him. However, Jesus trusted in His heavenly Father and said, even in the agony of His death, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” He trusted the steadfast love of His Father’s plan and brought that everlasting love to us by His sacrifice and death for us.

Bible Study - Old Covenant and New Covenant

God made a promise already in Genesis 3:15, after the fall into sin, that an Offspring of Eve would eventually defeat the power of Satan. (We know, of course, that that Offspring was Jesus.) This promise was already connected to a particular person, Abram (Abraham), and his descendants in Genesis 12:1-3. The promise included the fact that all families of the earth would eventually be blessed through one of his descendants. (Again, that descendant was Jesus.) Though he struggled, Abram believed in the Lord and His promises, and he was counted as a righteous man by faith (Genesis 15:6).

God renewed this promise with a “covenant” with Abram in Genesis 15:7-19. There is a ceremony described that seems strange to us but familiar to people in Abram’s day. Some animals were cut in half. Then, normally, the parties in a covenant, an agreement, would both walk between the pieces of the animals to show their willingness to keep this covenant. Some say that they were both indicating that they deserved to be killed like those animals if they did not keep their part of the agreement.

In this case, though, Abram did not walk between the pieces. Only a smoking pot and a flaming torch went between the pieces. Smoke and fire were often symbols of God Himself being with His people, in the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament. God was indicating that He would keep His promise of a descendant as a blessing for all nations, even if Abram’s descendants broke their covenant with God. (Abram’s descendants did shatter the Old Covenant by their sins and especially by their unbelief in the true God, as we will hear. And just as God promised, as He went between the pieces of animals Himself, His own Son would die in payment for the sins of God’s people.)

In Genesis 17, God renewed His promise again and changed Abram’s name to Abraham, “the father of a multitude of nations.” The line of promise and the promised descendant would run through Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Jacob’s twelve sons, the twelve tribes of Israel, and eventually through the tribe of Judah, including David and his descendants from Judah. There was a focus on the land of Israel, where these descendants would eventually live, and the nation of Israel, and God’s renewed covenant with them, when he raised Moses to lead them out of slavery in Egypt and brought them to this promised land. It was God’s doing for the sake of His people and His future promises.

Over time, God would call all males to be circumcised and gave His commandments and many other rules and regulations to this Jewish nation. But He reminded them that He had acted first, on their behalf, in love for them. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” In gratitude to Him, His people were to follow His will and especially follow only Him as the one true God. God gave them many other prophets and the Old Testament Scriptures to lead and guide them, as well.

Sadly, the Old Testament is a story of sin and rebellion against God, even by His own chosen people through whom He would work out His plan for all nations. Some were faithful to Him, but many were not. The one nation split into two, and eventually, many of the people of both nations were carried into captivity in other lands. Only a “remnant” of the people returned to Israel over time. It was during these unsettled times that God gave the promise through the prophet Jeremiah of a whole New Covenant, in Jeremiah 31:31-34. That was the reading we had just a few weeks ago and prompted me to prepare this study. I am greatly simplifying what I am saying. There was continuity between the Old Covenant and the New, but the New Covenant would not be like the Old.

The problem with the Old Covenant was that the people kept breaking it, “though I was their husband, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 31:32). God uses the picture image of a marriage. God was a faithful husband to His people, but they had been like an unfaithful wife. They kept cheating on Him and going after false gods. That led to breaking all the other commandments and the overall will of God, too.

Central to the New Covenant would be the “forgiveness of sins” and “a new heart” and “renewed knowing of God.” Old Testament prophets had also predicted this and the coming of a “suffering Savior” for the sake of His people and all the people of the world. (See Ezekiel 11:19: “one heart and a new spirit… I will remove the heart of stone … and give them a heart of flesh.” See Ezekiel 36:25-27, too, and Isaiah 53.)

The birth of Jesus Christ was the beginning of that New Covenant. See Luke 1:30-33. His whole life and ministry and suffering and death brought that forgiveness and new life to us and, as promised, to all nations and peoples in the world. He died for all (1 Timothy 2:6), and His blessings are now available to all. (Of course, people can reject Him and His gift of eternal life, which was earned for them, and still be lost.) See His Words, as He gave the Lord’s Supper to us in Luke 22:20: “This cup that is poured out for you is the New Covenant in My Blood.” Soon after, He would make the ultimate sacrifice for us on the cross. Paul and other New Testament leaders are now “ministers of a New Covenant,” which can only be seen “through Christ” (2 Corinthians 3:4-6, 12-17).

The best description of the contrast between the Old Covenant and the New is found in the Book of Hebrews. “Jesus is the Guarantor of a better covenant” because He is risen from the dead and is our High Priest and “continues forever” (Hebrews 7:21-25). The priests of the Old Covenant were temporary and were sinners themselves, in contrast with Jesus, who was perfect and “the Source of eternal salvation” for all who trust in and seek to obey Him (Hebrews 5:1-10). See especially Hebrews 8:6-13. The New Covenant is “better, enacted by Christ on better promises,” fulfilled by Him and His perfect, once-for-all sacrifice on the cross (Hebrews 9:11-15, 25-26). The whole passage from Jeremiah 31:31-34 is then quoted in Hebrews 8:8-12. Then we hear, “In speaking of a New Covenant, He makes the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13).

This is very important because some say that we still have two different covenants by which we can be saved. Christians are still saved through Christ, while, in this view, Jews can follow the Old Covenant and still be saved through it, apart from faith in Christ. That part about Jews is clearly wrong, according to the New Testament. Jesus says that He is the Way, and no one can be saved apart from Him (John 14:6). Peter preached that “there is salvation in no one else” but Jesus (Acts 4:12).

Besides this, there is no way that Jewish people can do all the expected things without a temple in Jerusalem, as a place for all the expected rituals, etc. The temple was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans and has never been rebuilt. See also the contrast in Hebrews 12:18-24 between the Old Testament Mount Sinai and the giving of the Law and the New Testament Mount Zion and the Heavenly Jerusalem promised to us through Jesus, “the mediator of the New Covenant and His sprinkled blood” and the Good Word of hope and forgiveness He brings us (Hebrews 12:24).

We do not have to be concerned, either, about groups like the Seventh Day Adventists, who try to put us back under Old Testament Law, saying that, even as followers of Christ, we must worship on Saturday and do no work that day, and follow other dietary rules and rituals if we really want to be saved. We also do not have to worry about cultic groups like the United Church of God, which insists that we must follow all the Old Testament festivals and stop celebrating Christmas and Easter, etc., if we really want to be acceptable to God.

We have confidence for our eternal future in Christ alone. We do not have to worry about whether we have kept all of God’s Old Testament laws well enough. We read in Hebrews 9:26, “As it is, He (Jesus) has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once" (no worry about reincarnation or any of those non-Christian ideas), "and after that comes the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for Him.”

We have the blessing of Hebrews 13:20-21 as our own, too. “Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal (New) Covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever." Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, March 17, 2024

Sermon for Sunday, March 17, 2024

“Who Serves Whom?"

Based on Mark 10:32-45

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)

The text for our meditation today is the Gospel lesson, Mark 10:32-45, as read a few moments ago. You are welcome to follow along, as it is printed in your bulletin.

Jesus and His disciples were headed for Jerusalem, and Jesus was leading the way. Our text says that the disciples were amazed and afraid, probably because they knew that there was opposition to Jesus, and the center of that opposition was in Jerusalem. Maybe they would have some trouble if He went there.

Jesus then took them aside and told them for the third time what would happen to Him, with even more detail. “He, the Son of Man, would be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, who will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him over to the Gentiles (the Roman authorities). And they will mock Him and spit on Him and flog Him and kill Him. And after three days, He will rise.”

Hearing this, you would think that the disciples would rally around Jesus and be thinking about how to help and support and encourage Him. But it wasn’t that way at all. Instead, the next thing we hear is that two prominent disciples, James and John, came to Jesus, asking, ”Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of you.” (Matthew’s Gospel tells us that they even involved their mother in making this request) (Matthew 20:20-28).)

Imagine that you came to God in prayer and asked, “Lord, give me what I want. Promise You’ll give it to me, even before I tell You what I want.” Children do that sometimes, and I suspect that we all do at times. We are sure we are right about what we want and can become demanding and pretty self-centered in what we want. We can certainly ask for what we wish, but we sometimes forget to pray also, as Jesus taught and did in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, not my will, but Your will be done” (Mark 14:36).

Jesus, in our text, simply said to James and John, “What do you want Me to do for you?” And then it came out - in a very selfish request. They said, “Grant us to sit, one at Your right hand and one at your left, in Your glory.” They had no thought about Jesus and what He said was ahead for Him. Likely, they were still thinking the typical Jewish way that sometime soon, the Messiah would not suffer and die but would overthrow all of Israel’s enemies and set up a glorious earthly kingdom where He would reign and the Jews would have a great time, as in earlier days. And James and John wanted the best spots in that new kingdom of glory. Jesus could not, of course, grant such a request from them.

Jesus told James and John that they did not even know what they were asking. Could they drink the cup and receive the baptism coming for Jesus Himself? James and John said they were able to but did not realize that He was talking about His own true suffering and death, coming very soon, and drinking the cup of suffering described in the Old Testament as the punishment for the sins of the world. Jesus alone would drink that cup in payment on the cross for all sins. And He would have a baptism of blood as He suffered. That is what some early church fathers called His suffering and death. But, Jesus predicted when James and John would later become faithful apostles, they would suffer much for sharing the faith of Jesus. (James was the first of the original 12 disciples to be killed just for being a Christian, and John was banished from the churches he later served and exiled to the Island of Patmos by the Romans simply because of sharing “the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” (You can read about this in Acts 12 and  Revelation 1.)

Anyway, when the other 10 disciples of Jesus heard what James and John had asked for, they were angry and indignant at them. It may well be that they were jealous of James and John and that these two had thought first of pushing for these positions of honor. They may have cheated the other disciples out of these positions of honor. Again, there is no mention of Jesus in all this, and any concern expressed for Him and what He was facing.

This wasn’t a new problem for the disciples. If you look back to Mark 9:33-37, you’ll read that Jesus saw the disciples arguing and asked them what they were discussing. They kept silent because they were arguing about which of them was the greatest. Jesus had to set them down and say, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all.”

And in our text for today, Jesus had to set all 12 disciples down again and say, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles (the Romans and Greeks and others) lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.” It’s all about power and control and keeping that control. The Scriptures do say that we need government to provide some order and authority. And Jesus taught in the temple on Tuesday of Holy Week those famous words, “Render (give) to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (including taxes).

But, Jesus said, in our text, that it should not be that way of power and control among you, as God’s people. “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.”

The disciples were clearly not doing very well in their serving. They were thinking too much about themselves and what they wanted instead of God’s will and the needs of others, including Jesus. Jesus had to step in and serve them by showing them their sins and weaknesses and calling them to repentance. Even more important, He had to provide the forgiveness of their sins and set them free from the condemnation of their sins. The last verse of our Gospel reading says, “For even the Son of Man (Jesus Himself) came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

A ransom is the price paid to set someone free from some kind of bondage. The death of Christ on the cross, along with His perfect life in our place, is the ransom price paid by Jesus to set us free from the curse of sin and Satan and death and gives us a whole new and eternal life through Him and faith in Him.

Psalm 49:7-8 says, “Truly, no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice” (be enough). That’s why God the Son had to humble Himself and become man, one of us, and serve us and pay the ransom price for us and for the whole world. As true God and man, only He could do that for us. And He did!

We are used to saying, “We love because God first loved us.” But who serves whom? We can also say, “We serve because God first served us.” And our Lord continues to serve us, and we need that because we are sometimes just like the disciples in our text, even in our churches and schools. Many good things are happening, but we also have our struggles, at times, as sinful people, and we want things our way and have trouble being humble and caring servants of others. But God is always there to help us and serve us. Think about what we are doing this morning. We call this a Divine Service. We come to praise and thank God and give gifts. But even more importantly, our Divine Lord is coming and serving us.

• He has already forgiven all our sins at the beginning of the service.
• If a child or adult is baptized, as last week, God brings faith and new life to that person.
• When we hear our Scripture readings, we are gathered just like those disciples in our text, hearing the Law that shows us our sins and weaknesses but also God’s great love and help, especially in Jesus.
• When we pray, God does hear our prayers and does respond in the way He knows best.
• And in the Lord’s Supper, our Lord Jesus actually comes to us, in, with, and under the bread and wine, to forgive us and strengthen our faith.

It is all Divine Service to us, for our own good and benefit, but also to help us love and serve our Lord and others in a better way.

One example. When the disciples were arguing with each other about who was the greatest, Jesus taught them, but He did one more thing I haven’t already mentioned. Jesus set a little child in the midst of them and said, “Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me.” If we help and serve a little child, it is as if we are serving Christ Himself. That’s what makes our school and all our programs for children so important, whether we are directly involved or give support in other ways. We are serving Christ as we lovingly serve children and help them know the love of Jesus.

The same thing is true for us at home. It is not much fun to change diapers or get up in the middle of the night to get a child a drink. It is a challenge to help in so many ways. But we are serving our Lord and His will, as we once were served when we were children years ago. And the Lord serves us and gives us strength, too, all along the way.

Let us pray: Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe, only where they are safe, in Christ Jesus our Lord and His loving service to us. Amen. (Philippians 4:7)

Preparing for Worship - March 17, 2024

The Old Testament lesson is from Jeremiah 31:31-34. God promises through Jeremiah that He will make a New Covenant. The Old Covenant was with the houses of Israel and Judah when God rescued His people from slavery in Egypt. God had been like a “husband” to them, but they had been like an unfaithful wife, again and again, following false gods and breaking the covenant with Him, in which they were to have no other gods. In the New Covenant, God would put His will within them, on their hearts, and the Lord would be their one great teacher, for them all, and forgive all their sins and remember them no more. (See this week’s Bible study for more on this.)

The psalm is Psalm 119:9-16. How can a “young man” follow the Lord faithfully? He will listen to God’s Word and store it up in his heart. He will “meditate” on the Word and “declare it with his lips.” He will “fix his eyes on the Lord’s ways” and ask the Lord to “teach” him. He “will not forget God’s Word.” (This is the opposite of what God’s Old Testament people so often did, in rebellion against God’s Word and will and following false gods and false words and ways.)

In the Gospel lesson, Mark10:32-45, Jesus was heading to Jerusalem to suffer and die in payment for the sins of His people and of the whole world. He tells his disciples what will happen, but they can only think of themselves and what they want, instead of helping and serving Him. James and John were the most callous about this, wanting the best spots next to Jesus in glory. The other disciples were indignant and probably jealous because they didn’t try the same thing first. Jesus had to teach them again about “greatness” through serving others and the Lord. Jesus Himself was in the process of ultimate service for them and for all by giving His life as “a ransom” for them and for the world. He was paying the price big enough to set them free from slavery to sin and Satan and death.

In the Epistle lesson, Hebrews 5:1-10, Jesus is described as the greatest “High Priest,” “appointed” in the order of a mysterious Old Testament priest, Melchizedek. Ordinary high priests had to be concerned about their own sins, as well as dealing with the sins of others through various animal sacrifices, etc. Jesus offered up prayers and supplications and finally His own life for the sake of others, and became “the Source of eternal salvation for all who would obey Him” by faith and trust in Him. (See more about all this in Hebrews 7-10 and in the Bible study.)

Sermon for Wednesday, March 13, 2024

We have been looking, this Lenten season, at the preaching and teaching of Jesus during the Monday and Tuesday of Holy Week, in the temple in Jerusalem. On Wednesday and Thursday, Jesus would spend much time preparing His closest disciples for what was to come, in a more private way. But later Tuesday afternoon, He spoke for the last time to a large crowd of people gathered to hear Him in the temple. What would He say in this final public appearance?

Jesus had said, many times before, “My time has not yet come. My hour has not yet come.” But now He says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”

This must have sounded very promising to many in the crowd. Many were expecting that the promised Messiah, the Christ, would rise up and overthrow the Roman and Greek domination and make Israel once again one of the top nations on earth, with a leader who would rule forever in a kingdom here on earth. How glorious that would be for the people of Israel!

Instead, Jesus began to describe Himself as like “a grain of wheat” and went on to say, “Truly, truly” (literally, in the Greek, “Amen! Amen! This is most certainly true!) “I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus was predicting again His suffering and death, coming in just a few days. And it was going to be terrible suffering and a horrible death. Jesus said, “Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?” No! Jesus said, “For this purpose I have come to this hour! Father, glorify Your name!”

And then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd heard something, but they were not sure what it was. Some thought it was thunder, and others thought an angel had spoken to Jesus. 

Jesus knew that the Heavenly Father was affirming again that He, Jesus, must die and that He must die by being “lifted up” on a cross. To those seeing this, it might look as if Satan and the evil forces in this world that he rules had defeated Jesus and gotten rid of Him forever. Some of Jesus’ own followers thought that was what had happened when they saw Him die, and said, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”
(Luke 24:21). But now that hope seemed gone.

But it would actually be the opposite. Through His suffering and death, Jesus would break the power of Satan and forgive all sins, suffering the punishment of God-forsakenness that we and all people deserve for our sins. Jesus would die, but on the third day, He would be “lifted up” out of death and the grave and raised to life. His grave would be empty, and forty days later, He would be “lifted up” to heaven at His ascension. This was the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer on Maundy Thursday: “Father, glorify Me in Your own presence, with the glory I had with You before the world existed” (John 17:5).

Jesus was God the Son. He had existed with the Father and the Holy Spirit from all eternity. He was there at the creation and ever since. But now He had willingly become man to do this saving work, which only He could do, for us and for the whole world. He was going to die for all, and that is what He did. Jesus makes this clear, as He says in our text, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.” He did enough to save all people and wanted all to come to faith in Him.

People could, of course, still resist and reject and refuse this saving work that was accomplished by Jesus Christ. That is exactly what many in the crowd that Tuesday of Holy Week were doing. They said, “We have heard from the Law (from the Old Testament and what rabbis and others had told them) that the Christ (the promised Messiah) remains forever; how can you say that the Son of Man must be “lifted up” to die? That made no sense to them. They did not want to hear of a suffering and dying Messiah. Their vision was still of a glorious Messiah who would conquer all of Israel’s enemies and reign forever as their leader here on earth. If Jesus was talking about dying, He couldn’t be the promised Son of Man, in their view, though He said He was. “Who is the true Son of Man?” they asked. Jesus couldn’t be the one.

Jesus did not give up on these people, though. There was still time for them to come to faith in Him. His last words to the crowd showed that. Earlier, He had said, “I am the Light of the world.” (This is Good News for the whole world. For all!) “Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of Life” (Light and Life now, and forever in heaven!) (John 8:12).

That Tuesday, Jesus’ last words to the crowd and to us were, “The Light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the Light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may become sons of the Light.”

What Good News that is for all of us, still today, who have been brought to faith in Jesus as our Savior. We know that it is a gift by the grace of God and not by our efforts. The Scriptures remind us that “no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:3) working through the Word of God and the gift of Baptism. We know where we are now headed as children of Light, by the Light of Christ and His Word. Our eternal future is secure in Him.

And this is Good News to be shared with all, for Christ Jesus still wants to draw all people to Himself. Sadly, there are some churches and groups that don’t agree with that. They say that Jesus only died for a select group of people, and therefore, you can’t say to people in general, “Jesus died for you.” That view is totally wrong, as Jesus makes clear in this passage. On this Tuesday of Holy Week, He said even to the crowd resisting Him, “While you have the Light, believe in the Light, that you may become sons of Light.”

There can come a time that is too late if people live and die in the darkness, apart from Christ, not knowing where they are going, as Jesus said that Tuesday. The apostle John uses these same words of Jesus in his first letter when He writes with the sadness of one who is “in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11).

That’s why we have a church and school and Bible classes and Sunday School and other activities by which to be encouraged in faith in Jesus ourselves and learn more about the Savior and His Word, and to be better able to share this wonderfully Good News about Jesus with others, even those still in darkness. They, too, need to hear of and see the Light of Christ.

Let us pray: Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe, only where they are safe, in Christ Jesus our Lord. And help us, Lord Jesus, to see and use opportunities to share that Peace and Light of Christ with others. Amen.

Preparing for Worship - March 10, 2024

The Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, the 4th Sunday of the Lenten season, is Numbers 21:4-9. God’s people were not to take lands from the descendants of Esau, the Edomites, and so they went around Edom. The people became impatient with the extra travel and spoke against God and Moses, saying that they had “worthless food” and no water, even though God was continually giving them enough manna (bread from heaven) and had recently given them plenteous water from a rock. It was pure rebellion again, and God sent fiery serpents among them, and many began to die. They confessed their sin and asked Moses to pray to God to take away the serpents. Moses prayed, and the Lord told Moses to make and set up a fiery bronze serpent on a pole. If the people were bitten and would look at the serpent, trusting God’s promise, they would live.

This unusual story was actually a prophecy of what would happen to Jesus, as told in John 3:14-21, the Gospel lesson for this week. Jesus would be lifted up on a pole, on the cross, so that everyone who would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life. God the Father, in His great love, sent His only Son into our world, not to condemn but to save. Jesus was and is Light, but many would reject Him and continue to live in darkness and evil and condemnation. Those who believed in Him would be saved, through Him and His sacrifice for them.

Paul also tells of God’s plan and way of salvation in our Epistle lesson, Ephesians 2:1-10. We all started off our life dead in our sins and trespasses, under the power of Satan and our original sin, our sinful nature,  as “children of wrath.” God, however, in His great love and mercy, made us alive together with Christ. It was purely by His grace that we were saved. Our salvation is so certain, in Christ, that it is as if we were already in the heavenly places. We will see the fullness of all that in the future, but we have the promise that we have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus and what He has done for us. This salvation is not our doing at all but is a gift of God, not by our works. We are now re-created in Christ so that we can do some good as we walk through this life to honor Him and love others.

Our life now in the Lord, as His “redeemed” people in Christ, is described in prophecy in Psalm 107:1-9. We had been in the wilderness, lost and hungry and thirsty, fading away, on our own. The Lord saw our cries and delivered us and led us “to a safe place, a city to dwell in,” the city of God. We can only “thank” our Lord for “His wondrous works” and “goodness” and “steadfast love that will endure forever” for us. (The rest of the psalm uses other picture images of the Lord, rescuing people in all sorts of circumstances in life, and we are called, as people “wise” in Christ, to pay attention to all this and keep on considering and trusting the steadfast love of the Lord for us, too!)