Worship Helps for Pentecost 16
Artwork: Christ Carrying the Cross
Artist: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Date: 1737-1738
Worship Theme: The mind is a powerful tool, capable of
reasoning its way to much success and many great things. The human mind knows
how to guard the bottom line. The mind knows what is most cost effective. The
mind can quickly determine the most reasonable course of action. But our
brains, despite all their vaunted wisdom, cannot find their way to the cross.
The cross is incomprehensible to human wisdom. One man, the God-man, dies for
the sins of all men?! It is only when our fear and trust is in the Lord that we
can know his great mercy and understand how that mercy affects us now and
forever.
Old Testament: Genesis 12:1-8 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country,
your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
2 "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will
make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless
those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on
earth will be blessed through you." 4 So Abram left, as the
LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when
he set out from Haran . 5 He took his
wife Sarai, his nephew Lot , all the possessions they had accumulated and the
people they had acquired in Haran , and they set out for the land of Canaan , and they arrived there.
6 Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of
Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7
The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this
land." So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.
8 From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the
east. There he built an altar to the LORD and called on the name of the LORD.
1. When God called Abram to go to the land God would show
him, God gave Abram seven blessings. What was the last one?
2. Abram was a childless man 75 years old when God called
him to go to an unknown land and promised to make a great nation out of him.
What other problem did Abram have? (See the end of 12:6.)
Epistle: Philippians
3:4-11 If
anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more:
5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of
Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6
as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness,
faultless. 7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for
the sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss
compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose
sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes
from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-- the righteousness
that comes from God and is by faith. 10 I want to know Christ and
the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the
resurrection from the dead.
3. What reasons
could Paul give for trusting in who he was before God? (See 4:5-6.)
4. How did Paul see his former goodness and good efforts?
Gospel: Luke 14:25-33 Large crowds were traveling
with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 "If anyone comes to
me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers
and sisters-- yes, even his own life-- he cannot be my disciple. 27
And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28 "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit
down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?
29 For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone
who sees it will ridicule him, 30 saying, 'This fellow began to
build and was not able to finish.' 31 "Or suppose a king is
about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and
consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming
against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he is not able, he will send
a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of
peace. 33 In the same way, any of you who does not give up
everything he has cannot be my disciple.
5. Does Jesus really want us to hate our parents, our
brothers and sisters, our children?
6. What
motivates us to “hate” our families, to give up everything we have for Jesus?
Answers:
1. God promised Abram, “All peoples on earth will be
blessed through you.” This was a promise that the Savior of the world, God in
the flesh, would come from Abram’s descendants. (And that Savior would die in
place of all people.)
2. Abram’s other problem was that plenty of Canaanites
filled the land to which God sent him. How could his descendants take over such
a land when he had no son, either? God asked Abram, like he asks us, to keep
trusting him in the face of much opposition and circumstances that often seem
to make no sense.
3. Paul could have trusted in who he was because he was
not just a Jew, he was the most Jewish man possible. He kept the law that God
had given the Jews almost faultlessly. He had even persecuted Christians in his
zeal to be a good Jew.
4. Paul learned to see his former goodness as a loss (in
accounting terms) not a profit. He even considered it garbage (literally,
“dung”). Jesus had become his righteousness.
5. We do not hate our parents in the sinful and wicked
sense that Scripture condemns. We “hate” them in the sense that we make Christ
the first priority in our lives. Our Lord and Savior is to be the number one in
all things. No matter what the wisdom of the world says, we always follow
Christ.
6. “We love because he first loved us.” God showed us
incredible mercy and love by sending his one and only Son into the world. He
chose us before creation (Eph. 1:4). He adopted us as sons (Eph. 1:5). He “made
us alive” (Eph. 2:5). He “raised us up with Christ” (Eph. 2:6), all by His undeserved
love, by grace. As children of our Heavenly Father, we take up the cross
appointed for us and follow our Savior, Jesus, even if we don’t always
understand it, even if the world mocks us, spits upon us and hates us.
Regarding the necessity or
voluntary nature of good works, it is clear that in the Augsburg Confession and
its Apology these expressions are often used and repeated—good works are
necessary. They say it is necessary to
do good works, which follow faith and reconciliation. Likewise, we are to do, and must do, the kind
of good works God has commanded. In the
Holy Scriptures themselves the words necessity, needful, and necessary, as well
as ought and must, are used to describe what we are bound to do because of
God’s ordinance, command, and will…
Note the following
distinction. The meaning of these
expressions must be a necessity based on Christ’s command, and will and based
on our obligation, but not a necessity based on coercion. When the word necessary is used, it should be
understood not as force, but only as the order of God’s unchanging will, whose
debtors we are. His commandment points
out that the creature should be obedient to its Creator. New Testament people are to be a willing
people (Psalm 110:3) and sacrifice freely (Psalm 54:6), “not reluctantly or
under compulsion” (2 Cor. 9:7). They are
to be “obedient from the heart”, “for God loves a cheerful giver.” In this sense, it is correctly taught that
truly good works should be done willingly, or from a voluntary spirit, by those
whom God’s Son has made free. – Formula of Concord ,
Solid Declaration, Article IV, Good Works (paragraphs 14, 16-18)
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