Worship Helps for Epiphany 4

Artwork: The prophet Elisha and the widow of Sarepta

Artist: Bernardo Strozzi

Date: 1640

Worship Theme: Was Jesus’ earthly ministry was a huge numerical success? Hardly. After his ascension, 120 believers gathered in Jerusalem (Acts 1:15). He was not the type of Savior many expected. He was not flashy enough. He did not offer instant gratification. He said his followers would suffer. As a result, people in Jesus’ time and today often refuse to follow him.

Old Testament: 1 Kings 17:7-16

⁷After some time the stream dried up because there had been no rain in the land. ⁸Then the word of the Lord came to him: ⁹“Get up! Go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and live there. I have commanded a woman there, a widow, to provide for you.”

¹⁰So he got up and went to Zarephath. He came to the city gate, and there he saw a widow gathering sticks. He called to her and said, “Please give me a little water in a jar, so that I can have something to drink.”

¹¹When she went to get it, he called to her, “Please bring me a piece of bread.”

¹²She said, “As surely as the Lord your God lives, I have no food except a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a pitcher. See, I am gathering a couple of sticks so that I can go and prepare it for myself and my son, so that we can eat it and then die.”

¹³Elijah said to her, “Do not be afraid. Go and do just as you said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from the flour and bring it out to me. Then go and make another for you and your son. ¹⁴For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. The jar of flour will not run out and the pitcher of oil will not become empty until the day the Lord sends rain to water the surface of the ground.”

¹⁵So she went and did exactly as Elijah said. He and she, as well as her household, were able to eat for many days. ¹⁶The jar of flour did not run out, and the pitcher of oil did not become empty, just as the Lord had said through Elijah.

1. Where was Elijah to go?

2. What did the widow tell Elijah when he asked her for a piece of bread?

3. What happened when Elijah told the widow not to be afraid, but to make bread first for him, then for herself and her son?

Epistle: Romans 10:18–11:6  

¹⁸But I ask, did they not hear? Of course, they certainly did. The sound of their voice went out to all the earth, and their words to the farthest parts of the world. ¹⁹Yet I ask, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says: I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation; I will make you angry with a nation that does not understand. ²⁰And Isaiah also boldly says: I was found by those who were not looking for me; I became well known to those who were not asking for me. ²¹But about Israel he says: All day long I stretched out my hands to a people who disobey and oppose me.

^11:1So I say, did God reject his people? Absolutely not! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin. ²God did not reject his people whom he foreknew—or don’t you know what Scripture says about Elijah, how he was pleading with God against Israel: ³“Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars. I am the only one left, and they are trying to take my life.” ⁴But what did God’s answer tell him? “I have reserved for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.”

⁵So in the same way at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. ⁶Now if it is by grace, then it is not the result of works—otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

4. Did first-century Jews commonly disbelieve the gospel of Christ because God did not want to save them?

5. Did God reject his people completely? (See 11:1.)

6. As in Elijah’s day, in what manner did God choose to save anyone? (See 11:5‒6.)

Gospel: Luke 4:20–32  

²⁰He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. ²¹He began to tell them, “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

²²They all spoke well of him and were impressed by the words of grace that came from his mouth. And they kept saying, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?”

²³He told them, “Certainly you will quote this proverb to me, ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ Do here in your hometown everything we heard you did in Capernaum.” ²⁴And he said, “Amen I tell you: No prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵But truly I tell you: There were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the sky was shut for three years and six months, while a great famine came over all the land. ²⁶Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow of Zarephath, in Sidon. ²⁷And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was healed except Naaman the Syrian.”

²⁸All those who were in the synagogue were filled with rage when they heard these things. ²⁹They got up and drove him out of the town. They led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. ³⁰But he passed through the middle of them and went on his way.

³¹He went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee, and was teaching them on the Sabbath. ³²They were amazed by his teaching, because his message had authority.

7. When Jesus claimed that he was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies, what question did the people raise?

8. What did Jesus say that aroused the people’s anger?

Answers:

1. God told Elijah to go at once to Zarephath of Sidon (well north of Israel). Evidently his prior pronouncement of no rain made it necessary for him to leave Israel. Authorities would likely have wanted to retaliate against Elijah. Starving people would likely have hounded him for relief.

2. The widow told Elijah she had only enough flour and bread to make a meal for herself and her son. Then they would die.

3. The widow kept having more and more oil and flour. We stagger at the miracle, but Alfred Edersheim wisely points out: “It is difficult to know which most to wonder at: Elijah’s calmness, consistency and readiness of faith, or the widow’s almost incredible simplicity of trustfulness.”

4. No, God very much wanted to save Jewish people, both in Isaiah’s day (about 700 B.C.) and Paul’s day. All day long God held out his hands to them. (Picture it. Imagine the physical weariness / agony.) But they stubbornly refused.

5. No, God did not reject his people. Paul was as Jewish as could be. God had chosen to save Paul.

6. God chose ahead of time to save sinners by grace alone. No human merit could figure in, or grace is no longer grace.

7. The people of Nazareth asked themselves, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” They had seen Jesus grow up among them. They had a hard time seeing him as the promised Messiah.

8. Jesus said that “no prophet is accepted in his home town.” He alluded to the prophets Elijah and Elisha, who helped Gentile foreigners because God’s Old Testament people were, for the most part, unwilling to listen to the prophets’ message. Jesus would have much the same experience. “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (Jonn 1:10). Jesus was usually rejected as Savior.

Putting your faith into action

Throughout my life there will be times when I will have to depend on the proverb: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” However, I will never have to follow that proverb when it comes to my Lord and Savior. With him I can always be confident. I can always be certain his good news is true.

A reading from the Book of Concord for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

The New Testament keeps and urges this office ‹of the Law›, as St. Paul says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”.  Also, “the whole world may be accountable to God….No human being will be justified in His sight.”  And, Christ says, the Holy Spirit will convict the world of sin.

This is God’s thunderbolt.  By the Law He strikes down both obvious sinners and false saints.  He declares no one to be in the right, but drives them all together to terror and despair.  Jeremiah says, “Is not My word like… a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?”  This is not active contrition or manufactured repentance.  It is passive contrition, true sorrow of heart, suffering, and the sensation of death.

This is what true repentance means.  Here a person needs to hear something like this, “You are all of no account, whether you are obvious sinners or saints ‹in your own opinions›.  You have to become different from what you are now.  You have to act differently than you are now acting, whether you are as great, wise, powerful, and holy as you can be.  Here no one is godly.”

To the Law, the New Testament immediately adds the consoling promise of grace through the Gospel.  Christ declares, “Repent and believe in the gospel”.  Become different, act differently, and believe My promise. – Smalcald Articles, Part III, Article III, Repentance (paragraphs 1-4)

564  There Is a Balm in Gilead

Refrain:

There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole;

There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.

1  Sometimes I feel discouraged And think my work’s in vain,

But then the Holy Spirit Revives my soul again.

Refrain

2  If you cannot preach like Peter, If you cannot pray like Paul,

You can tell the love of Jesus And say he died for all.

Refrain

Text: African-American spiritual, abr.