Understanding Divine Service Part 2

Let's pray. O Lord, our God, how blessed are we. Not only have

You given us Your Word, which offers and imparts to us all the fruits of the redemption of Your dear Son, Jesus Christ, You have also opened our eyes so that we may know

Your grace and in a firm confidence receive it. Though the world and the law and our hearts and our conscience condemn us, what do we care?

Your Word declares us all free of guilt. O keep us in such faith unto our end and grant that all the members of our congregation may appreciate the treasure which they possess.

Help them in us to triumph over all of the attacks of the devil, the world, the flesh, and finally to depart this life in peace and to be received into Your eternal kingdom.

Here's for the sake of our risen and victorious champion, Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen. Last week we began a little tiny mini teaching series talking about why we do what we do, when we do it in the worship service.

And we've been looking at the historic liturgy kind of as our outline. And we noted last week that many, many, many, many of the components of the historic liturgy are present in Kongsvinger's church service.

There's a couple things that are not present. For instance, the Kyrie, which is a set of prayers that were so important that the church decided that we would get those in there every single

Sunday. And then the Lord have mercy portion of it falls in line with the prayer of blind

Bartimaeus, son of David, have mercy on me, which is a good response.

And we also noted just how much scripture is packed into the church service itself, into the form of the liturgy.

So that the idea then is that as we do these things, you'll note that scripture becomes something that's memorized, you know.

And the liturgy itself is a great teaching tool. I don't know if you've noticed this, but kids learn from repetition.

Kids also learn from singing. You know, I mean, I remember a song from when

I was a kid, and I don't even remember which Sunday school I learned it in, but there's a song about the 12 spies.

You all know the 12 spies that went to spy out Canaan? And the way the lyrics go,

I don't remember the tune, but I remember all the words. 12 spies went to spy on Canaan. 10 were bad and two were good.

What did they see when they spied on Canaan? 10 were bad and two were good. Some saw giants big and tall.

Some saw grapes in clusters fall. Some saw God rule over all. 10 were bad and two were good.

Now, you did that in sign language. See, they went through, they've done the same thing. So I'm gonna say this, and that is that I found that the historic liturgy is a great way to teach the faith to your children.

And what's really fascinating, our pastor friends of mine, who, all of us pastors, we are called upon to bring the body and blood of Christ, to visit shut -ins, and bring communion with them, and to fellowship with them, and to pray with them, and to talk with them.

And what's really fascinating to a lot of us is that as some people get older, they might slip into dementia, or maybe they have

Alzheimer's, or something like that. They may not even remember that you're the pastor of Kongsvinger. But what's really fascinating is, is that little bits and pieces of the liturgy, that you can take them right back to it, you know, if you know these tunes.

And I remember when Faith was a tiny, tiny little girl, she was still in her crib, and we were attending a church where they had the liturgy.

And one afternoon, we heard her singing, after she had woken up from her nap time.

She was singing, and it's like, kind of put the head in the door to see what she was singing.

And she was singing one of the tunes from the liturgy. ♪ This is the feast of victory for our

God ♪ ♪ Hallelujah ♪ You know, she was singing this, and it's like, and she wasn't even out of her crib yet.

You know, she was walking like the drunken sailor thing, because you know how toddlers are, you know, like, you put bubble wrap on them and stuff like that.

It's called following the style. Following the style, right, yes. So, but you know that phase where, as a parent, you're kind of like this the whole time they're walking, right?

And she was, she knew these words, and she knew the tune, and she was singing it.

And so, the idea then is that there's some real wisdom, real wisdom to the repetition and the rhythm that we experience in worship, in teaching the faith and imparting it to our kids, because this stuff gets memorized and is down, down, down deep, just like the old hymns.

I remember talking with somebody in the Netherlands, and they were talking about how their parents, when the, during the

Nazi occupation, they were afraid to worship. And so, they would go out into the woods, and they would kind of gather in a circle, and they would sing these hymns.

You know, they would sing these hymns. And then, when, you know, after the war was over, this grandmother made sure, you know, this woman who became a grandmother made sure that all of her kids and all of her grandkids knew these hymns, because she knew that these hymns taught the faith.

In fact, the hymns that are really worth it, the ones that have, that you want to sing over and over and over again that are classics, like if you were to look at the

Lutheran service book, they have hymns that go back to the fourth century, fifth, sixth, and we're still singing them to this day.

And the reason why something becomes a classic is because somehow they've figured out how to encapsulate these biblical truths and set them to verse and tune.

And some of them are not easy to sing. Some of them are not easy to sing at all. If you know the story of St.

Patrick, you know, and if you think of St. Patrick, the guy's a Roman Catholic, yeah, you're gonna have to kind of put that aside for a moment because the

Catholicism he knew is not today's Catholicism is the best way I can put it. And so he's a missionary to the

Celts in Ireland. And he took one of the songs that the

Celts were singing and he put his own words to it. And it's very fascinating.

I don't think we've sung it here yet, but the tune itself is quite fascinating.

And it encapsulates just some amazing stuff theologically. And we'll talk about kind of the principle in that.

Let's see if I can find it. Yeah, I mean, listen to these words. The tune is a little bit difficult because it's an old

Celtic tune. And so you notice the tune is Irish. It's attributed to St. Patrick and look at the dates.

St. Patrick lived from 372 to 466. So that's when this thing was written and people still sing it today.

Now, I probably won't do the tune justice, but let's see if I can get this. ♪ I bind unto myself today the strong name of the

Trinity ♪ ♪ By invocation of the same, the three -fold name of God.

♪ ♪ Three in one and one in three.

♪ Isn't it beautiful? I mean, the words are amazing. And one of the lines that just tears me up every time

I sing it, I bind this day to me for error, the power of faith,

Christ's incarnation, His baptism in the Jordan River, His cross of death for my salvation,

His bursting from the spiced tomb, His riding up the heavenly way, His coming at the day of doom.

I bind unto myself today. Isn't it fascinating? And so when some, these are, this is the scriptures kind of reworked and then put to verse and tune in such a way that it captures our imagination.

And people have been singing this for more than a millennia.

The United States is 200 what years old? Before the United States was ever even a possible reality, long before Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492.

Long before that, people were singing, I bind unto myself today, the strong name of the

Trinity. It's quite the border. Yeah. And, you know, and so the principle kind of in play then is this, is that the way the ancients would say it in Latin, Lex Arendi, Lex Credendi.

I said this last week. Lex, law, Arendi, the law of prayer. Lex Arendi, Lex Credendi.

The law of prayer is the law of belief. What you pray, what you sing, what you hear, you're going to end up believing it.

So if you sing songs at church that teach and say nothing, what will you believe?

Yeah. This is a very, what you're saying is very, however,

I don't want to hijack your problem, but I want to take it to a different chapter. In my growing up,

I heard a lot of this. And even the Lord's prayer got to the point where you memorized it and you said it weekly or daily, independent.

But did you understand it? Are the people understanding it? Yeah. And so if you put it to tune and you sing it every week in la vida,

I always felt it would be good to take that apart once in a while. Yeah. Like you have with the

Bible from time to time. In this Bible, we need to take it apart. What is the meaning of the

Lord's prayer? What is the meaning of this poor poem here that was written by St. Patrick?

You know, the thing of it is, is if you hear it over and over and over, sometimes it comes to a place where that's the point of harmony.

Yeah, you know, I understand what you're saying. Sometimes it's easy to just kind of come in and go through the motions.

It really is. And in a situation like that, you have to ask yourself, why am

I distracted? Why am I not attentive to God's word or what's being taught? Sometimes it could be the pastor. I'll be blunt, pastors are sinners.

And there are pastors that I have known who literally come in, hit the punch clock, do their duties, make the sign of the cross.

You're forgiven. Now get out of here. I gotta go play. Well, we used to sing the doxology before we'd sit down to a meal.

And I just, that was just part of the meal. I didn't understand the doxology until one day.

It's when we pulled apart on it. Yeah, but I mean, consider the words of that. Absolutely. Yeah, we all know this.

This is one of the, this is another one of those tunes. And we all know it. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above the heavenly host.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Some of you already know it so well enough you're able to harmonize on it.

Isn't that amazing, right? But that was a, that was a, for instance, and I always thought that was a precursor to eat, man.

For me, it was, but the precursor to eating was mm -mm, yub, thank God for the grub, let's eat, okay.

How old is that doxology? I don't know, that one probably goes way back too. But you see, the thing is is that these things have power, staying power, because they've somehow caught these things so perfectly.

And we live in a day, we live in a day where if something's old, it's automatically despised.

Have any of you been watching the Netflix series called The Crown? I know you have, all right.

If you haven't, it's actually quite fascinating because it's telling the story of the early years of the monarchy for Queen Elizabeth.

And one of the recurring themes in these episodes is how do you take an ancient institution like the

British monarchy in a world where you have all of these republics, these democratic republics, how does that remain relevant in our day?

And this is one of the, and so she's coronated in the age when television just came into being.

And she was the first monarch to televise part of her coronation ceremony.

Now, granted, there haven't been any new monarchs since. But she's got, how does she remain relevant in a world that is so rapidly changing?

And what's happened in the modern era, and you kind of have to get this, we'll talk about the narrative of this for a little bit.

There are two major philosophical streams of thought that are still battling each other right now in the minds of Western civilization.

They're like Rodan and Godzilla. It's the best way I can, and Tokyo and New York City, nothing's safe.

But the two major philosophical movements, one is called modernism, and the other is called postmodernism.

A good way to think about it, we've talked about postmodernism a little bit. Modernism is the underpinning philosophical assumption behind our

Constitution and the United States of America. And if you know our history as a nation, we are a nation that embraced this idea of manifest destiny.

We as a nation historically have been all about what? Progress, moving forward, bright future.

We're gonna seize these opportunities, and we've gone from a country that was with horse -drawn carriages to trains, to supersonic jets, to putting men on the moon, and sending satellites out into the farthest reaches of our solar system.

That's progress. And all of that in part is made possible by the assumptions of modernity, of the modernist philosophical movement.

And that is that in the underpinning of this is the belief that reason, human reason can solve everything.

Human reason can pull us out of the muck and mire of the dark ages and superstition and nonsense into a scientific age where everything can be explained via the scientific method.

And it sounds so appealing, but have you considered the fact that the narrative of modernity is at odds with Christianity?

Have you considered that? What's the primary religious movement that is the direct outcropping of modernity?

Deism, deism. This belief that God just put the world together, put the laws of nature in place, sent it off into outer space, and he's fishing somewhere on the backside of the rings of Saturn right now and has nothing to do with his creation.

Thomas Jefferson, deist. Ben Franklin, deist. Thomas Jefferson's Bible.

Have you seen this thing? All of the miracles. He took an exacto knife to the

Gospels and everywhere that Jesus performed a miracle, he took it out. Why? Because human reason stands over this and says, that's not possible, and got rid of it.

Of course. Yeah, they still happen. Yeah. Thomas Jefferson knows better now.

So, that's very good. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that these hymns have stood the test of time because they're based in Scripture.

Yes. Because they're based in truth. Yes. I just can't think of any songs that are just pop culture songs that are still around today.

But these are kind of encouraging that maybe like Jesus culture and Hill song won't be around very long because they're not based in truth, you know?

Right. And you'll notice this about contemporary Christian music. It's got to churn just like secular music.

How long is a song on the charts? How long will it stay on the charts? Very few songs we sing right now that our parents were singing.

There's certain ones. I mean, if you know the Beatles and of course Led Zeppelin, but we won't get into that. But you have to maintain the recording industry.

Huh? You have to maintain the finance. Yeah, you have to maintain the finances of the industry. But you're gonna notice this.

So, progress, the modernist mindset is that anything that's old is suspect. It's in the way of progress.

And these hymns, you know, come on, you wanna sing these things? They sound like dirges, you know?

Last time I was at a funeral, we sang a hymn. This is how they talk. And the whole idea is that somehow these hymns are in the way of progress.

But see, the thing is, is that the church is not about progress. The church is about confessing and proclaiming the faith once delivered to the saints.

We have what is called a corpus doctrinae, a body of doctrine that we are to teach.

We are not to add to it. We are not to subtract from it. Christianity literally is stagnant.

If somebody says to you, you guys just seem like you're stuck in the first century, go, and then remember, we confess one holy universal and apostolic church.

And so the idea that we believe in the communion of the saints. G .K.

Chesterton, who is a Roman Catholic, he was a Roman Catholic, he had an interesting saying. He says that Christianity is the only religion where the dead have a vote in what we do as the living.

And there's something profound about that. There really is. And so, you know, so what happens is, is that those songs that can somehow withstand the test of time and are meaningful across generations, we should cherish them and hang on to them because they are profound then in teaching the faith.

These songs teach the faith. And so, and human beings are unique in this way.

The lions don't sing. We can take these truths of God and speak them and sing them.

And as human beings, it's really earthy. It's this really human thing to do.

And it involves when we are singing these things, not just our heads, it involves also our hearts and our mind and everything that's within us.

Have you ever sung a hymn and there's just one particular verse that every time you sing it, you kind of choke on the word because it's so striking and profound and true.

Right? And it saddens me that we let the younger people tell us, get rid of those hymns, otherwise we won't come to church because that's irrelevant.

We should tell them to grow up. When I would have a temper tantrum, my parents would tell me to grow up and stop behaving like a stupid, spoiled little brat kid.

Yeah, it's abuse. And my mom understood that eating greens was important. I didn't like it.

But now that I'm an adult, I eat greens. And I made my kids do the same with one exception, lima beans.

Never, never have I forced my children to have a lima bean. They probably don't even know what one tastes like.

So getting back to the watering. Yeah. And isn't that something that European and Flemish probably are holding on to because it is a set custom that was practiced for all the years coming up and it's one thing they can hold on to that will always be.

Yeah, so we as Americans think that it's all about the tradition, but here's the thing, watch the crown and you would be shocked just how involved the queen is in government.

I had no idea the queen got a daily report from parliament and that she met with the prime minister at minimum on a weekly basis.

I had no clue. I didn't, I had no idea. She just signed Brexit.

Yeah. No, she signed it. She signed it. They're a constitutional monarchy. She's actually a vital part of their government and I had no idea, but then again,

I'm just an American and I think the whole world revolves around America, because, you know, America.

Well, the monarchy actually kind of protects them from socialism. You know, they were one of the, a lot of countries in Europe went socialist and they had this to hang on to that kind of shielded them from that.

But you also get the feeling that with the head of state who crosses so many decades, how wise do you think this woman is?

How much experience does she have that there's no president in the United States that you could say has this? It's just very fascinating, very fascinating.

But we always, as Americans, as people who are buying into the modernist narrative, we have a prejudice against the things that are old.

And I love the fact that I think, if you think about our history, it was the baby boomers who, as a whole, you know, this is a little bit of a broad brush, but made this big decision.

We were gonna break from the past, break from what our parents were doing and chart a new course.

And it's the millennials, a lot of the millennials who are saying, those boomers really screwed everything up.

We like that old stuff. Let's bring some of that back. It's very fascinating. And part of the reason why is because millennials, from the time they are in the cradle all the way through school, they are being marketed to, sold this, promise that, commercial, commercial, commercial, buy this, buy that, that, that.

And when the church buys into this progressive thing, they intuitively know they're being sold something.

But the thing is, is that historic Christianity has nothing to sell you. It's a gift, nothing to sell you.

And we are all disciples, which means we are learners. And we are all learning the same thing together.

One of the things I love, and you can really see this when in the lectionary we get into the Gospel of Matthew, because it's so stark, it's easy to kind of point out.

Have you ever considered this? Every single one of us, we are being discipled by Jesus with the exact same miracles, sermons, stories, and accounts that Peter, James, John, and the rest of the 12 that they all went through themselves.

Yeah, but think of it this way. Read the Gospel of Matthew and ask yourself, how is it that I have all of this inside information?

If you read the Gospel of Matthew properly to kind of get it, the secret behind the Gospel of Matthew is your disciple number 13.

When the disciples have something explained to them privately by Jesus, you're in the huddle.

And since the word of God is living and active, sharper than a double -edged sword,

I think there's something to be said about that. You're in the huddle.

You're being discipled too. This morning, again, that text just tears me up.

I can't preach that text without being torn up. But when you read it in the

Greek, it is so in your face and descriptive and now.

Again, I don't even know how to emphasize it enough. The fact that all the verbs are in the present tense.

Mark is writing this thing as if it's happening this second. It's like he's seeing it in front of him.

And now here comes a woman with an issue of blood. Jesus goes, everything is present tense.

It's vivid, it's stark. And there we are engaging this story, experiencing it with them.

And see, here's the thing. Jesus took three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John. But no, he took four.

He took Peter, James, and John, and you. You were in that room with him this morning.

You heard him say, Talitha Kume. You saw this girl stand up and Jesus say, give her something to eat.

You were the fourth disciple in that account. You see what

I'm saying? We got really important things to do.

We are being discipled exactly the way Peter was, exactly the way

John was, exactly the way Matthew was, exactly the way Alpheus was in Bartholomew, all of them.

We are being discipled that exact same way. And so the idea then is that we've got important stuff to do when we come together.

We're not here for entertainment. This isn't a social club. It struck me in that passage how the actual

Greek terms were salvation, saved, scourge, it's like there's a masked prophecy in there.

Yeah, I think the wordplay is intentional. I really do. And here's the funny thing.

When you learn Hebrew, the Hebrew language, it's all about the wordplay.

I mean, the things they do with words, the closest thing I can say that we can point to and we would get.

Have you ever noticed how the Brits always have these really cool names for things?

And they have these really kind of cool turns of phrases. The Hebrews do it better than the

Brits do. They're always on the wordplay. And so you think of Jesus in the Nicodemite passage where he says, unless one is born anothen, anothen, from above, or is it again?

Which is it? It's one of the two. And so Jesus is intentionally just putting it out in space.

And Nicodemus is thinking, all right, I can go one of two ways with this word. What am I gonna do with this? And so he chooses one direction and Jesus kind of goes the other, right?

But that's intentional. Jesus is trying to engage your brain and your heart and get you to think through these things as well.

So you come to these words, and are ESV translated heal, heal, heal?

No, the verb is save. Put it out there the way it's intended.

Put it out as save because you sit there and you go, is this about a physical healing or is this about something else?

And you can't read it with those verbs and sit there and go, this isn't just about physical healing.

There's more to this because all of the verbs and all of the things to believe and all that kind of stuff, it sounds so much like salvation.

It can't be just mere healing that this is talking about. And it's not. You see what

I'm saying? And so there's a drama to all of this.

Now, another piece of this then too, in the creation, in the account of the creation, there's a rhythm to it.

Have you noticed that? And there was evening and there was morning the first day. And God said, let there be and there was.

And then there was evening and there was morning, second day. And then

God said this and it came about. And then there was evening and then there was morning, the third day.

Have you noticed the rhythm to all of this? We as human beings were created inside of an order and there's a rhythm to our lives.

Do you know that every single society who's tried to get off of a seven day week has failed miserably?

Why do we have a seven day week? It doesn't make any sense.

Why base seven? Why not base 10? 10 days and then on the 11th day you have a day off.

Everybody who's tried it has failed miserably because your body fights against it the whole time. You ever thought about this?

And so there's this rhythm to things. And we in our culture, in our society, it's like we're trying to figure out how to undo the very natural rhythm that we have been put into, as if somehow we can just chart our own course and buck the way we were made or buck the way the whole system is made.

And we do so to our detriment. And there's a wonderful thing about the liturgy.

It's the rinse, wash, repeat. You come to church, you confess your sins, you're forgiven, you praise

God, you hear His word, you respond in thanks and praise, you receive His body and blood.

Rinse, wash, repeat. And you come back and we do it again the next week.

We do it again the next week. You know what we're gonna do again next week? The same thing. Over and over and over again.

This is a good rhythm. And we despise this rhythm to our own detriment.

What are you gonna replace it with? How do you know that what you're gonna replace it with is better? This is the rhythm that has created all of the great theologians of the past.

This is the rhythm that has inspired all of the great hymn writers of the past.

They've all operated inside of this rhythm. And we're gonna break that and expect that we can do better?

I'm not that smart. I'm not.

And do you know how much freedom there is to just keep this train on this track?

When a train jumps the tracks, it's no longer being a good train. It's pretty stuck.

These rails were made by other people. And I think we better keep these things on the track.

Because I don't know another way to do it. You kind of get the idea, right? Now, all of that being said, all of that being said,

I want to take a look. Today we had the Lord's Supper. And I wanted to show you just what's involved in the communion liturgy.

And the wonderful thing is that we actually do this. Okay, now, before I get to that, I'm gonna ask you a question.

Why do we confess the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed right after the sermon?

Fact check. Yeah, fact check. You can either do it before the sermon or after the sermon.

It's not gonna matter. But the purpose is fact check. If you ever hear a sermon that doesn't agree with the creed, you know for a fact your pastor has done something wrong.

He's taught something not true. So if I were to get up on a Sunday morning and say, you're all descended from apes and there is no

God that created everything. This is all just the result of random chance and evolution.

Let's baptize everyone again. Yeah, right? You would know that, what's the creed say?

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. Maker of heaven and earth, right?

Or if I said Jesus didn't really come to die for your salvation. He died on the cross in order to set an example of what it means to kind of stick it to those who are in authority.

You'd say, yeah, that doesn't sound right. Because the creed says otherwise. Who for us men and for our salvation.

He did all these things. Was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate. Or if I said

Jesus wasn't really born of the Virgin Mary. Come on, we live in the modern era. Why would anyone want to believe in a virgin birth?

Virgins don't give birth. That's silly. You'd sit there and go, no, the creed says born of the

Virgin Mary. And the reason the creed says this is because the scriptures say it. So when the fact checking doesn't pan out, the problem's not with the creed.

The problem's with the pastor. And I can tell you this, it's very fascinating. In the history of heresies, many, not all, but many of the most arch heretics, they've gotten rid of the creeds.

That's their first move. Get rid of it, because then they can preach whatever they want. You get rid of the creed, you get rid of the lectionary.

And now the guy can teach whatever he wants and there's no fact checking set up. And people sit there and go, I don't know if I believe that.

That doesn't seem quite right. But, alas, I'm confused. I just won't say anything.

You got nothing to compare it to. Right, right. So there's a fact checking piece of this. Now when we come then into the liturgy portion of the service of the sacrament, you're gonna know,

I love the fact that the Lutheran service book gives us the scripture references.

The Lord be with you, and also with you. So those words are taken from 2 Timothy. Colossians 3 .1,

lift up your hearts. We lift them to the Lord. Psalm 136, let us give thanks to the Lord our

God. It is right to give him thanks and praise. So you're gonna note, even the rhythm, what I say, what you say, those are words that are taken from the scriptures and put together in a way that seems kind of coherent as a way of kind of moving into it.

Now what's fascinating is that then the pastor goes into and says, it is good right and salutary that we should at all times and in all places.

And you're gonna notice there's a dot, dot, dot. There's, in the liturgy, intentional spaces put for different words so there's some variety to it.

So the propers, so this is called the proper preface. So this is a preface then. So if it were

Easter, I would say something different. I have a whole different proper preface for Easter, for Christmas, for Advent, for Lent, for just common days like this or feast days.

There's different proper prefaces that are pulling in on the different themes for that specific celebration or that specific part of the church year.

So you're pulling in those themes and then that adds variety so that you're not hearing the same thing every single

Sunday because as soon as you're hearing the same thing every single Sunday said the same way, you're on autopilot and you're checked out.

So it is good right and salutary that we should at all times and in all places give thanks to you, holy Lord, almighty

Father, everlasting God, who on this day rose Jesus from the grave and who for us men and for our salvation.

You see, you pull in all these things and during Lent you say something different and it's just amazing.

So there's a little bit of variety put into it and then it ends with Evermore praising you and saying and then we sing holy, holy, holy,

Lord God of power and might. So we have the triple holy, the triple kadosh and you'll notice that the reference there is

Isaiah 6 .3 and let me show you that in the text so you kind of get the idea.

There's a rhythm to this that makes a lot of sense. Isaiah 6, wonderful passage of scripture by the way.

This is again one of these just epical portions of scripture that everybody needs to consider.

Scripture has highlights. This is definitely in the highlight reel. So there's Isaiah. It says, in the year that King Uzziah died,

I saw the Lord, Yahweh, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Some scholars believe that because he's writing in this way and it's so vivid in the Hebrew that maybe

Isaiah was a priest and that he had priestly duties. So there it was, he had been called upon to go and offer incense or something like that.

So there he is in the holy place but not the holy of holies and he's offering incense at the time of the prayer and that all of a sudden his eyes were opened and because remember the temple itself and the tabernacle itself, these were copies of the heavenly things and so at this point, the way scholars talk about it, it's beautiful.

It's maybe a right way of understanding it is at this moment, the heavenly reality and the earthly copy somehow came together and his eyes were open so that he can see what was really going on.

So he's in the temple and all of a sudden, I see the Lord high and lifted up and the train of his robe fills the temple so the whole temple is now filled with this and above him stood the seraphim, the burning.

That's what seraphim means. Each had six wings, two he covered his face, two he covered his feet and with two he flew, one called to another and the

Hebrew here is wonderful. Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, Yahweh, sabaoth, melokal, haeretz.

Heaven and earth are full of your glory. Kibod. It's this wonderful picture.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of armies. That's what hos means.

Whole earth is full of his glory. Foundations and thresholds shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke and I said, woe is me.

I'm lost. I'm a man of unclean lips. I dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king,

Yahweh, sabaoth. And so here you have this beautiful vision of the glory of God on his throne and the seraphim calling out, holy, holy, holy and he's totally undone.

You're thinking, why is this in the communion liturgy? It makes perfect sense when you continue. So he's undone.

Oh no, I'm a man of unclean lips. I've seen the Lord of hosts and he thinks he's in trouble as is the case with many sinful human beings when they come in contact with the holy.

So then one of the seraphim flew to me and having in his hand a burning coal, where would that be from?

From the altar itself. The altar is where the sacrifice is.

He had a burning coal that he had taken with a tongue from the altar and he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips.

Your guilt is taken away. Your sin is atoned for.

Notice, he didn't brand him. He took the hot coal and it came right up and he touched his lips with it.

Your sin is atoned for. Today, you came to the rail, you came to the altar and I came by and I said, take, eat.

This is the body of Christ given for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Deaconess Marilyn followed behind, take, drink.

This is the blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. The blood and the body of Christ are the very sacrifice that won your salvation and they have touched your lips.

They touched your lips this morning. Peace, your sin is atoned for.

This has touched your lips. You see how come this gets sung then every time we have the

Lord's Supper? It is good and right and salutary that we sing holy, holy, holy.

These very words that the angels, the seraphim sung because when we have the

Lord's Supper, the sacrifice touches our lips and our sins are atoned for. That's why that's in there.

And so you'll note then after the proper preface, holy, holy, holy,

Lord God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. And I love how it then takes

Isaiah's vision of the seraphim saying holy, holy, holy and then combines it with Jesus' triumphal entry.

On the day of Palm Sunday. Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. Hosanna in the highest. Take two disparate things, put them together and it just makes so much sense.

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And who is it that is coming to you in the name of the Lord? It's Jesus himself.

His triumphal entry now hidden under the bread and the wine.

He's coming to you and we're recognizing this. Jesus is about ready to enter into the creation physically for us.

And so it is good right that we not only say holy, holy, holy, but now we say blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. You're saying this because Jesus is coming physically for you in the

Lord's supper. You see it? Yeah. So is this kind of trying to teach us that the

God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are one and the same? Oh yeah. It's unmistakable. That's part of it.

That's part of it. But the words hearken to the atoning portion that touches your lips and hearkens to Jesus' triumphally entering in.

It takes the two, pushes them together into one now unified song.

And so when we sing now the Songtus, that's the name of this song. The Songtus.

And there's different ways to sing it. You can sing. Holy, holy, holy Lord. God of Sabaoth adored.

Heaven and earth with full acclaim. Shout the glory of your name.

Sing hosanna in the highest. Sing hosanna to the Lord.

Newly blessed is he who comes in the name of the

Lord. That's one version of it, right? And then we have the version that we've been singing. But it takes these elements from Isaiah and the hosannas of the triumphal entry, pushes them together and now it's something new.

And it's us saying to Jesus, we recognize that you are holy, holy, holy.

And we recognize that you are now coming in among us. That's the idea.

It's like a welcoming song, recognizing that Christ is present to forgive us.

Yeah. It seems like it's completing it because the Old Testament talks about the coming Messiah. Then you have the arrival of the

Messiah. But even these little liturgical songs, the thoughts behind them, they're brilliant.

This is a theological genius that I could only dream of aspiring to.

I dare not tinker with it. But see, that's why you take Isaiah 6 and Matthew 21 and push them together and now it becomes a song that we're singing.

And then we give from there a prayer of thanksgiving. Blessed are you, Lord of heaven and earth.

You have had mercy on those whom you created, sent your only begotten Son into our flesh to bear our sin and to be our

Savior. With repentant joy we receive the salvation accomplished for us by the all availing sacrifice of his body and his blood on the cross.

Good prayer, by the way, which is acknowledging that Jesus has done it all, that we receive these things as a gift by grace through faith.

So gathered in the name and the remembrance, that's a big word, remembrance of Jesus, we beg you, oh

Lord, forgive, renew, strengthen us with your word, your spirit.

Grant us faithfully to eat his body, drink his blood, as he bids us to do in his own testament.

Gather us together, we pray, from the ends of the earth. I love this part of the liturgy when I have people from all over the world gathered to celebrate with all the faithful the marriage feast of the

Lamb and his kingdom which has no end. Graciously receive our prayers, deliver, preserve us to you alone, oh

Father, be all glory, honor, worship with the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. So we're singing that he's coming, we're recognizing he's coming among us, we thank him for these gifts, and then we immediately go into the words of institution, which come straight from Scripture.

And as we look at these words that come straight from Scripture, I think it's important for us to kind of note a few things here.

So, our Lord Jesus Christ. So you're thinking, okay, where's this from?

This is from Matthew, it's from Mark, it's from Luke, it's from 1 Corinthians. All of them are pretty much giving the same words of institution.

Slight variation, but very minimal. So on the night that he was betrayed, Monday, Thursday, he took bread, and this is the

Passover, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and you get a note then.

So the first Lord's Supper, Jesus does this and does this.

He didn't go take, he didn't come up to them and commune them individually. He gave them the elements, they passed them amongst themselves.

They received them from each other. Gave them to the disciples, and he said, take, eat, this is my body, which is given for you.

He didn't say, this symbolizes my body. This is my body.

Now we've talked about this before, but worth repeating in this context then. This is done in the context of the

Passover. Christ, our Passover lamb has been slain, Paul says.

The Passover pointed to who? Christ. The Passover lamb was a type and shadow of Jesus whose blood causes the destroyer to pass over us.

So that being the case, what was the fate after it was killed of the body of the

Passover lamb? What were the Israelites commanded to do with their Passover lambs? Eat it.

Eat it. Passover lambs were consumed. So Jesus now is doing something really radical.

He's saying, I'm now the Passover lamb. He gives them the bread. This is my body given for you.

Do this into the remembrance. Into is the better way of kind of saying it from the Greek. Into the remembrance of me.

What does that mean, remembrance? I've taught on it before. See if you guys can remember. Kind of see if you can tease out what you remember about this.

Is remembrance saying, oh, I'm thinking about Jesus on the cross. I'm thinking, ooh, that really had to hurt.

I'm so, I feel bad for you, Jesus. That's not remembrance. God, okay, okay.

It's God's remembering, and there's a reason why God's remembering. The reason why God's remembering is that remembrance in this context and in other contexts in the

Bible is a reference to the fact that a covenant is being established.

And that when covenants are made between two parties, there's oftentimes something visible that then becomes the thing by which you remember the covenant.

So you think of Noah. Noah and his family. Spend almost a year on the ark.

Maybe a little longer, right? They get off the ark, and God does something interesting.

He establishes a covenant with man and with the beasts, and he makes a promise.

So here's the covenant. It's called the Noahic covenant. God promises, I will never again destroy the entire earth by a flood.

Love, God. That's the promise. The sign of this covenant is what?

Rainbow. And when you read the text in Genesis, God says, when

I see the bow in the clouds, I will remember my promise.

So remembering, in the Hebrew here, zakar, remembering in this context is about the fact that we're dealing with a covenant.

So Jesus on the night that he's betrayed is doing what? He's establishing the new covenant.

The old covenant is now passing away. The new covenant is now being established.

What are the signs, the visible signs of the new covenant? The body and blood of Christ.

Do this into the remembrance of me. Remembrance in the context of a covenant now being established.

So if the signs of the new covenant are the body and blood of Christ, when we see these signs, who's doing the remembering?

Yeah, God is, and we are. What is the pinnacle promise from God in the new covenant?

Forgiveness of sins. Not that he's not gonna destroy the whole world by a flood. He's not gonna destroy you.

So there's your pastor, the sinner. And he says these words.

You can see bread and wine. And we believe, because Christ said it, that somehow his body and blood are present.

How? We don't know. So we Lutherans do something weird. We throw on all of these prepositions.

So we don't know how Christ's body and blood is present. We just know that it is. So we say it's in, it's with, it's under, it's there.

We don't know how else to say it. And so we believe by faith that Christ's body and blood is present.

We see bread and wine. And when we see the signs, we remember, God, you promised you would forgive me and you would not destroy me, that I would not be swept away in the flood of your wrath.

And God sees the signs of the new covenant, and he says, I will never destroy you.

I forgive you. So this remembering thing is really important.

Really important, because it's all in the context of that covenant. And it's really cool when you think about it.

So next time we gather together around the body and blood of Christ, and you say, you hear me say, in remembrance of me, you say to God, I see the signs of this covenant, and you've promised you will not destroy me and you will forgive me.

And you hang on to that promise. God never lies. Luther kind of put it this way, and we'll end with this thought.

He said that if I were standing before Christ on the day of judgment, and Jesus said, I'm gonna send you to hell, Luther would have protested and said, if you throw me into hell, you are a liar.

You throw me into hell, you're totally a liar. You promised me that I was forgiven.

You promised me that I was saved by grace through faith. You fed me your body and blood, given and shed for the forgiveness of my sins.

If you throw me in hell, then your word is nothing, and you are not good, and you are not kind.

That's a good way to put it. If you're ever gonna argue with God, argue with his words and his promises. He always ends up losing in that case, because he cannot lie.

God cannot send you to hell. He can't. You're forgiven. You're forgiven.

I was there when the sacrifice touched your lips. Your sins are atoned for.