Understanding Divine Service Part V

Okay, we are going to get started. We're going to pray and then get into it. Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears. Please show us now Your ways that we may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ.

Your Word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. So give us life, O Lord, according to Your Word, and we will declare Your greatness. Amen. We've been working our way, kind of explaining what's called the divine service.

The Church as the Forgiven Body of Christ

And we've noted when we launched into the study, and if you haven't heard all of the weeks, I strongly recommend taking some time. Go on to the kongsvingerchurch .org website and listen to the previous weeks and the beginning of it.

And we already noted that we are pretty much following the divine service here. We have for a long time. And historically, the divine service is the order of service used in this congregation. And I think it's important to make a point that over and again needs to be made.

And that is that when we talk about the church, what is the church? Is the church the building? Is it the sanctuary? Is it your pastor's really cool beard? No, I just, by the way, I can do pushups with my goatee.

I just, you know, that's how legendary I am. I'm joking about that part. No, we are the church. We collectively. And so in this congregation, in this church, we are the forgiven, blood-bought, baptized, redeemed sons and daughters adopted by the blood of Christ, children of God.

And together here, we have, and I noted this point that we're a mixed family. We're a mixed family. Do you remember when you got married, when you first got married? Those of you who have, now some of you aren't married at the moment.

But I will say this, that there is a stark difference between married life and not married life. Do you all remember what it was like to be single? I barely remember. It used to involve sleeping in on a Saturday, you know, till like one in the afternoon, you know, staying up until all wee hours of the night and pretty much deciding on my own without any input or negotiation, the things that I would like to do.

Unless of course I'm negotiating with my friends. And I always made sure that my friends, that we all had the same interests. We were all nerds anyway. So, I mean, my ideas were as good as theirs and theirs were as good as mine.

It's worked out wonderfully. But I distinctly remember the very first Saturday after I got married, for my entire single life, Saturdays were sleep-in days. And my wife, she rolls over and says to me, time to get up.

And I look at the clock, does that say 6 .30? I said, no, it's Saturday, it's not time to get up. There was a foot in my back and I found myself on the floor. And she says, nope, now that you're married, you're not sleeping in till one in the afternoon on Saturdays, time to get up, we've got stuff to do.

It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Did I agree to that when I said I do? Oh, you bet your bippy you did. So you remember then that when you got married, that, well, things were different. They were not the same as when you were single.

And those of you who are single or young, all I can say is that marriage is one of these things that it takes a while to get in sync with. And it's a little easier for the women than the men because it takes men a little bit of time to be trained properly.

And of course, I remember years ago, my wife gave me a patch when I was a Cub Scout leader that said untrainable. But it tells you what she thinks about me. So the idea then is that in this congregation, we all have different experiences that we bring to the table.

Some of you have come out of the ELCA. Some of you have come out of the LCMS. Some of you have been here your whole life. And or some of you have come like in the past few decades. And your experiences are all different.

So when we talk then about us being the church, it's important for us to realize and to recognize this. That over and again, there are a lot of times when people step on each other's toes because they are bringing into the relationship a different set of experiences and a different set of assumptions.

So as the body of Christ, we then all have an equal voice as to what's going on here. And our experiences matter. Your experiences matter. You know, there's nothing worse than, you know, a church where one or a few people kind of hold power and don't allow anyone to have a voice or dismiss their experiences or their input just out of hand.

And they clutch onto that power. We don't, that's not what we're to do. We are all equal in the body of Christ. Blood bought, adopted children of God. And so as a mixed family, we need to recognize that about ourselves here so that we act in love, not suspicion.

We act in love and empathy. And we hear each other out. And we're open then to things that maybe we haven't experienced. As long as they are in the proper order and are for the building up of the body of Christ and not contrary to sound orthodoxy or orthopraxy, then we, as the body of Christ, should be open to hearing these things and consider these things.

And so that's the idea. Now, as we've been working our way through the divine service then, we noted last week that the body of Christ is truly present and that what it means to take the Lord's Supper in a worthy manner is to recognize you're a sinner and you need to be forgiven.

It's the exact opposite of the person who says, well, I'm not good enough, so I can't go to the Lord's Supper. That's backwards. You say, I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy enough. I'm in need of the forgiveness of sins.

And this is a place where it's tangibly distributed. I like to say that the forgiveness of sins tastes like weird bread and cheap wine. That's what it tastes like. That's a weird way to talk about the forgiveness of sins.

Yes, but that's the very words that you hear then in the words of institution and then as the pastor gives out the body and blood of Christ in with under the bread and wine. And let me remind you what the catechism says in this regard, because I think Luther's small catechism is very helpful here.

In the small catechism, it says this. What is the sacrament of the altar? Answer, instituted by Christ himself, it is the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ under the bread and wine given to us Christians to eat and to drink.

Where is it written? Answer, the Holy Evangelist, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and also St. Paul write thus, our Lord Jesus Christ on the night that he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it, gave it to the disciples and said, take eat.

This is my body, which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. In the same way also, he took the cup after supper and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of it all of you.

This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. This do as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. All right, we've been spending a few weeks on the words of institution, noted the covenantal nature of it.

So Luther writes and asks the question, so what is the benefit of such eating and drinking? Now, you ask this question to a whole group of people within visible Christianity, and they will say, there is no benefit.

It is merely a symbol. There is no benefit. Do the words of institution instruct us that there is a benefit to the Lord's supper? Yes, what is the benefit? Forgiveness of sins, right. So here's Luther's answer.

We are told in the words for you and for the forgiveness of sin. By these words, the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation are given to us in the sacrament. For where there is forgiveness of sins, there is also life and salvation.

So the benefit then is in the words given and shed for you. So you are receiving the Lord's supper worthily when you hear these words for you, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you say, yes, that's right.

I need that. So I always like to say the devil spends a lot of time buffeting our faith during the week. We are tempted by our own sinful nature and our own sinful passions. We are tempted by the devil and the world, and there isn't a single one of you when you come into church on Sunday who doesn't need to say these words.

I confess that I am by nature sinful and unclean. So the devil buffets you, and so there you are, and isn't it funny how the devil works? I've said this before, and it's worth repeating. There's the devil tempting you, tempting you with sin, and the devil is telling you it's no big deal.

It's not that big a deal. It's just a little sin. It's just, you deserve it. No one's gonna know. It's just between you and the wall, and so what do you do? You sit there and you go, yeah, that makes sense.

So you give in to the temptation, and then the devil changes his tune. It goes from it's no big deal to, oh, you are going to hell, and now he's, you call yourself a Christian? You call yourself a Christian?

You did that?

Oh, man.

What would happen if somebody found out? You shouldn't go to church. You should just hang your head in shame and just walk away from this Christianity thing, right? You're terrible at it. You're lousy at it.

Give up. This is how the devil talks, and we're tempted to believe it because we have the law of God written on our heart, and the Holy Spirit, and our conscience is telling us we've really blown it, and so here's the idea.

You come then to the Lord's table, and you hear the pastor. Notice I'm saying the pastor. I'm talking about the guy in the office. You hear the pastor say, take, eat, this is the true body of Christ, given for you for the forgiveness of your sins.

Take, drink, this is the true blood of Christ, shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. You come and take your seat back in the congregation, and the devil comes along and says, oh, man, here's what you say to the devil.

Do you not have ears? Did you not hear? Did you not see? Notice that when you come to the altar to receive the body and blood of Christ, this isn't some general announcement of the forgiveness of sins.

This isn't a congregation-wide absolution. When you come to the altar, you're receiving an individual absolution from Christ with the visible signs of the new covenant, and it's in your mouth. You can't say that just applies to everybody else, but not to me.

So you can tell the devil, go pound sand, because in case you were like not paying attention, Christ just absolved me up there with his own body and blood. That's how you resist the devil, with the promises of God.

And the nice thing is is that that's actually something tangible you can hang onto and then use it right back against the devil as a weapon when he tries to undermine your faith. So the more in distress you are about your sin, and I would even argue the more worthy you are to receive the Lord's Supper, if you're just kind of blase and you really don't feel any guilt about your sins, and you don't even feel like you really need the Lord's Supper, why are you coming up?

I mean, I never take Advil when I don't have a headache. Why would I have the Lord's Supper if I'm not a sinner? The problem I have is sin. The solution is that. That's one of the solutions given to us.

And so then you'll note then that God himself gives us something tangible that our faith can hang onto, and it's outside of you. The internal dialogue is the place where all the crazy stuff is going on.

You got your sinful flesh warring against the new creation that you are in Christ. You have the devil whispering into your ear. You have the world tempting you, and everything's haywire on the inside.

But out here, none of that internal dialogue's going on. Here in this house, you hear that you are forgiven. Here you hear these words, broken and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. That's outside of you.

And it doesn't depend upon the internal dialogue. So then the question is, which voice are you going to listen to? The voice of fear? The voice of the devil? The voice of the world? Or I can be blunt, the voice of Christ.

Because it's not Pastor Rosebrew who says, this is the body and blood of Christ shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. It's Jesus. Those are his words. So which voice are you going to listen to?

One comes to you from the outside, and the rest are on the inside. The inside voices are the treacherous ones. The one speaking to you from the outside, that's the one that's where Jesus is speaking. So who are you going to believe?

Who are you going to trust? Which voice will you listen to? Adam and Eve listened to the wrong voice and look where it got us. Now, a little bit of a note here.

Confessions That Say the Same Thing as Scripture

We talk about being confessional.

We have confessions. And what is the book where our confessions are documented? It's called the Book of Concord. What is a confession? I've said it before, but I want to see if you guys remember. What is a confession?

What does it mean? Am I confessing, saying I'm guilty? When we talk about confessions in that sense, what does it mean that we have confessions?

To say what the word of God says.

That is like almost perfect.

Yeah.

Two Sunday school points for you, Marilyn.

All right.

I don't know what you're going to do with them, but we're going to put a chart together now, right? The word confess comes from the Greek word homologeo, to say the same thing. The reason why our confessions are true is because they say the same thing as scripture.

Does that make sense? So when we say, well, the Nicene Creed says that Jesus Christ is God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made. That's saying the same thing as scripture. It's saying it in different words, but it says and means the same thing as scripture.

So when we say that when we take the Lord's supper, the pastor says, this is the body of Christ. This is the blood of Christ. Is the pastor saying the same thing that Christ said? Yeah, the exact same thing.

The pastor who says this is a symbol of the body of Christ, is he saying the same thing as scripture? Nope, he ain't. We don't confess that. To say the same thing as scripture, to say the same thing as Christ, we say, this is the body of Christ.

This is the blood of Christ. How does that work? I don't know. I don't know how the universe was created in six days either. It had something to do with the word of God. The mechanics of it elude me because God hasn't given it to me to know.

So what are we receiving in the Lord's supper? The body and blood of Christ. So that's why we believe that Christ's body and blood are truly present because Jesus didn't say, take boys, this is a symbol of my body.

Take boys, this is a symbol of my blood. He said, this is my body. This is my blood. And to take the Lord's supper in an unworthy manner, as we noted last week, means that you're sinning against what?

The very body and blood of Christ. How can you sin against something that isn't there? How do you sin against a symbol in that sense? So that's the idea. We're just kind of simple in that way. And approaching the scriptures by faith and believing the things to be what they are because Jesus says, or the word of God says, is a much easier way to go than the person who tries to reconcile.

All right, the Bible says this. Science says that. So I need to make the Bible jive with science. And the Bible does not need to jive with science. The Bible actually doesn't contradict science. Science is based on observation.

Period.

And the Lord's supper is what the Lord's supper is because Jesus says it is that. Plain and simple. And he always gets to trump everything because he gets to play the resurrection card. He rose from the grave.

He gets to call the shots. As soon as you rise from the grave and you stand next to him, maybe I'll start listening to your opinions. Till then, we go with his. We go with what he said. So how can bodily eating and drinking produce such great effects?

Luther says, the eating and drinking do not in themselves produce them. It is the words for you for the forgiveness of sins. These words, when accompanied by bodily eating and drinking are the chief thing in the sacrament.

And he who believes these words has what they say and declare, which is the forgiveness of sins. So who then receives this sacrament unworthily? Well, fasting and bodily preparation, those are good external discipline.

But he who is truly worthy and well-prepared who believes these words for you for the forgiveness of sins. On the other hand, he who does not believe these words or doubts them is unworthy and unprepared for the words for you require truly believing hearts.

That's the idea. It's real simple. And what Luther has expounded there is really exactly what the scriptures say. So then let's come back to the order of service. You're gonna note that after the words of institution, the very next order of things is what?

The Lord's prayer. We have the Lord's prayer. And these are words that he taught us to pray. In fact, when you do a real study on prayer in the scriptures, I'll just kind of mention this now. So much of prayer in the scripture is praying back to God his words.

Praying back to God the words that he has given us. And there's some great examples of this. Like in the account of the golden calf incident, Moses throws back into God's face because God after the golden calf said that his presence wasn't gonna go with them.

He was gonna send an angel and that angel will bring him into the promised land, but the presence of God is gone. Moses says to God, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can't do this.

But even worse than that, God had literally threatened to destroy all of the people of Israel and bring Israel back down to one fellow, Moses himself. That's how angry God was with the children of Israel over the golden calf to literally wipe out everybody in Israel except for Moses and start over.

And Moses says, you can't do that. You promised Abraham these things. You promised Jacob in Israel these things. So you can't do that. And God relented, it said. You think of that really awkward, really, really, really awkward story where Jesus is in Gentile territory near Tyre.

And there's that woman, that woman whose daughter is ill and she is crying out to Jesus,.

Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus, my daughter's ill. I need your help, please.

And he's not acknowledging her at all. Remember, he's in pagan territory. And the disciples are, do you want us to tell her to go away? I mean, seriously, Jesus, right? This is the Roseboro paraphrase.

And so Jesus finally says, bring her. And so she comes and she tells her story about how her child's ill and she wants him to heal her. And Jesus says these really awkward words. I was sent to the children of Israel.

It's not right to take their bread and throw it to the dogs. Did you just call that lady a dog? Jesus just called that lady a dog, all right? And then Facebook and Twitter melted down.

Right?

I mean, CNN, the son of God calls woman dog, you know? Of course, Fox is trying to defend it, you know?

Right?

What do you do with this?

What is her response to that? You know what she did? She took his words, she held on to him, and by doing so, found a promise in those words and held Jesus accountable and prayed them back to him. So she says, yes, Lord, I'm a dog.

Bow, wow, wow, kippee yay, kippee yay, I'm a dog. But even the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the children's table. So where are my crumbs? She prays back his words to him, as awkward as they are, as insulting as they are, and he answers her prayer.

So when the disciples come to Jesus and they say, teach us, Lord, to pray, Jesus said, when you pray, say, our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Jesus said, when you pray, say. Do you know there's a whole group of people in visible Christianity who refuse to pray these words, and you know why?

Well, that's just vain repetition. That's a written out prayer. You're just boxing the Holy Spirit in a box, and this is how they talk. And you say, could you show me that passage that says when I pray the Lord's prayer that I'm putting the Holy Spirit in a box?

I'd like to see that one. There's a whole group of people who are literally of the opinion you as a Christian are not supposed to ever pray a pre-written prayer, and so they'll get in the face of their pastor.

Pastor, I wish you'd put away those pre-written prayers. You're stifling the Holy Spirit. Where did the Holy Spirit say that you cannot take a pre-written prayer and pray it and make it your own? Jesus said, when you pray, say.

And the only place I've been able to find that we get to learn what those words are is in the written word of God. That's what we call a written prayer. You know what the Psalms are? Hoy, they are some pretty raw prayers.

Some of them even say a prayer of David, and it's written out for us. Nowhere in Scripture are we told, not even once, nor is it even hinted at, that you are putting the Holy Spirit in a box, that you are not praying from your heart if you pray a pre-written prayer.

That's nonsense. In fact, to say that it is contrary to what Christ would have us do, that's called a man-made doctrine, and we are to reject it. In fact, I learned how to pray by praying the prayers in the Bible.

And when I was a young lad, I have no qualms saying this, when I was 18 years old, I had suffered nothing in my life, for the most part. My parents, pretty well to do. The extent of the suffering I went through was maybe being grounded for something I did wrong, which is just punishment, and that only happened on rare occasions.

I pretty much got what I want when I wanted it. And you know what? When I was a young man, you know what I thought of the Psalms? Boring. I don't get it. Why are we reading these things?

They're stupid. I don't even like poetry.

What an idiot I was. Complete, utter, narcissistic idiot. I'm 50 now, and life does what life does. It makes you suffer, and that suffering is good. Now as a 50-year-old man, I read the Psalms, in fact, I pray them every single day.

I pray them like my faith depends upon it, because I see in those Psalms the same feeling, the same anxiety, the same concern, the same sufferings that I have been made to go through as a human being.

And if you're honest, that's the same for you too. You wanna learn how to pray? Read the Psalms and be warned. Some of these Psalms are like, they are like on one nerve raw. They are on the verge of like screaming at God.

Where are you, Lord? How long are you gonna hide your face from us? Those people who hate you, they are taunting me. Where are you? These are the kind of prayers. The Psalms will teach you how to pray, and they're all written.

And they're designed for you to take these written prayers up and make them your own. You wanna learn how to pray? Read the written prayers for you in Scripture. And Jesus says, when you pray, say. It's not some model of prayer.

It is the actual prayer that we are to pray. It can be added to. You can embellish it if you'd like. But there is no fault in actually praying the Lord's prayer. And one of the things that's really kind of standing out in my mind is the outreach that we have, the church planning outreach through Aletheia.

So many of the Aletheians, when they first come, they are blown away by the fact that our church service includes the Lord's prayer. And it's like, I haven't heard that in church before. And their kids don't know the words of it at all.

They couldn't tell you the 10 Commandments. You ask the average Christian, I'm not talking pagan. You ask the average evangelical Christian walking down the street, name for me the 10 Commandments. How many do you think that they'll be able to tell you?

Two, three, and then it gets really weird after that. The Scriptures are to be read. The Scriptures are to be repeated. The Scriptures are to be memorized. These words are to become your own words. The Hebrew word for meditate, which by the way, we're not talking about transcendental Eastern meditation.

The Hebrew word for meditate has as its kind of visual picture, a cow chewing the cud. You are to take God's word into your mind, into your heart, and you are to chew on it the way a cow sits there and goes, nom, nom, nom, right?

By the way, just so you know, cows fear me so much, milk comes out their nose. Just saying, I had to do that. Break up the tension just a little bit, okay? So taking in God's word, we chew on it. We meditate on it.

And this is one of the brilliant things then about the historic Christian liturgy. It's so chock full of God's word that as you say it Sunday after Sunday, sing portions of it Sunday after Sunday, it gets down in your heart, down.

Worth repeating. Talked to some of my friends who are pastors in the ministry. As dementia sets in and people get older, or maybe they're suffering from Alzheimer's or something like that. As they begin to lose the faculties of the ability to use the brain, over and again, the person who's been steeped in the historic liturgy, these songs become their own.

They may not know the name of the pastor when he shows up, but you sing some of these hymns and songs, they will immediately be able to sing them along with you. It's amazing how that works, amazing. And so we, for whatever reason, have this weird idea that somehow we're stifling the Holy Spirit, putting the Holy Spirit in the box because we are repetitious with certain things.

No, that repetition helps things go down deep, deeper than we even recognize or understand. So deep that you can recall those things even in your oldest age when your mind is at its weakest. These things can be pulled out.

It's quite fascinating and amazing. So we write the words of God then on our heart. Memory, repetition, praying back God's words. These are ways in which we meditate on it and it becomes our own. You realize that every single passage of Scripture, every prayer written in the Bible that you have memorized, that if a tyrant were to arise in this land and take away all access to the word of God, he would not be able to take it away from what's in your heart.

You see what I'm saying? That's how important this is. So we pray the Lord's Prayer. We talked about the Anemonic Prayer last week, the Pax Domini, and then the peace of the Lord be with you always, and you say amen.

And then we sing this wonderful little tune. And there's different varieties of this tune, but it's called the Agnus Dei, which is just the fancy Latin term for Lamb of God. And you'll notice the repetition, the threefold repetition.

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace. And the threefold repetition is on purpose.

It invokes the Trinity. And so whenever you see threefold things in a song, hymn, or something like this, it's politely reminding you that God is Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Now, years ago I had a pastor who was the pastor to my pastor.

And we were at a conference, and this guy was a force of nature. And I remember him at this conference talking about how men in the ministry are to handle those who are heretics in their presence. So as a pastor, if you find yourself in a situation where you're sitting across the table and somebody is spewing heresy, and you're not able to speak, he said, here's what you do.

You cough loudly three times to invoke the Trinity. I thought that was hilarious. I don't know how practical that is, but I love that. So the threefold Lamb of God then is for invoking the Trinity and also the mercy of God.

Have mercy on us, have mercy on us. Grant us peace. I just love throwing the Hebrew in here, shalom, because it just has such powerful meaning as far as peace. And then you'll note that in the distribution, the words that I follow, take, eat, this is the true body of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, given unto death for your sins.

Take, drink, this is the true blood of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, shed for the forgiveness of your sins. Am I saying the same thing in scripture? Yes, yes. And then from there, we do the dismissal.

The body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ, strengthen and preserve you, and watch this, body and soul, body and soul to life everlasting. And here's the idea. There's a reason why I don't say, you know, bless your soul.

I say, bless you body and soul. The idea here is that when you're raised from the grave, you're gonna be raised from the grave, body and soul. The intermediate state between our death and the return of Christ and the resurrection, where we are only spirit without a body, that's an intermediate state.

Christ has saved you, body and soul. You're gonna spend eternity in a body. This body has been redeemed by Christ. It belongs to Jesus. This is why we don't use our bodies to commit sin. It doesn't belong to you.

It was purchased by Jesus. You're not calling the shots. He is, he owns you. You see it?

Yeah.

And then in the divine service setting one, they have one tune is thank the Lord and sing his praise, which is usually sung kind of, you know, feast days and festivals. It's a little bit more upbeat.

Thank the Lord and sing his praise. Tell everyone what he has done. Let all who seek the Lord rejoice and proudly bear his name. He recalls his promises and leads his people forth in joy with shouts of thanks giving.

Alleluia, alleluia.

And you'll note that this tune itself, the words, the lyrics are kind of a conglomeration of several of the pieces of Psalm 105 and 1 Chronicles 16 kind of all mixed together. But historically, this is a pretty new arrival on the scenes as a post-communion canticle.

The old song that people have been singing for millennia is called the Noctimitus, Noctimitus. And this is a fun story. If you want to turn with me to Luke chapter two, Luke chapter two, we're going to see where this comes from.

I'll start in 22. When the time came for their purification, so Jesus has been born. He's now an infant. The infant Jesus has been born. The time of their purification, according to the law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord as it is written in the law of the Lord.

Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord. A pair of turtle doves, two young pigeons. Now, so here's the idea.

Here's the infant Christ, the infant Messiah. This is his first time as God in human flesh to actually enter the temple. That's a big deal. God appearing in his temple. That's ginormous. And so now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon.

And this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ or the Lord's Messiah.