Preparing for Worship - August 17, 2025

Jesus is “The Prince of Peace” and is the source of our eternal life and of our salvation and peace, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, many people resist and reject Him, and His Words and coming can also bring division. Our Scriptures this week speak of this reality, and yet of the great hope and peace we have in Christ.

The Psalm is Psalm 119:81-88. In this longest psalm of the Scriptures, the psalmist rejoices in all that the Word of God can do and promises. In this section, though, the psalmist longs for God’s salvation and hopes in His Word and promises, but needs much comfort, because there are insolent persecutors who are saying falsehoods and digging pitfalls for him. They have almost made an end of him on earth. He is like a wineskin in great heat and smoke, by a fire,  shriveled and almost ready to burst. He cries out to the Lord: Help me! Yet he is sure that the Lord’s commands and precepts are sure, and he has not forsaken the testimonies from the Lord’s mouth. He still trusts that the Lord’s steadfast love would give him life. (Could these not be the Words of Jesus, too, when he faced so much opposition and persecution from His enemies? And He was doing all this and suffering for our sake and yet perfectly trusting His Father’s will and plan, where we so often fail. Think about this in terms of the Gospel lesson we will soon look at.)

The Old Testament lesson is from Jeremiah 23:16-29. Jeremiah had to speak a very hard Word of judgment against almost all the prophets and leaders in Judah at his time. They were despising the Word of the Lord and giving vain hopes and visions from their own minds and wishes, instead of speaking of the true anger of their Lord at their evil ways, and that they were making the people forget the true God’s name and leading them away to false gods like Baal. They were speaking lies and claiming dreams that were not true, and they were not speaking God’s Word faithfully. Their words were like worthless straw, and God’s Word through Jeremiah was like fire and like a hammer that breaks the false ideas into pieces. (Sadly, most people would not listen to Jeremiah, and they were carried away into captivity in Babylon, as God‘s judgment.)

The Epistle lesson continues a reading from last week about people of faith in the Old Testament, who did believe God’s Word, by God’s grace, with joy and blessing, but also with many challenges to their trust in the Lord. Abraham received his son, Isaac, but then was asked, as a test, to sacrifice his only son, until God provided an animal sacrifice to be offered instead of his son. (This was a prophecy of how God the Father would later allow the sacrifice of His only Son, Jesus, to pay for our sins and bring us forgiveness and new life.) God’s line of promise continued through Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and, later on, Moses. Moses gave up his high position in Egypt and the treasures of Egypt by defending his own people and later serving them and helping them escape Egypt by God’s passover plan and the blood of lambs (another event prophetic of Jesus as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world). Moses led his people, even though they were often rebellious and gave him much trouble. They finally reached the Promised Land, with the help of a repentant and forgiven prostitute, Rahab. Verses 32-39 of this text may not be read by some churches, but tell of many other Old Testament people who lived by faith in God’s promises, but also faced terrible difficulties because of the opposition by others to God’s Word. Some even gave their lives in following the faith, trusting that they could rise again to a better life. All these did not see the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises, which came in Jesus as the promised Savior. Yet they, too, were saved by God’s grace, as they lived by faith in the promised one to come. The writer to the Hebrews calls them a great cloud of witnesses who help us live our lives in Christ and run our race with endurance, even as we also face many difficulties and opposition to what we believe. Christ Jesus is the Founder and Perfecter of our faith, enduring the worst of evil and hostility and a terrible death in our place. He endured and won victory and the gift of heaven for us, and He will help us, even on days when we grow weary and faint-hearted, as we seek to stay in faith in Him, in spite of struggles and opposition. By His grace, we persevere, knowing the joy and eternal promises ahead for us.

The Gospel lesson, Luke 12:49-56, takes us to the words of Jesus Himself. Jesus speaks of the fire of judgment and a baptism he would still have to be baptized with and wishes that it would come soon, horrible as it would be, so that it could be fully accomplished. He is talking about His own distress and suffering and death, with the opposition and ridicule of so many, where He would suffer the fire and judgment we deserve for our sins, in the God-forsakenness of hell on the cross, until He could say, “it is finished,” “it is accomplished,” in His death on the cross, and then His Easter victory over sin and Satan and death. Jesus did not come to bring peace to the earthly land of Israel, against their enemies, as many expected in the coming Messiah, but peace with God and eternal life. This would bring division, though. Some would trust in the saving work of Jesus, by God’s grace. But some would resist and reject all that, and look for a different way and plan not through Jesus. Even families could be divided in this way. Jesus would be and still is the Prince of Peace, the Savior of the world. (See Scriptures like Isaiah 9:6-7, John 14:27, and Philippians 4:7.) But many could also resist and reject Jesus, unable to interpret what was really going on with Him in His life, death, and resurrection for us. They could predict the weather, but miss out on God’s saving work in Christ. (Lord, help us to see and continue to believe always in the saving work of Jesus, according to God the Father’s plan, for our salvation and eternal life, in spite of the rejection by many. Amen.)