Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Our Wisdom Is Found in the Lord
These are the readings for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
God’s Word for This Week
The mind is a powerful tool, capable of reasoning its way too much success and many great things. The human mind knows how to guard the bottom line. The mind knows what is most cost-effective. The mind can quickly determine the most reasonable course of action. But our brains, despite all their vaunted wisdom, cannot find their way to the cross. The cross is incomprehensible to human wisdom. One man, the God-man, dies for the sins of all men! It is only when our fear and trust are in the Lord that we can know his great mercy and understand how that mercy affects us now and forever.
Traditional First Lesson – Proverbs 9:8-12
What is the source of true wisdom and knowledge?
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One (Jesus) is true understanding.
What is the benefit of putting all our trust in the Lord, of leaning on his wisdom?
Eternal life is the benefit. The writer says, “For through me your days will be many…years will be added to your life…your wisdom will reward you.”
What is the punishment for not fearing the Lord?
If you refuse to fear and trust in God, “you alone will suffer.”
Supplemental First Lesson – Genesis 12:1-8
When God called Abram to go to the land, God would show him; God gave Abram seven blessings. What was the last one?
God promised Abram, “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” This was a promise that the Savior of the world, God in the flesh, would come from Abram’s descendants. (And that the Savior would die in place of all people.)
Abram was a childless man 75 years old when God called him to go to an unknown land and promised to make a great nation out of him. What other problem did Abram have? (See the end of 12:6.)
Abram’s other problem was that plenty of Canaanites filled the land to which God sent him. How could his descendants take over such a land when he had no son, either? God asked Abram, like he asks us, to keep trusting him in the face of much opposition and circumstances that often seem to make no sense.
Traditional Second Lesson – Philemon 1:1, 10-21
What is so incredible about Paul’s request that Philemon take back Onesimus?
Onesimus was a runaway slave. Most masters would severely punish such a slave—perhaps even have him killed. But Paul asks Philemon to have mercy on Onesimus out of Christian love.
On what basis would Philemon show any mercy to Onesimus?
On the same basis by which Philemon was shown mercy. Philemon was shown mercy by God, who brought Philemon to faith through the good news of Christ preached by Paul. Now Philemon has an opportunity to show the same mercy which he was shown to his servant Onesimus. “We love because he [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19).
Supplemental Second Lesson – Philippians 3:4b-11
What reasons could Paul give for trusting in who he was before God? (See 4:5-6.)
Paul could have trusted in who he was because he was not just a Jew, he was the most Jewish man possible. He kept the law that God had given the Jews almost faultlessly. He had even persecuted Christians in his zeal to be a good Jew.
How did Paul see his former goodness and good efforts?
Paul learned to see his former goodness as a loss (in accounting terms) not a profit. He even considered it garbage (literally, “dung”). Jesus had become his righteousness.
Gospel – Luke 14:25-33
Does Jesus really want us to hate our parents, our brothers and sisters, our children?
We do not hate our parents in the sinful and wicked sense that Scripture condemns. We “hate” them in the sense that we make Christ the first priority in our lives. Our Lord and Savior is to be the number one in all things. No matter what the wisdom of the world says, we always follow Christ.
What motivates us to “hate” our families, to give up everything we have for Jesus?
“We love because he first loved us.” God showed us incredible mercy and love by sending his one and only Son into the world. He chose us before creation (Eph. 1:4). He adopted us as sons (Eph. 1:5). He “made us alive” (Eph. 2:5). He “raised us up with Christ” (Eph. 2:6), all by his undeserved love, by grace. As children of our heavenly Father, we take up the cross appointed for us and follow our Savior, Jesus, even if we don’t always understand it, even if the world mocks us, spits upon us, and hates us.
