Faith Lutheran Mesick LCMS

08/09/2026

Faith Lutheran Church, Mesick, Lector David Monroe, 10th Sunday after Trinity.

08/08/2026

O God, why? Three simple words, but they summarize volumes of tears, screams, moans, protests, and tortured confusion of the children of God who sit suffering among the ashes.

One of the psalms we prayed today in Bible in One Year begins that way: "O God, why do you cast us off forever?" (74:1).

Why did you let my home be destroyed in a hurricane?
Why did you let my little girl die of cancer?
Why did you let my enemies undermine everything I had worked for?
Why do you seem to care so little?

On the cross, Jesus himself, one man speaking for all humanity, lamented, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; Ps. 22:1).

Here is a prayer that refuses to be silent in the face of suffering. O God, why? Such prayers are not seeking information but intervention. Do something, God!

And that is just what our Father wants us to ask. To see darkness staring us in the face and to lift our eyes to cry to the Light.

When we sit among the ashes, whatever the loss, whatever the pain, of one fact we can be certain: nothing can un-resurrect our Lord.

He lives. And because he lives, we can not only face tomorrow but all our tomorrows, for we know that God is on our side. In his own time and in his own way, he will intervene, because he will not close his heart to the cries of his children.

08/08/2026

08/07/2026

Never apologize for reading the Old Testament as a book about Christ. Never back away from that conviction. And never pretend that we're somehow “reading Jesus into” the Old Testament.

To say that is to contradict Jesus and the teaching of his apostles.

Jesus taught that the Scriptures testify about him: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39).

After his resurrection, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Later that same day he said that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (24:44).

The apostles preached the same message, as we read today in Bible in One Year. Standing before King Agrippa, Paul declared that he was saying “nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:22-23).

The Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings each proclaim, in their own distinctive ways, this central message of Scripture. Some books do so more explicitly than others, but all bear witness to God's saving work in the Messiah who suffers, dies, rises again, and brings salvation to the world.

So whether you’re reading Genesis or Proverbs, Hosea or the Psalms, let your primary question always be: How is God using this narrative, this psalm, this proverb, or this prophecy to teach me about the salvation in Jesus the Messiah?

That is not imposing Christ upon the Old Testament.

That is reading the Old Testament the way Jesus taught us to read it.
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For more on this topic, see my book, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament, https://a.co/d/0aSzqBSn

08/06/2026

“Without peers.” That is how we describe men and women, perhaps athletes, whose skills are virtually unparalleled. We dub them the G.O.A.T. (“greatest of all time”).

In Hebrew, we could look at them and ask, “Mi kamocha?” that is, “Who is like you?”

David once asked Abner, Saul’s general, that question (1 Sam. 26:15). In the Song of Moses, Israel is asked, “Who is like you, a people saved by the LORD?” (Deut. 33:29).

Most of the time, however, “Mi kamocha?” is addressed not to an individual or nation, but to Yahweh.

Most famously, after Israel crossed the Red Sea, they sang, “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exod. 15:11). Obviously, the question is rhetorical. Yahweh is peerless.

The same question is also in Psalm 71, which we prayed today in Bible in One Year: “Your righteousness, O God, reaches the high heavens. You who have done great things, O God, who is like you?” (71:19).

What follows this question is a lovely, compact confession that, in a single verse, sums up the crosses we bear in this life, our trust in God, and the hope of the bodily resurrection when Jesus returns on the last day: “You who have made me see many troubles and calamities will revive me again; from the depths of the earth you will bring me up again” (71:20).

How perfect is that? The psalmist, who began this autobiographical psalm by praising the God upon whom he learned from birth, now looks forward to the horizon of the resurrection, when his body—and our bodies—formed by God in the womb will be reformed and glorified to mirror the body of Jesus.

Mi kamocha, O LORD? Who is like you? No one. You are peerless in power, in grace, and in promise, Lord Jesus. Our lips shout for joy as we sing praises to you; our souls, also, “which you have redeemed” (71:23).

From womb to tomb to the glorious day of resurrection, you are our God.
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From my book, Untamed Prayers: 365 Daily Devotions on Christ in the Book of Psalms, https://a.co/d/07kzVw4

08/06/2026

The Jews of the first century were far from a monolithic group. Yes, they shared many common beliefs, but they also had sharp and deep disagreements.

We see one of these in Acts 23, which we read today in Bible in One Year.

Paul said to the Sanhedrin, "I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with respect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial" (Acts 23:6). Soon, "a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the assembly was divided" (23:7).

Here is a quick summary of these two groups and other Jewish groups of the first century.

The PHARISEES were the most influential movement among the common people. They accepted oral traditions alongside the written Law, and believed in the resurrection, angels, and spirits. After the Romans destroyed the temple, the Pharisaic tradition developed into what we now know as Rabbinic Judaism.

The SADDUCEES were associated with the wealthy priestly aristocracy who controlled the temple. They rejected the resurrection, the immortality of the soul, and fate. Acts 23:8 also tells us they denied the existence of angels and spirits. After the temple's destruction, they disappeared from history.

The ESSENES emphasized ritual purity, strict discipline, and eagerly awaited God's dramatic intervention in history. Some of them lived apart from mainstream Jewish society in tightly ordered communities, the most famous likely being Qumran, near where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

The ZEALOTS believed Israel should throw off Roman rule by force. A more radical wing, the Sicarii, carried concealed daggers and assassinated those they considered collaborators. If you're familiar with Masada, near the Dead Sea, that mountaintop fortress was the Zealots’ last stronghold until their mass su***de shortly before the Romans breached its defenses in AD 73.

The HERODIANS were not a religious sect but a political party that supported the Herodian dynasty and its cooperation with Rome. Though they had little in common with the Pharisees, the two groups united in their opposition to Jesus (Mark 3:6).

The New Testament unfolds amid this fascinating world of competing hopes and rival visions for Israel.