March 3, 2024 —
Throughout Lent, we are seeing the battle between Christ and Satan. Today, the arena is worship. Satan tries to distract us from doing the Father’s will at worship. If He cannot keep us from going to the house of the Lord, He tries to blind us to its beauty by either enslaving us to ritual or distracting us with peripheral matters. He’s happy to have us focussing on the activities of worship, either to criticize them, to idolize them, or to see them as merely tasks to be completed. Satan doesn’t want us to commune with God in spirit as God desires. He wants to rob our worship of its object, namely the One who came to atone for our sin on the cross.
Our Old Testament Lesson is the 10 Commandments, where God outlines what He expects of us, including worship. Our Epistle reminds us that “Christ Crucified” is the center of worship.
In our Gospel we see how zealous Jesus is that worship should be done in spirit and in truth.
Our Sermon will focus especially on our Epistle Lesson, under the theme: “The Commandments and the Cross.”