This week on the Word of the Lord Indoor's Forever, we move further in our adventure in Acts with Moses Part 2,

Moses Part 3, Tabernacle vs. Temple, Stephen's martyrdom and prayer, and Philip preaches in Samaria.

Join me, Pastor Will Whedon, for the Word of the Lord Indoor's Forever, your daily 15-minute verse

by verse 5, both study on demand. Listen at thewordendours.org or your favorite podcast provider.

For here with Jesus and with patience, bear our cross. Join we'll find all our sadness, where he is, there is no loss.

Who today we saw on after we shall reach, shall we say, let's do try?

All days come for the time, shall give way to Matthew after Jesus, here I share your role.

Help me there, you'll try to know.

Stanza 2 of the hymn, let us ever walk with Jesus, talking about bearing our cross with patience. Jesus promises a lot of things.

One of the things that he promises, and we tend to forget it, is suffering, opposition, because we bear his name, because we bear his word, his word, and his name are always opposed.

So that brings with it, suffering, but as we say in the hymn, suffering here with Jesus, it's his suffering, and we are privileged to bear it.

Welcome back to Issues, et cetera, I'm Todd Wilken. Thanks for tuning us in live on this Tuesday afternoon, the 27th of June. It's time to look forward to Sunday morning.

According to the three-year electionary, the 5th Sunday after Pentecost, Pastor Sean Denzer joins us, Director of Worship, for the Lutheran Church, Missouri Senate.

Sean, welcome.

Great to be back, Todd.

One of the themes that we're going to see as we look forward to Sunday morning is opposition to God's word. Why is God's word opposed?

It's opposed because of the deep corruption of sin in our world. We know that Jesus himself calls the devil the ruler of this world, and that means he's orchestrating in some way, all sorts of things, or at least it appears that way.

But he has so many allies, and the ally he has is our own sinful flesh, that corruption that runs through every son of Adam, every single person who's born naturally into this world, has sin and its lines cutting right through their heart and opposing God himself.

That means when the word of God belongs in creation, who was there at the beginning, who created this world with the Father and with the Spirit, when he enters into the world, he's opposed.

That means that his word brings division, as we'll see in the gospel.

And so we're continuing from last week where we heard about the opposition that the apostles would face in particular, and the church at large, in speaking God's word.

Today we see that the division this brings between us and the world cuts close to us, and the reality of that division requires that we make a choice, so to speak, whether we're going to stick with what is true, and acknowledge the difficulty that it brings, or whether we're going to give into the temptation to make it much easier by creating a false peace, by simply giving up.

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