This week on the Word of the Lord indoors forever, we dig further in Genesis, the book of beginnings,

with in Egypt, family strife, the family divides, the promise renewed, and four kings against five.

Join me, Pastor Will Whedon, for the Word of the Lord endures forever.

Your daily 15-minute verse-by-verse Bible study on demand. Listen at the wordendors.org or your

favorite podcast provider.

Music No hymnal can include all the great hymns of the past.

You have to make a choice.

Only so many pages.

The book can only be so big. There's a Lutheran hymn,

actually from the pen of Martin Luther himself, that has fallen out of use among Lutherans,

precisely because it was one of those that was cut. And maybe it was cut because it's not a very polite hymn. It speaks very frankly about doctrine, false

teachers, and God's Word as a weapon against both false doctrine and false teachers.

Welcome back to Issues Cedar, live on this Thursday afternoon, November the 7th. I'm Todd Wilkin.

Thanks for tuning us in. It's time to study the hymn, O Lord, look down from heaven, behold. Pastor David Peterson joins us. He is pastor of Redeemer

Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and editor of Godestine, the Journal of Lutheran Liturgy.

David, welcome back. Thanks, Todd. Good to be here.

This was written more than 500 years ago by the 16th century reformer Martin Luther.

Is the hymn still relevant today?

Yeah, it's still relevant today. I think there's a little bit of a nuance. Luther writes

it in 1523, so it's early in the Reformation,

and he feels very much the oppression from the Pope, you know, his life's been threatened.

I mean, all of those sorts of things that are going on. It's different in our day, I think,

...