The Lord has a soft spot in his heart for widows.  Time and again in the Bible, the widow is specifically mentioned as an object of God’s attention and concern.  Already at the time of Moses, the Lord said to his people, You shall not take advantage of any widow. (Exodus 22:22).  Later, through the prophet Jeremiah, the Lord would repeat the thought, Do not oppress the alien who lives in your land, the fatherless, or the widow. (Jeremiah 7:6)  God’s concern for the widow is not just an Old Testament thing.

It is said there are two things that are absolutely certain:  death and taxes.  While this is generally quite true, on the basis of our text today, this Reformation festival, we might want to add a third thing to that list.  And that is the preaching of the Gospel.  Jesus says in our text, The gospel must first be preached to all the nations. (v. 10)

On of the techniques used by Jewish rabbis when teaching was the use of hyperbole, or exaggeration.  We often do the same.  It is not uncommon for us to engage in hyperbole in our own conversations.  When we say someone has “tons” of money, we do not literally mean if we weighed all their money it would weigh thousands of pounds.  But we would all understand the point being made:  that person has a lot of money.

A number of weeks ago, our theme for worship was “spiritual warfare.”  Remember that?  We were reminded about our unseen enemy in the spiritual realm, the devil and the demons.  We spent some time considering Paul’s encouragement to put on the full armor of God from Ephesians 6.  Our arsenal includes truth and righteousness and faith and the Gospel of peace and prayer.  Remember that?    One of the things we did not talk about that day was the unseen army who fights for us.  We are talking now about the holy angels.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed a certain little feature in our hymnal.  At the top of each page, in small letters, is a word that describes what type of hymn is on the page.  There are categories like Christmas and Easter.  There headings like Redeemer, Justification, Prayer, and Commitment.  I have here the hymnal from when I was a child.