Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany [b] February 7, 2021
Psalm 147:1-11
1 Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God;
for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.
2 The LORD builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
3 He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
4 [The Lord] determines the number of the stars;
he gives to all of them their names.
5 Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his discernment is beyond measure.
6 The LORD lifts up the humble;
he casts the wicked to the ground.
7 Sing to the LORD with thanksgiving;
make melody to our God on the lyre!
8 He covers the heavens with clouds; he prepares rain for the earth;
he makes grass grow on the hills.
9 He gives to the beasts their food,
and to the young ravens that cry.
10 His delight is not in the strength of the horse,
nor his pleasure in the legs of a man,
11 but the LORD takes pleasure in those who fear him,
in those who hope in his steadfast love.
In the Name of Jesus.
The Lord lifts up the humble. But what does it mean to be humble before the Lord?
To be wimpy and snivelly? But King David was no wimp, yet the Lord blessed him. Peter, when he’s cutting off a soldier’s ear is hardly a weakling. Paul when he’s standing at the Areopagus in Athens explaining why the Greek gods are false, he stood more like a man’s man, hardly a picture of humility.
Yet Peter and Paul are blessed by the Lord.
The Lord lifts up the humble, he casts the wicked to the ground.
Yet, the Lord did cast Paul to the ground, literally, when he was on his way to Damascus to persecute Christians. And the Lord was pretty hard on Peter when he said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan” when Peter said Jesus shouldn’t go to the cross. And David was torn down pretty good when the Lord has Nathan tell him he was guilty of adultery and murder.
The Lord lifts up the humble, he casts down the wicked. David, Peter, Paul … you and me—wicked, or humble?
First, we look at the Lord. He’s the one with all the power. Nothing is hidden from him. Psalm 147:4:
[The Lord] determines the number of the stars;
he gives to all of them their names.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power;
his discernment is beyond measure.
What will it look like when this holy God, Creator of all, enters creation and sees the arrogance, the sin and death? What will it look like when holy God approaches the sinner? It looks like Jesus walking around Galilee. Mark 1:31:
Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And [Jesus] came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
With all the big things going on in the world, the problems of a corrupt Roman Empire, the incompetent governor sitting in Jerusalem, the wars, the slavery, the excessive taxation, the breakdown of marriage promoted by the King, the lack of care for families, with all of it, when the Lord shows up in the flesh, he will be found not in Rome but in the little nondescript fishing town of Capernaum, invited into a fisherman’s home where Peter’s mother-in-law lays sick with a terrible fever.
He came for her. In her boring little life barely known to the world, her smallness, he came for her. He walked up to her sickbed to bring life.
Caesar remained in power in Rome, Herod still sat on his corrupt throne in Jerusalem, the excessive taxes were still collected, the slaves remained in chains, the King continued to disparage the Lord’s gift of marriage, nothing much in the world changed, but Jesus came into her little life.
He comes into ours, too.
Peter’s mother-in-law would still live in the sinful world, she would still live in her sinful flesh, subject to the temptation of the demons as those demons knew how to most deeply afflict her, but in this life of flesh, she had been approached by Jesus. He took her by the hand and lifted her up.
He cleansed her. He gave health and life. She was his servant. Her life belonged to him. She would now live her life of faith even as she, at the same time, lived her life of sinful flesh.
He comes into our lives, too. He speaks his Word to cleanse us. He has his gifts distributed to us. In his Word, he creates us anew in our life of faith, he claims us as his own.
We still live in our sinful flesh. Our own Caesar may have some of the same problems as Peter’s mother-in-law’s Caesar with corruption, out-of-control government interference in lives, and expansive laws controlling families; our own government may have some of the same problems as Peter’s mother-in-law saw with King Herod’s disparagement of the Lord’s gift of natural marriage, but our Lord comes to us to speak a Word.
His Word cleanses us.
The big problems around us, the problems of corrupt governments and decaying society, they may remain, but we are cleansed. We are made new. He comes into our own little nondescript Capernaums to bring life.
He brings life. Because, when he did ride into the capitol city of Jerusalem, it wasn’t to overturn a corrupt, overly-expansive government, it was to die.
Psalm 147:6:
The LORD lifts up the humble.
Do we want to know what it means to be humble? It is to be holy God, the Lord who determines the number of the stars, the Lord who is great and abundant in power, and to come in the flesh in order to humble yourself by taking the sin and arrogance of this world upon your back and setting yourself for the cross, where you would then die for the sins of those who are trying to justify themselves.
To be humble, it is Jesus on the cross, dying for the sins of a world he created but which has now rejected him.
Now, he lifts up the humble. What does it mean to be humble before God?
It means to know that like David, you still live in your sinful flesh, but the Lord gives you repentance. It means to know that like Peter, in your sinful flesh you would reject the cross of Christ, preferring instead to justify yourself, but the Lord gives you repentance.
To be humble is to know that, as the Psalm says, the Lord casts the wicked to the ground, and to know that we are the wicked ones as we try to use the Law to justify ourselves, and yet, this Lord has thrown us down with his Law, in order that he may now pick us up and cleanse us with his Gospel.
We hear his Law. We hear the accusation. And we have been made humble.
The Lord lifts up the humble. The Lord lifts up you and me and our families.
We still, as Peter’s mother-in-law, live in our world of sin and in our own sinful flesh. It will not be otherwise until we are done with our life of flesh.
But the Lord comes to us. In a gentle Word spoken to us by the crucified Christ, the Lord coming to us in a Word to forgive and restore. The Lord lifts up the humble.
In the Name of Jesus.