Speaker: Warren Graff

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT                                               February 21, 2021

 

GENESIS 22:1-18

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ² He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” ³ So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. ⁴ On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. ⁵ Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” ⁶ And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. ⁷ And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” ⁸ Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. ⁹ When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. ¹⁰ Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. ¹¹ But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” ¹² He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” ¹³ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.” ¹⁵ And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven ¹⁶ and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, ¹⁷ I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, ¹⁸ and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

A most odd story. Surely one of the strangest accounts in Scripture, it almost seems bizarre. A man taking his son up a mountain to give sacrifice. And the sacrifice would be his son. And he was told to this by God.

 

Our eyes are on the man, on Abraham. Will he do it? Every step up that mountain ripping his heart out. Every step tearing at him with doubt. Does he really want to have faith in a God who would have you give up your own son?

 

How are you to feel about a God like that? You doubt him, how could you not? Loathing, even hatred would enter in, would it not? How can you love a God who rips from you a person you love? Even hatred had to be there, it would seem.

 

Our eyes are on Abraham. What does he feel? How far will his faith go? What will he do?

 

God can raise from the dead, that is true. He is the God of life, the God of creation, the God who brought every living being, including Abraham’s son Isaac into life. Can he not raise from the dead? Yes, Abraham knew he could. But did God say he would? Genesis 22:2:

After, these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

 

In that command, we hear nothing of God speaking of resurrection—no promise to Abraham that he would see Isaac alive again. Yet, Abraham did know that God could bring life from death, he did have faith in the resurrection (Hebrews 11:17ff.). But is that what God would do with Isaac? How is Abraham to have certainty?

 

 

So Abraham goes up the mountain. Just him and Isaac. Isaac asking,

“Father, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering”?

[Genesis 22:7]

 

How do you answer your son a question like that? You know God has told you to sacrifice your son, and now your son, in all innocence, asks, “Where’s the sacrifice, Dad”?

 

What a sorrowful trip up the mountain when Abraham answers,

“God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

 

What did Abraham even mean by that? Was it just line to divert his son? Did Abraham really think God would provide a sacrifice other than Isaac? If Abraham did believe that, we don’t see it in his actions. For the next thing he’s doing is binding Isaac up as sacrifice—hardly the actions of a man confident that God will provide a sheep.

 

Our eyes are on Abraham. The distress, the pain, the thoughts of faith and of doubt, of love for God and hatred for a God who would demand such a thing; the turning stomach, the thoughts of what he would have to say to Sarah, his beloved wife and Isaac’s mother, when he returned home with no son.

 

Our eyes are on Abraham. What will he do?

 

But let’s turn our eyes to God. The one who created Abraham. Who gave to Abraham Sarah as bride, and gave to Abraham and Sarah Isaac as son. Turn our eyes to God who created all life, who names himself as the God not of death but of life, who put all people under the command to not kill, but to uphold life and care for one another.

 

Let’s turn our eyes to God. What is God doing in this account?

 

It’s clear he’s commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son. But what is he doing with that? What is God’s end game, and why does he have this strange account written down in Holy Scripture so that the Church throughout the generations would hear it and live from it?

 

What is God doing?

 

 

A strange thing about covenants. We think of a covenant as a promise from God, and that is, indeed, what a covenant is. A promise by God of grace and life; a promise that God will be with his people and will keep them, will continually cleanse them of all sin and make them holy.

 

Throughout the Old Testament, God gave the promise many times by covenant.

 

To Adam and Eve, he gave the covenant that through Eve’s lineage would come the one who would crush the head of Satan and save Adam and Eve and those who followed in the faith.

 

Later, to Moses and Israel he gave the covenant promise that Israel would be saved and would be brought into the promised land and in that land one would then be raised up from Israel as Savior.

 

He gave the covenant promise of salvation and eternal life to Noah and his family. He gave the covenant promise of the kingdom of Heaven and eternal life to David as he made him king.

 

And to Abraham, God gave the covenant promise that the sinner is saved not by works but by faith and that from Abraham’s lineage would come the Savior of mankind.

 

So what is God doing on that mountain with Abraham when he tells him to sacrifice his son Isaac but then doesn’t let him, providing to him the ram for a sacrifice?

 

Here’s the strange thing about these covenants God has given throughout history from Adam and Eve, through Noah then later Abraham, then later to Moses, later to David, all the way up until God the Son himself came in the flesh by Mother Mary.

 

The strange thing about these covenant promises is, when God gave a covenant, he was not just giving the promise of grace and cleansing and forgiveness and eternal life; he was, in all of that, giving by promise his own Son over to death.

 

That’s what God did when he promised Adam and Eve that from Eve’s lineage would come forth a Redeemer to save all sinners from sin and death. He was promising that his own Son would be born in the human lineage of Eve, and that his Son would crush the head of Satan and redeem sinners.

 

That’s what God was doing on that mountain with Abraham.

 

He was, in this most extraordinary way, a way never seen before and never to be seen again, giving the promise that there would be a sacrifice to save all nations—for he gave to Abraham the promise that he would be the father of many nations—and the promise was that that sacrifice to save sinners of all nations would be a son of Abraham. Not his son Isaac, for God withheld Isaac from sacrifice, but Abraham’s greater son, Abraham’s son many generations away—the son born of Mary.

 

The promised sacrifice would be God the Son in the flesh, given as the full, complete, final sacrifice to atone for the sins of every sinner of every family, tribe, and nation, of every generation.

 

 

That’s what God did on that mountain. He sealed a covenant, he made a promise in blood, an oath by his own Name, that he would give his own Son to die for the sin of Abraham, of Sarah, of Isaac, of you and me, of the world.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever has faith in him will not perish but will have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world would be saved through him.

[John 3:16]

 

ASH WEDNESDAY                                                                        February 17, 2021

 

2 CORINTHIANS 5:20b-6:10

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ^6:1 Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. ² For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. ³ We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, ⁴ but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, ⁵ beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; ⁶ by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; ⁷ by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; ⁸ through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; ⁹ as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; ¹⁰ as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

David shows us how to be a sinner before God. Psalm 51:4:

⁴ Against you, you only [O Lord,], have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

 

To be a sinner before God, we confess that our sin is against God.

 

We know that David’s sin was, indeed, against Bathsheba, the woman he seduced into adultery, and against his own family, which he damaged with his adultery, and against Israel, who was counting on him to be an honorable king, and against his own body for the lust he brought himself into, and, of course, against Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband whom he murdered in order to cover up his adultery. Yet, when he confesses his sin, it is confession of sin against the Lord:

⁴ Against you, you only, [O Lord,] have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.

 

To properly be a sinner before God, the confession is that all the sin we commit, in our heart, in our family, against our neighbor, it is all sin against the Lord who created us and created our neighbor.

 

Then, to be a sinner before God, David confesses:

⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

 

David shows us that to properly be a sinner before God, we confess not only that we are sinners, but that God has said we are.

 

In other words, even if we don’t know our sin, or if we do know it, but not the depth of it, nevertheless, God declares that we are, indeed, sinful, and we are, therefore, fully sinners according to his judgment. Psalm 51:

that you, [O Lord,] may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

 

Then David shows more.

 

Not only are we sinners because we sin against our neighbor and against our own bodies, and because our sin is even more profoundly not only against our neighbor or ourselves but against God, and because God declares us to be sinners and he will be justified in what he says, but we are sinners also, David says, because we have been in sinful flesh even since we were conceived in our mother’s womb:

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

[Psalm 51:5]

 

David teaches us how to be a sinner before God. We confess our sin against our neighbor and ourselves; we confess our sin as even against God himself; we confess that we have heard God’s word declaring us sinful; we confess that our sin is not just our thoughts, our actions, and our desires, but is who we are even from conception: we stand before God with that confession.

 

 

Then, we look at who this God before whom we stand, and we have another confession to make. This is the God who became human to be with us, to know our sin against our neighbor, against ourselves, against him, the Lord, and he became man in order to take all that sin upon himself.

 

Who is it who stands before God as fully sinner?

 

Not you, not me. It’s Christ Jesus. He knew no sin; he was born with no sin. His desires are not sinful; he desires to receive every good gift from his Father; yet, he stood before his Father as the greatest sinner of all. 2 Cor. 21:

For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

That’s how David teaches us to be a sinner before God. We stand before God confessing our sin, then we turn to our Lord Jesus and we make a greater confession. We say, There, in him, there you will find my sin. On him my sin was laid. In his body my sin was put to death. By his blood my sin is covered. This is my confession.

 

Psalm 51:9:

Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation.

 

 

To be a sinner before God! We confess our sin. It is sin against our neighbor and against ourselves. We confess that it is, at its root, against God, and it is sin from our very origin.

 

Then we confess that our sin has been taken by Jesus.

 

We are accounted righteous by no worthiness of our own but purely by the grace and kindness of him who willingly took our sin upon himself that he might give us his righteousness.

 

Then we confess that we are his. He has ransomed us that we might live under him in his righteousness and purity forever, all as a gift of his grace and kindness. So Paul writes:

We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹ For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[2 Corinthians 5:20]

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

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.

1. TIMOTHY, PASTOR AND CONFESSOR January 24, 2021

 

1 TIMOTHY 6:11-16

¹¹ But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. ¹² Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. ¹³ I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, ¹⁴ to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵ which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, ¹⁶ who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Our world, it’s in turmoil—we know this. Neighbor against neighbor, political conflict, social media conversations backing people into corners, unapproved voices cancelled, marriage of man and woman under attack, family denigrated, and whatever else we want to add.

 

What’s the church given to do?

 

We know Christians are not given to protest by attacking businesses and burning down buildings, by trespassing property and yelling at people. But when we see the weak and vulnerable not protected from those who bring violence, when we see natural law under daily attack, what is the Church of Jesus Christ given to do? Start our own political party or what?

 

Maybe we can appreciate meeting young pastor Timothy.

 

Paul placed Timothy as pastor to the Church in Ephesus at a time when the world was under the thumb of Nero.

 

Nero was an effective politician. He had raised taxes significantly to fund massive government projects, he had neutralized his opposition so that they have no legitimate political voice, and in master political strokes, he set the classes against each other so that he could take advantage of the conflict.

 

Nero’s an effective politician. At least until he wasn’t, at which point he died, possibly suicide. Government had never been bigger and more invasive, and had never been less interested in protecting the institutions of natural law, such as marriage and family, property and wealth, not to mention the lives of the innocent, than it was under Nero. Abortion of children, they had it. Unnatural marriage of same-sex, Nero instituted it—he himself took part in it in an episode we should probably not even mention from the pulpit.

 

And the pastor in Ephesus? Young Timothy. Ephesus was a major city in the Roman Empire (in the area we today think of as Turkey). She had trade and textile manufacturing, technology and one of the largest libraries in the world. She was under the authority of Nero, of course, and in the midst of all this, was this church in Ephesus and her pastor, young Timothy.

 

What is Timothy to do? How is the Church to thrive in a society that doesn’t even know to respect natural law? A society that can’t even speak rightly of what it means to be man or woman, and has lost all sense of family? How is the is Church to live in a society driven by multiple philosophies and government approved worship, and ignorant of the Gospel of Christ?

 

 

The Apostle Paul gives Timothy his commission. 1 Timothy 6:13:

I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things.

 

This is the way Paul describes his commissioning of young pastor Timothy.

 

It’s a charge or commission. Like a commission into a military office or an authorization to assume an office in government. Paul is not just giving advice or suggestions to a young pastor needing encouragement, he’s placing Timothy into an office and giving him a charge.

 

And by looking at what that charge is, that authorization to young pastor Timothy, we will see what the Lord sets pastors to do and also what the Lord sets us to do as Church.

 

It starts in the introduction of Paul’s letter, chapter 1:

Remain in Ephesus,

Paul writes to Timothy,

so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrines.

[1 Timothy 1:3]

 

That is, the first charge to a pastor is to teach the doctrine, and only the doctrine, given by Jesus to the Apostles.

 

What is that doctrine? Paul further spells it out in the next paragraph. 1 Timothy 1:15:

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

 

Surely young pastor Timothy was tempted—who wouldn’t be—to use the pulpit to preach about better tax policy or the need to replace Nero or better government programs.

 

But Timothy was not given that charge. He was put in place to proclaim

Christ Jesus [who] came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.

 

This charge I entrust to you, Paul writes to Timothy. And what was that charge? In chapter two, Paul continues,

I urge [you] first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

 

Paul charged Timothy to make intercessions to the Lord for all people and for kings and all in authority. Did Timothy not know that this charge for the church to pray for all in authority included Nero—Nero who killed his own mother, who practiced homosexual marriage, who did not protect the vulnerable, including the child still in the womb? Yes, the church is given to pray also for Nero.

 

How are we, as Church, given to pray for a Nero?

 

We might say, we pray for Nero even over against Nero. That is, where Nero destroys the family by promoting unnatural marriage, we pray all the more fervently that for the well-being of all Nero would uphold God’s orders of creation.

 

Where Nero does not protect the innocent, not even those still in the womb, we pray all the more fervently to the Lord of life that Nero would uphold life and extol the value of every person.

 

Where Nero uses his courts and army to trample on and oppress the weak, we pray all the more fervently that Nero would rightly use the sword to protect the innocent and bring justice to the evildoer.

 

We make this extraordinary intercession to

God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.

[1 Timothy 2:4]

 

 

So coming to the end of his letter to young pastor Timothy, Paul closes with,

I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[1 Timothy 6:14]

 

The commandment to keep unstained is the command spoken by Jesus to his Apostles to make disciples of all nations by baptizing into the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and by teaching all the things commanded unto them.

 

That is, the Apostles, and then the pastors whom they appoint are to continue teaching of Baptism’s cleansing for every person, young and old, no sinner left out, and to continue teaching of the Lord who comes to his people in his Body and Blood for the forgiveness of all sin, and to continue proclaiming the Gospel of Christ Jesus who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

 

Keep this command from Jesus unstained, Paul says to the pastor. Don’t add to it, don’t subtract.

 

That’s the commandment the pastor is to be clear about and keep unstained, and it is the commission to the church. We are given the charge to continue praying for all those in authority, and when we see them opposing God’s good gifts of life and natural marriage and family and home, we pray all the more fervently for our Lord’s gifts. And when we see them oppressing and being intolerant of those who uphold natural law for the benefit of all, we pray to our Lord all the more fervently for his gifts.

 

And we continue in the charge our Lord gives us, for he loves all and desires all people to be saved.

 

Which means, for the Church, it’s about the cross, it’s about the forgiveness of sins, it’s about the mercy of the God of life. That’s the clarity the Lord gives his church about our purpose in this sinful world.

 

The Large Catechism puts it like this:

Everything in the Christian Church is ordered toward this, that we shall daily receive in the Church nothing but the forgiveness of sins through the Word and Sacraments, to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live here. So even though we have sins, the grace of the Holy Spirit does not allow them to harm us. For we are in the Christian Church, where there is nothing but continuous, uninterrupted forgiveness of sin. This is because God forgives us and because we forgive, bear with, and help one another.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany [b]                   January 17, 2021

 

Psalm 139:1-10

¹ O LORD, you have searched me and known me!

² You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.

³ You search out my path and my lying down

and are acquainted with all my ways.

⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,

behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.

⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is high; I cannot attain it.

⁷ Where shall I go from your Spirit?

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

⁸ If I ascend to Heaven, you are there!

If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

⁹ If I take the wings of the morning

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

¹⁰ even there your hand shall lead me,

and your right hand shall hold me.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

What do you want to be the last words spoken about you here on Earth? Those glorious eulogies, of a politician, perhaps, where all the money he or she voted to spend for bridges and buses and schools, of all the programs he or she set up to organize peoples’ lives; those eulogies where a man is always the kindest, the most caring, and ready to help anyone—what do you want to be the last words spoken about you?

 

The last words on Earth spoken over you and over me—not the glorious eulogy cataloging the good and whitewashing the bad, but the actual words rightly describing you and me, the realistic words showing the good and the bad, the joy and the fear—the last words spoken concerning you and me, as our bodies wait to be lowered into the ground, the pastor standing a few feet from the empty rectangular hole, the family and loved ones, with tears in their eyes standing also there the hole, and the pastor will say:

May God the Father, who created this body;

May God the + Son, who by his blood redeemed this body;

May God the Holy Spirit, who by Holy Baptism sanctified this body to be his temple, keep these remains to the day of the resurrection of all flesh. Amen.

 

Nothing about how this guy being lowered into the ground loved fishing and loved watching the Broncos; nothing about how much charity he gave and how his smile lit up a room; nothing about how he will now be fishing or golfing are whatever with the angels in Heaven. Really, not anything about the man at all. Except, that this body was created by God the Father, and was redeemed by God the Son, and was sanctified by God the Holy Spirit.

 

Entering the ground, the body is commended to the God who resurrects it on the Last Day.

 

Beautiful words extolling the Lord’s gift of life in the midst of sorrow.

 

 

Those are the words to be spoken over you and me. They show the good and the bad.

 

The bad, that’s the sin and death. Death doesn’t belong to us. Not according to our creation by the God who made us for. He made us to live in these bodies and enjoy life. We sinned. We brought sin into all creation. Sin brought death. The dead body being let into the ground, that shows the sin belonging to all of us.

 

But the body being let into the ground, it is commended to the God of life. That’s the good.

 

So these last words on Earth spoken over us, they show us where we live, our address, even now.

 

We all have our addresses, of course. For us now, it happens to be Albuquerque. The addresses among us here include earlier places we’ve lived, some in Texas, some in California—you can add up the places belonging to different ones of us, Idaho, Wyoming, even England or Germany and more, depending on where our vocations have taken us.

 

But the one address common to all of us is the one we professed in the Psalm.

Where shall I go from your Spirit, [O Lord,]

Or where shall I flee from your presence?

[Psalm 139:7]

 

When David wrote this Psalm, his address would have been Jerusalem. But he wrote of a different address he belonged to.

 

In the Psalm, he wrote, “Where, O Lord, shall I flee from your presence?”

 

But the translation we have has actually softened it somewhat. In his own language, David did not reference God’s presence. In the Hebrew what David says is more stark, more located. He said, “Where, O Lord, shall I flee from your face?”

 

David’s life is at the face of God. When he was running in the wilderness from Saul, he was at the face of God. When he knelt down for Samuel the prophet to anoint him to be King of Israel, David was at the face of God. When he married his first wife, it was at the face of God.

 

David’s adultery with Bathsheba? It was in a private bedroom. But it was at the face of God. His conversation with the prophet Nathan where Nathan pronounced him forgiven and clean of his sin, it happened in David’s palace, but it was at the face of God.

 

“Where shall I flee, [O Lord,] from you face?”,

said David. David’s whole life was at the face of God.

 

So is yours. So is mine. That’s where we live our lives, whether we know it or not. Our address is Albuquerque, or Dallas, or Denver, or wherever, but we live always at the face of God.

 

We see here the severity of our sin. Wouldn’t it have been better for David if, when he was committing adultery with Bathsheba, he was able to keep it in that bedroom, without God being involved? But his sin, hidden from the world, was at the face of God. And so is ours. The news on that front is bad.

 

But these bodies, they were created by God the Father. And redeemed by the blood of God the Son. And the Holy Spirit had water poured over our bodies and words spoken into our ears, and he cleansed us, made us holy, even while we at the same time live in these bodies of sin. So Paul says,

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? … You are not your own, you were bought with a price.”

[1 Corinthians 6:15]

 

The blood of Christ, that’s what bought you.

 

 

So Nathanael was one day sitting under his fig tree. He was in the shade reading Torah.

 

That is, he was reading the Holy Scriptures. He was reading of creation in Genesis; of deliverance in Exodus; he was reading of salvation given to such names as Ruth and Tamar, Jacob and Joseph; he was reading of the lineage of David. That’s what an Israelite would do in the season of the Feast of Tabernacles, you sit under your fig tree and you read Torah. For in the Holy Scriptures, God is with you, and you are with him: you’re at the face of God.

 

John 1:47:

Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

 

Jesus saw him. He was with him. Nathaniel’s under a fig tree reading the Scriptures, but he’s at the face of God.

 

That’s our address. That’s where we live.

 

Even while in Albuquerque, even as we live in this world which does not know God, even as we live in a generation so opposed to God’s gifts, so hostile to God’s creation of man and woman and his gift of marriage and family, a generation unwilling to protect the weakest among us, including babies in the womb, even as we live in a time of doubt, with everyone ready to turn on neighbor at the first hint of something said wrong—even as we live here, at the same time, we live at the face of God.

 

At the face of God, we must know our sin, for how can sin ever be any worse than if God is right there with us. But at the same time, living at the face of God, we hear his voice. And it is the voice of the Gospel.

 

It is the voice of God the Father who created our bodies, and God the Son who redeemed our bodies, and God the Holy Spirit who sanctifies our bodies with Baptism and the Word. And hearing his Word of Gospel, we know that he loves us, he loves our bodies, and when we are found in our sin, he wants nothing more than to forgive and cleanse and sanctify us, so that in the midst of death, we know that we belong to the God of life.

 

Where shall I go from your Spirit?,

says David.

Where shall I flee from your face?

 

That’s where we live: at the face of God. 1 Corinthians 6:19:

“Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price.”

 

In the Name of Jesus.

Second Sunday after Christmas [b]                         January 3, 2021

 

1 Kings 3:4-15; Ephesians 1:3-14

 

Luke 2:40-52

⁴⁰ And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him. ⁴¹ Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. ⁴² And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. ⁴³ And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, ⁴⁴ but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, ⁴⁵ and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. ⁴⁶ After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. ⁴⁷ And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. ⁴⁸ And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” ⁴⁹ And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” ⁵⁰ And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. ⁵¹ And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. ⁵² And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Who wants to be with us in all this mess? This mess people mad at each other, of everyone on edge, of one person yelling at another for not wearing a mask, while another argues that anyone wearing a mask has no backbone, of Facebook memes putting up statistics to shame one side or the other, this world of children not allowed in schools and businesses shut down, of nurses grueling days weeks on end—who would choose to be with us in this mess?

 

Jesus chooses. Luke 2:40:

The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.

 

The humanness of it, the earthiness. God didn’t just become man, as if it’s just some interesting addition to his divinity. He became man in the way of every human. He was a child. He had to have his diapers changed. His mother, we can imagine, had those conversations with aunts and grandmothers about what to feed the little boy to get him to sleep through the night.

 

There was, we might imagine, one of those rulers drawn on the wall by the door, to mark each inch he gained by the month and year.

 

“He grew and became strong”—that little verb “grew” glimpsing his humanness, the reality of his life as a boy of skin and bones and imagination and dreams, just like any one of us.

 

 

He wanted to be here in our mess. He knew the turmoil—in his day a turmoil of secret political movements doing violence and working to overthrow the governor; in the turmoil of pharisees roaming from synagogue to synagogue to run roughshod over peoples’ lives by controlling them with laws and rules and regulations, and of Sadducees collecting the Temple fees to support their opulent lives and to separate themselves from the regular families.

 

Jesus wanted to be with us in this mess. He knew of how we judge others, always ready to make the argument of what another is doing wrong; he knew of how we are on edge, of how we use words not to encourage and build-up and give gifts, but to control and even tear-down; he knew of our troubled consciences we try to placate by excusing ourselves or accusing others. He knew all of this and more.

 

And he wanted to be with us.

 

So he became a child, and as is given to a child, he grew and became strong and was filled with wisdom.

 

A wisdom not of knowing how to dice out all the philosophers and their arguments, nor of knowing the law in its depth so he could join the Pharisees in using it to control other peoples’ lives, but the wisdom of a child receiving good gifts from parents, the wisdom of hearing the words of life and encouragement, words of God, and hearing them with ears of faith.

 

 

That’s the wisdom Solomon had prayed for. When young Solomon became king, here is how he asked the Lord for the gift of wisdom;

O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of David my father, although I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, too many to be numbered or counted for multitude. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?”

[1 Kings 3:9]

 

In the translation we heard this morning, Solomon asked the Lord for an “understanding mind.” But what Solomon actually said in the Hebrew, which is what he spoke, was, “Give to your servant, [O Lord,] a hearing heart.” [1 Kings 3:9] To which the Lord said,

“Behold, I give you a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you.”

 

Jesus, Luke tells us, came as a child, growing and becoming strong, and he increased in wisdom. [Luke 2:40]

 

The wisdom the child was given? The same wisdom given to Solomon: a hearing heart. Not the worldly wisdom of conquering a field of study or of being able to understand the philosophers, but the wisdom of a heart gladly hearing the words of the Lord, receiving them as pure gift—as a child receiving the gift of milk from mother.

 

Jesus was made complete in wisdom by hearing and receiving the words of his Father.

 

“The words that you hear [from me]”, said Jesus, are not my words, but [the words] of the Father who sent me.”

[John 14:24]

 

Jesus is given words from his Father, and he receives them with a hearing heart. That’s the wisdom of a child receiving gifts from a loving parent. Jesus speaks those words to us, and by those words implants in us a hearing heart, a heart of faith.

 

Because, the Old Adam, our sinful flesh, he doesn’t hear well. He hears only what he wants to hear.

 

But the Words of Jesus, the words he received from his Father and now speaks to us, these words put the old Adam of our sinful flesh to death daily in repentance, and they create in us the heart of faith, the heart hearing the Lord’s words for all they bestow. That hearing heart, open to receive every good gift from God, is the gift of wisdom.

 

 

The child grew and became strong, he increased in wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.

[Luke 2:40]

 

Jesus wanted to be with us in this mess—this world of words spoken not to bestow gifts and speak grace, but to judge and keep score and cover in shame.

 

He wanted to be with us. It was his Father’s gift to him to be given the office to save us from our sin, the Father’s gift to him to place him here among us to do the holy work of making us holy.

 

So he became man. Like us in every way, but without sin. In all humanness and earthiness, he came as a child to grow as we grow and to become strong and to have a hearing heart to receive every word from his Father and thus increase in the wisdom of being given to.

 

He is with us now. He sends to us the Holy Spirit to bring to us all the words which the Father gave to him. He sends to us the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit gathers us to all the gifts of Jesus, the Holy Spirit who is to be known to us as holy because that is his work—he makes us holy.

 

Jesus is with us now as he sends the Holy Spirit to keep us in all the gifts of the Word. In that Word, Jesus is with us now.

 

We hear his Word with the gift of hearing hearts. By that Word,

we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavishes upon us in all wisdom.

[Ephesians 1:8]

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

The First Sunday after Christmas [b]                                     December 27, 2020

 

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

¹⁰ I will greatly rejoice in the LORD;

my soul shall exult in my God,

for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;

he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,

as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,

and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

¹¹ For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,

and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,

so the Lord GOD will cause righteousness and praise

to sprout up before all the nations.

^62:1 For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,

and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,

until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,

and her salvation as a burning torch.

² The nations shall see your righteousness,

and all the kings your glory,

and you shall be called by a new name

that the mouth of the LORD will give.

³ You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the LORD,

and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

God will not keep silent, Isaiah says, he will not be quiet.

 

How will that work?

 

We listen to what we want to listen to. We have a TV mute button—if we get tired of hearing something, we make it silent. That’s easy. If we mute the obnoxious commercial, no one at the TV station even knows, they are too remote from us. If we switch channels so we don’t have to hear a certain politician, he or she doesn’t even know—they are too distant from us.

 

And so we can even mute God. Just don’t listen to him. Tune out.

 

Don’t turn to his word in Scripture to hear his voice; don’t come to the preaching of the Gospel to hear his voice; don’t gather to the word of forgiveness in the Sacrament to hear his voice; don’t pray in order for him to hear your voice. He’s distant, remote. It’s not like he’s right here.

 

But here we find the good news for the sinner. It’s the Gospel.

 

He is not distant, he is not remote, he is not removed from our sinful lives.

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,

and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,”

says the Lord.

 

He is here, even when we kid ourselves that he’s not. He’s no more distant than a family member at the dinner table.

 

“In the beginning was the Word,”

John tells us,

“and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

[John 1:1]

 

Where the Word is, there’s no silence. There’ s conversation and dialog; there is the speaking of things into existence, there’s creation and life.

 

But maybe we still think of the Word as far off, remote, distant, as something we need not worry about.

“The Word became flesh,”

says John,

“And [the Word] dwelt among us.”

[John 1:14]

 

He’s no abstract God up in the skies, distant from us; no spiritual being remote from our flesh and blood lives about whom we give no worry because we can’t hear him anyway.

 

He became flesh; as fully human as you and me. A real flesh and blood baby in the arms Mary. He dwelt among us, talking with people, eating fish with families, drinking wine with neighbors, walking around getting dirt on his feet and sunburn on his face.

 

Mary’s baby. One thing we can say about babies: they make noise. This God is in the flesh in order to not be a silent God, a God not mute to the sinner.

 

 

He’s the Word who with the Father and the Holy Spirit created the world and with that also our parents Adam and Eve.

 

He’s the Word who brought the rain out of the skies for forty days of judgment, saving only believing Noah and his family, eight souls in all.

 

He’s the Word who brought down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, who drowned hard-hearted Pharaoh and his army, who held back the jaws of the lions so that Daniel walked out of the den safe, who walked into the fire to be with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to keep them safe—and now he’s the Word make flesh, child of Mary.

 

He does it all to not keep silent, to not be mute to the sinner, to you and me and our families.

 

He does it in order to be with those who had not praised God as they should—to be with them in order to forgive them. To be with those of no thankfulness on their lips, in order to speak grace to them. To dwell with those who’ve been stingy, those who’ve delighted not in encouraging and building up others, but in judging and holding on to sins, in order to cleanse them of all unrighteousness.

 

He became flesh and he dwelt with us in order to be heard. Isaiah 62:1:

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,

and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,

until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,

and her salvation as a burning torch.

 

Zion, that’s the people called to the promise of the Davidic King to be saved from their sin. The new Zion, it’s the Church.

 

Jerusalem, that’s all those called to be cleansed by the blood of the sacrifice at the Temple. The new Jerusalem, it’s those cleansed by the blood of Christ, it’s the Church.

 

For the sake of the Church, for the sake of his baptized people, the Lord will not keep silent.

 

He speaks. This is the good news; this is the Gospel. For to know the Law, we don’t have to hear the Lord’s voice in Scripture—we already know the Law when we look into nature to see things of the sinful world deteriorate. We already know the Law by looking at our own lives to feel the sting in our consciences for sin. We already know the Law by the fact of our own mortality.

 

But the Gospel is that the Lord will not be mute to the sinner. The Word is not silent. He came in the flesh to speak from the cross, Father, forgive them.

 

Having been crucified, he descended to Hell to declare to the demons that it’s over, they’ve lost, he has stripped them of their terror, of their hold over sinners, by forgiving sinners, by cleansing our consciences with his Gospel.

 

Having descended to Hell to proclaim victory over the demons, he then rose from the dead in order to speak to the women at the tomb and to the Apostles to tell them that death is defeated, and the sinner is to hear the Gospel’s word of justification.

 

Having risen from the dead, he ascended to Heaven and sent forth the Holy Spirit to bring the Word of Gospel to the Church, calling sinners of every nation and every language into the Church, that all would hear the word of grace and be forgiven of sin.

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,

and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet,

until her righteousness goes forth as brightness,

and her salvation as a burning torch.

 

The new Zion is the Church. The new Jerusalem is all those the Lord gathers to his Name.

 

It’s you and me and our families. For our sake, he is not silent.

 

He keeps gathering us. He continues dwelling among us in his Sacrament, declaring us righteous by his blood. He steadfastly speaks to us in his Gospel, by which we are saved from our sin. He keeps coming to his people with his gifts, and he will not be silent.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

CHRISTMAS EVE                                                                          December 24, 2020

 

MATTHEW 1:18-25

¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. ²⁰ But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to [Joseph] in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: ²³ “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us). ²⁴ When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, ²⁵ but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

 

This baby, says the angel, this little one conceived in Mary, is of the Holy Spirit.

 

This work of bringing forth the Christmas child is Trinitarian—a work of the Holy Trinity. It’s not just God the Son, though it is certainly him—God the Son coming in the flesh as a human to join those he loves and to save them from their sins.

 

It’s the work, too, of God the Father, who has been Father to the Son in eternity, from before even the creation of the world and the creation of his Image on Earth in Adam and Eve.

 

God the Father has now sent forth his Son to be part of the created order, to be a creature himself, according to his human nature, while still at the same time, according to his divine nature, God the Son remains uncreated, and remains himself, the creator.

 

And it’s the work of the Holy Spirit.

 

In this mystery of the Godhead—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet One God—in this great mystery of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit comes to the Virgin Mary in a Word. And by having that word spoken into her ear—that word, which is, You will bear a Son, and you will call his name Jesus—by having that word spoken into her ear, the Holy Spirit gives her the conceiving of a child.

 

This Holy Spirit was there with the Father and the Son at the creation of the world, even before we brought the good creation into sin.

 

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, creating mankind and all things as they were in conversation with one another.

 

This is the Holy Spirit who spoke by the prophets, giving Israel the promise of a Savior who would save sinners from their sins.

 

This is the Holy Spirit who throughout the history of the Tabernacle and the Temple was using the mouths of the priests to declare people clean before the face of God.

 

This is God the Spirit who all along has been known as the Holy Spirit because in his grace, he makes sinners holy.

 

He has now given conception to the Virgin Mary. She will bear a Son and call his name Jesus, for he will save people from their sins.

 

 

And this is all brought to you and me and our families now by the Holy Spirit, who makes us holy.

 

And this is how the Holy Spirit makes us holy: By bringing to us Jesus and his gifts.

 

By gathering us to the proclamation of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

 

By teaching us that everything Jesus did in his Incarnation, everything he did in his humiliation, everything he accomplished in his death on the cross, everything he did in his resurrection—he did it all for us. He did it all to take our sin upon himself and to make us holy. He did it to justify us before his Father, because he loves us.

 

He became flesh, he came as the child of Mother Mary, in order to be brother to those he loved.

 

He grew up to teach in the synagogues in order to comfort the poor and the beat-down with his grace.

 

He went before Pontius Pilate to be humiliated, and he died on the cross, in order to save from sins those whose sin he willingly took upon himself.

 

And he now sends forth his Holy Spirit in order to gather his people to his Name, to assemble his church to his Body and Blood, in order to bring his forgiveness to us as gift, giving us the Holy Spirit, who by the Gospel makes us holy.

 

This is Mary’s child. You will call him Jesus, the angel told Mary, for he will save people from their sins.

 

We call him Jesus. He saves us from ours.

 

IN THE NAME OF JESUS.

Fourth Sunday in Advent [b]                      December 20, 2020

 

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴ And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” ³⁵ And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. ³⁶ And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸ And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

 

In the Name of Jesus.

 

Such kind words we are given to speak to one another, such encouraging and comforting words from one Christian to another: “The Lord is with you.”

 

More than just a thin statement of wish that things would go better, more than a hopeful declaration that the Lord will somehow make things better, but, much more, a statement of fact that the Lord is, indeed, with you.

 

In your doubt, in your fear, the Lord is with you. In your despair, in your loss of hope, he has united himself with you.

 

In Baptism and in his Body and Blood he binds himself to you in such a way that he suffers along with you; in your affliction, he is afflicted. He is not standing far off observing, but is dwelling with you in such a way that your life is taken up into his. You are, as the Apostle Paul puts in, in Christ. [Romans 8:1; 1 Corinthians 1:30]

 

What of you doesn’t belong to him? With his own blood he ransomed you. He purchased you out of sin and death; he transferred you from the kingdom of darkness into his marvelous light. Of all your problems and fears, all your doubts and failings, what does he not suffer along with you?

“The Lord is with you,” such kind words of encouragement given to one Christian to speak to another.

 

It’s in his Name. “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,” said the prophet Isaiah. Immanuel means, God with us.

 

Now the angel comes to Mary,

“Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.”

[Luke 1:28]

 

“The Lord is with you”—that’s Immanuel. That’s the promise Isaiah gave. Mary will call him “Jesus,” which in the Hebrew means “Yahweh saves,” or, in our translations, “the Lord saves.”

 

The Lord who saves is the Lord who is with you, your Immanuel.

 

Or flip it around: the Lord who is with you, your Immanuel, is Jesus, the Lord saving you.

 

 

So the kindness of that angelic word: “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.”

 

He is with Mary in such a way as he is with no other. With her in her lowly estate, bringing to her the gift of conceiving a child, so that she is now to be known as the mother of God-in-the-flesh, Immanuel.

 

It is you, Mary, upon whom the Holy Spirit will come, and you will find yourself under the shadow of the power of the Most High God.

 

It comes down to Mary.

 

All the history of the promise given to Adam and Eve of a Redeemer to come from Eve’s lineage to crush the head of Satan and save the sinner.

 

And the history of the promise to Abraham that from his lineage would come a greater Son to give the sacrifice to cleanse all nations, and the promise to Israel that from David’s lineage God would raise up a greater Son to be the Savior for every sinner.

 

It all comes down to Mary. The Lord is with you, said the angel, and you will call him Jesus.

 

Once God comes in the flesh as Mary’s Son, once she is named as Mother-of-God, most honored among women, it comes down to Mary.

 

For no one will know God, no one will be able to find God in his grace and salvation, except that they know the Son who came forth from Mary’s womb as the flesh-and-blood little baby to be with those of flesh and blood.  (Any other god spoken of on Earth, any other place we turn to find rescue from sin, is not real but an impostor, like laying a plastic doll up next to a real flesh-and-blood baby.)

 

 

And now it comes to you and me. Maybe it seems unlikely, maybe even a bit presumptuous, but it comes down to you and me.

 

For Jesus came to be with the sinner.

 

He dwelled with Mary for a time, in her womb, and in her arms as a child—she stands as most blessed among women.

 

He then dwelled with sinners throughout Capernaum and Galilee, touching the skin of lepers, eating and drinking with tax-collectors and drunks, always walking into the darkest corners of an unclean world to be with sinners in their darkest times, dwelling with them and bringing them out of darkness into the light of the forgiveness of all sin.

 

He lived with sinners. As the dwelling of God among men, he set himself for the cross, willingly letting sinful men judge him as he was bearing their sins.

 

And now, to you and me. He dwells with us. The Lord is with you.

 

When we’re not thinking about it, we may take the phrase lightly. But what could be a more comforting pronouncement from one Christian to another: “The Lord is with you”?

 

For God to say, “Behold, I am with you,” is for God to have consigned himself over to death.

 

“Behold, I am with you,” says your Lord. With you in your sin, your fear, in your deepest despair, you worst darkness, even in your death—I am with you, cleansing you, comforting you, bringing you into my life.

 

 

“I am with you”—Will God really die for this little phrase?

 

Yes. On the cross hangs Immanuel—God with us. True God and true Man, God-having-taken-our-sin-upon-himself, God humiliated for us—God-with-us.

 

So it comes down to you and me, to our children and families. He is God-with-us, Immanuel, Jesus, the Lord who saves.

 

He is the Son of God giving us to be baptized and to baptize our children in the Name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit. For, in that Baptism, in that bestowal of the holy Name, he says, Behold, I am with you, even unto the end of the ages. [Matthew 28]

 

He is Mary’s Son, having come in the flesh. He will not deny his birth from Mary; he will not be known apart from the flesh. He now comes to us, “My Body,” he says; “My Blood.” There, in that Body and Blood, he is with us, binding himself to us, forgiving our sins.

 

It comes down to you and me, to our children and families.

 

We who are with our world and its sicknesses and pathologies, who are bound to our fellowman in his despair, who are of one piece with the sin of our world, we now hear the word of our Lord:  I am with you.

 

Your life, your pain, your doubts or despair, in all of it, his word stands: I am with you. There is nothing of us that he does not cleanse, does not forgive, nothing of us that he has not redeemed.

 

Mary knew her Son was God-with-us. She pondered these things in her heart.

 

Our hearts, too, ponder. Along with Mary, we can say to this Immanuel, God-with-us, to Jesus, this Holy One who makes us his people—along with Mary we can say, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

 

And to one other we speak those words of comfort: The Lord is with you.

 

In the Name of Jesus.