The Fifth Sunday in Lent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. John 8:46-59
In Christ Jesus, the sinless Man, the Truth-teller, the Son of God, who was despised and rejected by the world of sinners, but who still went forward through suffering and death out of love for us to redeem our souls, dear fellow redeemed:
Do you ever think about what it would be like to be related to someone famous? Imagine if you were the child of someone whose name everyone knew. Is that something you would want or not want? On the one hand, it would mean you grew up having whatever you dreamed of, having doors open to you that most people don’t even know exist. On the other hand, you would constantly be in the shadow of that famous father or mother, and you might find it difficult to make your own way in life.
One thing we would all agree on is that it is annoying when someone plays a “name card.” This happens even in our small communities: “You should pay attention to me because I am connected to so-and-so. I deserve to have certain privileges because I am this person’s child or grandchild.” As much of a blessing as it is to be related to someone successful, this can become a crutch which keeps that person from taking responsibility for his own life and future.
The same principle applies in spiritual matters. We give thanks to God if we are part of a long line of faithful Christians who have been active in the Christian Church. Our cemeteries are full of faithful people and good names that still stand as an example for us all. But we are not right with God and destined for heaven simply because we belong to the right family or have our membership in the right church.
In Jesus’ exchange with the Jews in today’s Gospel account, He made it clear that lineage alone does not make anyone right with God. The conflict intensified when Jesus said this: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Joh. 8:31-32). How could that be controversial? We find these words to be very comforting! But the Jews responded, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” (v. 33).
Never mind the fact that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for the better part of four hundred years, that they spent seventy years as captives in Babylon, and that they were now ruled by the Romans. They said they had never really been slaves because they were descendants of Abraham. No one could take away their glory, they thought, since they were connected by blood to that famous man. As long as they could trace their lineage to Abraham and lived according to God’s law, then God must be pleased with them.
But what made Abraham so great in the first place? He was not great because of what he did but because of what God did through him. Abraham did not build up a nation of people as many as the stars in the heavens by his own will and determination. God waited until he was ninety-nine years old and his wife Sarah was ninety before He gave them the son of promise. Abraham knew where His glory and success came from—it was all from the LORD. Genesis 15 says that “he believed the LORD, and [the LORD] counted it to him as righteousness” (v. 6).
That is Abraham’s legacy—not what He did for himself or for God, but what God did for him. By the grace of God, Abraham believed the promise God made. Anyone who claimed a connection to Abraham should be focused on the same thing, but that was not the case with those contending against Jesus. He said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did” (Joh. 8:39), that is, the works of faith built upon the promise. He told them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad.” Abraham looked in faith to the fulfillment of God’s promise to send a Savior through his line. Jesus was that Savior.
But many of the Jews, descendants of Abraham, rejected Jesus. This showed that while they may have been physical descendants of Abraham, they were not his spiritual heirs. A rich inheritance had been handed down to them, but they were squandering it. They thought they still had it, but all they had was fool’s gold.
I recently heard that the vast wealth of a rich person is often gone by the third generation, wasted by their grandkids if it even makes it that far. We do not want the same to be said for the great treasure of faith that we have received. Our desire and aim as Christians is faithfully to pass along the holy teaching that has been handed down to us. Just as the management of wealth requires diligence and wisdom, so it is with the riches of God’s grace.
We cannot assume that the faith given at our Baptism will always be ours no matter what. We can lose this gift by intentional sinning and a proud attitude that minimizes repentance and the humble receiving of Christ’s Word and Sacrament. We can also send the message to our children and grandchildren that other things can take priority over the Word of God, that God and the Church will be there if they need them.
We must “count the cost” of what it means to follow Jesus. Following Jesus does not mean “family first” or “finances first” or “fun first.” He does not set the bar low. He says that nothing should come before Him and His Word. That’s His requirement. He says: “any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luk. 14:33). He is certainly asking a lot! But He does not ask from us anything He is not prepared to give us.
Think of Abraham: God told him to move away from his family to a strange land and promised to make him into a great nation. But after Abraham moved to Canaan, God made him wait—five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years—until finally He gave him the son of promise. He did not make Abraham wait to torment him. He made Abraham wait to strengthen his faith. That is His plan for you too. He does not promise that trusting His Word will make everything easy for you. He does promise that His Word will not return to Him empty (Isa. 55:11), and that it will bring blessings that continue into eternity.
His Word knocks off the rough edges of your sin that harm yourself and others, it softens your heart to hear the truth, and it guides you from suffering to endurance to character to hope (Rom. 5:3-4). His Word works contrition and repentance in you over your sin, and it increases your desire to do better. His Word comforts you, encourages you, strengthens you. His Word brings you the gifts Jesus won for you—His forgiveness, righteousness, and life. As Jesus told the Jews, His Word of truth sets you free.
He said the same thing in today’s reading: “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word, he will never see death.” By doubling the word “truly,” He wants you to know that what He says is absolutely certain, beyond any doubt. Those who keep His Word—pay attention to it, hold onto it, treasure it above else—will never see death. But how can you know if you have “kept” it well enough? How can you know if your faith and devotion are pure enough?
The key is not to look at yourself or trust what you have done. The key is to trust what Jesus did in your place. He asked the Jews: “Which one of you convicts Me of sin?” No one could rightly accuse Him because He never sinned. He never disobeyed the will of His Father. He never used His status before God for selfish reasons. He never took His eye off the goal, which was the salvation of every soul by His atoning death and resurrection.
He came to do for you what you could not do. The Jews in our reading rejected Him because they thought they could do what God required. They thought they were good enough for God. They thought He was pleased with them because of who they were. By glorifying themselves, they failed to give honor and glory to the One sent by God to save them.
Abraham, whom they were so proud to be connected to, could not have saved them if God sent him back to earth. The same is true of our faithful forefathers. Only the eternal Son of God could save us. God the Father sent His Son to take on the flesh of man, so that He could redeem the world of sinners. He was a blood descendant of Abraham according to His human nature, but He was also infinitely before Abraham as the eternally-begotten Son of the Father. This is why He could declare without any hesitation or exaggeration: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”
Jesus is the great “I AM,” the Lord of all creation, the Conqueror of sin, death, and devil. It was His plan from eternity to offer Himself for you, to save your soul. In the waters of Holy Baptism, He joined Himself to you and attached His name to you, so that you became an heir of His eternal riches. You are a dear child of God, not because you have the right human connections or belong to the right family tree. You are His dear child because Jesus died for you and rose again for you, and the Holy Spirit worked faith in you to believe in Him.
This faith comes through His powerful Word. Jesus says, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God.” Hearing and believing the promises of God is what makes you a spiritual descendant of Abraham. St. Paul writes, “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham… [they] are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith” (Gal. 3:7,9). You might not ever be connected by blood to someone famous or enjoy earthly wealth in this lifetime, but you already have something far better. You are connected to Jesus by faith, and Jesus Gives the Inheritance That Lasts Eternally.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
+ + +
(picture from “The Tribute Money” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The First Sunday after Christmas – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 22:1-14
In Christ Jesus, through whose sacrifice we are redeemed from all sin and adopted as God’s beloved sons, dear fellow redeemed:
Occasionally the newspaper has a story about an old building or an old town where now there is nothing but a parking lot or grass. It may have been a thriving place at one time, but except for a newspaper article, it is all but forgotten. It works the opposite, too, that a place with little activity is now well-known and busy. This church is one example. For most of history, my guess is that this particular location, this exact place, has never had such a gathering of people as in modern times since the church was built. Before the congregation chose this spot, it was a meadow for livestock or wild game, or for ancient peoples traveling through.
Another location like this is the land of Moriah mentioned in today’s reading. It doesn’t go by that name anymore, but you know the place. It is where Jerusalem now sits on Mount Zion. It is here that God told Abraham to bring his son Isaac and offer him as a burnt offering. Setting aside this shocking command for a moment, let us remember how Abraham and his wife Sarah were given this son.
God promised offspring to Abraham when he was seventy-five years old. God did not fulfill this promise until Abraham was one hundred and his wife Sarah was ninety! It was a miraculous birth. But even more than that, God made it clear that through them, “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3). All would be blessed because the Messiah, the world’s Savior, would come through them and their son Isaac. About Isaac, the LORD specifically promised, “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him” (Gen. 17:19).
And now God commanded Abraham to kill Isaac and burn him as an offering. The thought of this is horrific. We shudder when we read about the corrupt kings of Judah who offered their sons as burnt offerings to try to appease false gods (2Ki. 16:3, 21:6). We are sickened by the thought of the tens of millions of aborted babies in our own land who have been offered to the idols of selfishness, greed, and sexual “freedom.”
Why would the LORD tell Abraham to sacrifice his son? I’m sure Abraham wondered the same thing. Was this a punishment of some sort? Was God angry with him? What would Sarah think? What would Isaac think? The thought of taking up a knife to kill his beloved son was unbearable. And what would this mean for God’s promise of salvation? Had God changed His mind? No, that couldn’t be! Abraham hardly slept that night, troubled as he was by these questions and the task God had given him.
He got up early in the morning and made preparations for the journey. We are given details about the preparation that seem unimportant, but each one was accompanied by Abraham’s tremendous suffering. He saddled the donkey. He summoned two of his servants. He called his son. He cut wood for the burnt offering. They set off for the mountain God had designated. On the third day of their travels, Abraham saw the place in the distance, and he and Isaac continued on without the servants.
We are not told how old Isaac was at this time, but he must have at least been in his teens or perhaps his early twenties. He was strong enough to carry the wood for the burnt offering as they climbed the mountain. Abraham brought the knife and the fire. But something was missing. “My father,” said Isaac, “Where is the lamb?” Abraham replied, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” They reached the place, and Abraham built the altar and laid the wood on top. Then we are told matter-of-factly that Abraham “bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.”
How could Abraham have carried this out without Isaac trying to escape him or fight against the ropes? Since it seems obvious that Isaac could have done these things, there must be another explanation. Though we are not given the details, it seems very likely that Abraham had a straightforward conversation with his son, along the lines of: “This is what God commanded me to do. We dare not disobey His command. He has promised salvation through our line. That must mean, my dear son, that He will make a way to raise you back to life after you have turned to ashes.” That certainly seems to have been Abraham’s confidence when he said to his two servants, “I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
The New Testament book of Hebrews explains exactly this. It says that Abraham “considered that God was able even to raise [Isaac] from the dead” (11:19). This is a tremendous account of Abraham’s faith. He could not imagine that God had taken back the promise of salvation through Isaac. God is no liar. So Abraham would do what God said and offer up his son, and leave it to God to carry out what He promised. The fact that Isaac was willing to be tied up and placed on the altar also shows his confidence in God’s promise.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a faith like this that clings to God’s promises even when the opposite seems to be happening! But when we wish for a stronger faith, what we often want is for God to fill us up with faith like we might fill a car with gasoline—just so quickly and easily. But Abraham’s faith did not grow out of ease and comfort. He bore the cross of a move away from his family and homeland to a strange place, the cross of waiting twenty-five years in his old age for the fulfillment of God’s promise of a son, the cross of then having to sacrifice his son Isaac. The devil tried to use these trials to drive faith out of Abraham. God used these trials to drive faith deeper in Abraham’s heart.
Times of suffering are when people either hold tightly to God’s promises or when they loosen the grip of faith. Some people think their suffering is a sign of God’s punishment or a sign that He doesn’t really care for or love them. The devil wants us to think this too. But we learn from God’s testing of Abraham that He works all suffering for our good. This is what the Bible consistently teaches. Romans 8:28 says: “[W]e know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
And God did work Abraham’s and Isaac’s trial for good. He reinforced for them that His Word and promise was stronger than any love they had for each other. He trained their focus forward in time when His great promise of salvation would be carried out. “I will surely bless you,” the LORD said to Abraham, “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, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice” (Gen. 22:17-18).
This account has a happy ending. Abraham and Isaac returned home rejoicing. Will your faith be rewarded as theirs was? It already has been. Through all the trials and troubles of your life—the death of loved ones, the harm done to you by others, the stresses of your own weaknesses and failures—through all of it, the LORD has neither left you nor forsaken you. He has brought you back here to receive the forgiveness of your sins, peace in your heart, and rest from your weariness. Here through His Word and Sacraments, He does strengthen your faith, so that you are prepared for whatever crosses the Lord sends for your good.
He has these wonderful gifts to give you because God Provided the Lamb for the Offering, a Lamb to be sacrificed in your place. This Lamb, Jesus Christ, was born—where else?—in a stable. He was wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger. Forty days after His birth, Joseph and Mary brought Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to present Him to the LORD as the Law of God commanded. It was the first time the Son of God entered the city of Jerusalem in the flesh.
The mountain on which Jerusalem was built is where Abraham and Isaac once went up to build an altar to the LORD. Just as Isaac carried the wood of the burnt offering up the mountain, Jesus would carry the wood of His cross toward Calvary. Just as Isaac let himself be bound and placed on the altar, Jesus would let Himself be bound and nailed to the altar of the cross. This was God the Father’s only Son, His beloved Son, with whom He was well pleased (Mat. 3:17).
No angel stopped this sacrifice. God the Father poured out His fiery wrath on His Son, and Jesus willingly took it, so that you would be saved. He suffered and died for you, so that your doubting of God’s commands, your unwillingness to do what He says, and your impatience in suffering would not be counted against you. Jesus suffered and died for you, so that all your sins would be blotted out, taken away, eternally forgiven.
And just as the mountain on the third day of Abraham’s and Isaac’s travels changed from a place of death to a place of rejoicing and life, so it was on the third day after Jesus’ death. In His garden tomb outside Jerusalem, an angel rolled away the stone and declared, “He is not here, for he has risen, as he said” (Mat. 28:6).
This is what we have gathered today to celebrate. We celebrate the birth of Jesus because we know why He came. “God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law”—Abraham and Isaac and you and me and all sinners—, “so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Gal. 4:4-5).
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +
(picture from Saude stained glass depicting the wood, knife, and jar with fire for the sacrifice of Isaac)
The Fourth Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 17:15-22
In Christ Jesus, who leads His people to the heavenly Zion with singing, everlasting joy upon their heads, where they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isa. 35:10), dear fellow redeemed:
Abram and Sarai experienced a particular pain that many have experienced since then—they were unable to have children. This is the first detail the Bible shares about Sarai, that she “was barren; she had no child” (Gen. 11:30). Undoubtedly this caused them much sadness. As the years passed and no child was conceived, they became more and more resigned to the fact that they would have no descendants. They passed into their forties, then their fifties, then their sixties. By this time, Abram had become a very wealthy man. He had great possessions and many servants.
Then rather abruptly, the LORD told Abram to leave his country and his relatives and go to a new land. He said to Abram, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2-3). If Abram had any doubts about this, they are not recorded for us. He might have wondered how his name would become great and all the families of the earth would be blessed through him. For one thing, he had no children. For another, he was at this time seventy-five years old, and Sarai was sixty-five!
But Abram obeyed. He gathered all he had and traveled to the land of Canaan. When he got there, the LORD appeared to him and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (v. 7). A while later, the LORD repeated the promise, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them…. So shall your offspring be” (15:5). Abram believed what God said (v. 6).
But ten years passed after the LORD told Abram and Sarai to move. Sarai was now seventy-five. If she hadn’t had a child yet, how could she now? She decided to give her servant to Abram as another wife, so that if her servant conceived a child with him, Sarai would count the child as hers. Her servant did conceive and gave birth to a son named Ishmael. But Ishmael was not the child of God’s promise.
Thirteen years later when Abram was ninety-nine years old, God appeared to him again and told him, “You shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham” (17:4-5). Abraham means “father of a multitude.” At the same time, the LORD changed the name Sarai to Sarah which means “princess,” and He promised Abraham that he would have a son by Sarah.
Abraham’s reaction is recorded for us. He “fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, ‘Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?’” Now as you know, there are different kinds of laughter. Some point their fingers and laugh when they are ridiculing a person or showing their disdain for him. Some laugh when they are shocked or surprised. Martin Luther was convinced that Abraham laughed “because he was filled with great gladness and joy” (Luther’s Works, vol. 3, p. 154).
He was filled with joy because he understood that God’s promise of a son was about more than providing him an heir. It was about making a way for all the families of the earth to be blessed (12:3). The promise the LORD made to Abraham is the same promise He made to Adam and to Noah. God would send a Savior to redeem sinful mankind. Jesus pointed back to this promise when He said to the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (Joh. 8:56).
Abraham’s laugh coincided with the name of his son. God said to him, “you shall call his name Isaac,” a name which means “he laughs.” A year later, that son was born. And the new mother Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me…. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age” (Gen. 21:6-7). And every time they held that little baby and listened to his little grunts and coos, what else could they do but laugh?
But we can’t help but wonder: Why did God do this? Why did He make Abraham and Sarah wait until they were one hundred years old and ninety years old before they had a child? The author of the book of Hebrews writes in a very understated way that Sarah “was past the age” of being able to conceive, and in a more expressive way that Abraham was “as good as dead” (11:11,12). If this amazing birth were not recorded in the Bible, we would laugh at the possibility.
And that is the point. What we consider impossible, God makes possible. No one can say that Abraham and Sarah were the ones to keep the promise of a Savior alive. They were incapable of having children. They were very old. And God gave them laughter. He gave them Isaac. He wanted to show that this child was a gift, just as all children are. He wanted to show that His promise would neither fail nor succeed because of the work of man. God’s promises succeed because He is God.
That means we can trust His promises. What makes this difficult is our sinful tendency to trust ourselves. We act as if everything depends on ourselves instead of God. We offer weak prayers, if we offer them at all, because we are convinced that God will not give us what we pray for. Or we get impatient when we ask something of Him, and He makes us wait—maybe when we are sick or injured or in trouble. We might even attach a demand to our requests: “If You love me, You will do this by this day or this time.” What we are really doing is putting ourselves in the position of God, and by our lack of faith we are calling down His judgment instead of His mercy. When we take matters into our own hands, like Sarai did by giving her servant to Abram, we often experience unexpected and unpleasant consequences.
God’s plans are much better than ours, and His promises are rock-solid. When He makes a promise, nothing will change His mind. He fulfilled His promise to give Abraham and Sarah a son. And He fulfilled His promise to send a Savior through Abraham’s line. Some two thousand years down the road, God sent His angel to another old man, a priest named Zechariah. Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were also old and barren like Abraham and Sarah. And the angel said, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John” (Luk. 1:13). Zechariah did not respond in faith like Abraham, and for his disbelief, God made him unable to speak until after John was born.
John was a messenger, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (Joh. 1:23). He pointed to One much greater than he, “the strap of whose sandal [he was] not worthy to untie” (v. 27). That One was the Son of God incarnate, the descendant of Abraham and Isaac, the fulfillment of God’s promise to save the world. God sent His Son to take on human flesh because He loves you so deeply and so perfectly. Jesus came to be your righteousness, to live blamelessly under the Law in your place. He came to atone for your many sins by shedding His holy blood on the cross. He came to conquer your death by rising from the dead in victory.
He came to give you hope as you struggle with your doubts and fears. He came to give you peace as the guilt of your sins weighs down on you. He came to give you comfort in your pain and sadness. The hymnwriter Paul Gerhardt put it beautifully in his great Advent hymn:
Rejoice, then, ye sad-hearted, / Who sit in deepest gloom,
Who mourn o’er joys departed, / And tremble at your doom;
Despair not, He is near you, / Yea, standing at the door,
Who best can help and cheer you, / And bid you weep no more.
No care nor effort either / Is needed day or night,
How ye may draw Him hither / In your own strength and might.
He comes, He comes with gladness, / Moved by His love alone,
To calm your fear and sadness, / To Him they well are known. (ELH #94, vv. 6-7)
God promises to come to you through His Word and Sacraments. Through those means, He promises to forgive you. He promises to strengthen you. He promises to renew your faith, so that you have joy even when you are suffering, even when you are struggling. You have joy in knowing that you do not walk through this life alone, that there will be an end to the sadness of this life, and that Jesus will return on the last day to take you to His kingdom of glory.
The time of your final redemption is drawing near. The time will come when the joy you have in Christ will be perfected, when sin, death, and devil will no longer bother you, when you will forever forget the troubles you had here. Then we will sing. We will shout with gladness. And with Abraham and Sarah and all the saints, We Will Laugh.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +
(picture of Abraham viewing the stars from 1919 Bible primer book by Augustana Book Concern)
The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Galatians 3:15-22
In Christ Jesus, who had compassion on us and came to do for us what we could not do for ourselves, dear fellow redeemed:
The Good Samaritan dressed the wounds of the Jewish man who had been beaten, brought him to an inn to take care of him, and provided funds for his ongoing care. Possibly all this happened without the beaten man’s knowledge as he slowly began to recover from his serious injuries. If he had been unaware about what had been done for him and was then informed about it, how do you think he would respond?
We would expect gratitude. He probably thought he would die on that road to Jericho when the robbers attacked him. Yet here he was getting the care he needed and regaining his strength. But suppose his attitude changed as soon as he heard who had helped him: “You say it was a Samaritan?!?” Generally speaking, the Jews and the Samaritans avoided each other. They didn’t like each other. There was a long history of animosity between them. As a rule, they would not go out of their way to help one another.
What if the Jewish man didn’t like the thought of being saved by a Samaritan? What might he do? Think about it in your own life. Imagine a person who has always rubbed you the wrong way, who has brought trouble to your life, who you might even think of as your enemy. Now imagine having a health crisis and waking up to learn that it was your enemy who called the ambulance, who sat by your hospital bed day after day until you finally woke up.
That might result in your enemy becoming your friend. Or you might be suspicious. Is he or she just trying to manipulate me somehow? What’s their angle? You might do what you could to try to cancel your debt with that person. You might say, “What did it cost you to travel to the hospital and eat in the cafeteria? I want to pay you back. Did you miss work? I can compensate you for that too.” But nothing you could do, no amount of money you could pay, would change the fact that your enemy had saved your life. What is the price tag on salvation?
This attempt to balance the scales when a great gift is received is the way many people try to level up with God. They think they can do this by the way they live their life. I expect you have talked with a number of Christians who tell you they hope to be saved because they have “tried to live a good life.” In today’s culture, “living a good life” is less and less tied to any objective standard, like God’s holy Law. It’s more of an internal calculation about what is right and wrong to me which often contradicts God’s Ten Commandments.
But even those who try to keep God’s Law to save themselves are fooling themselves if they think they have done it. God never says we should try our hardest, and that is good enough for Him. Or that as long as we generally do more good than bad, we are okay. Or that we just need to make sure we are better than the people around us.
The Law of God demands our perfection. God says that if you want to get yourself to heaven, the only way to do it is to perfectly do the right things, say the right things, and think the right things. He does not care about what the world cares about. He does not care how attractive you are, how popular you are, how successful you are. He cares about righteousness.
And you and I by our own efforts certainly are not righteous. We might be Good Samaritans in our own way, helping people in need, being generous with our time and money, lifting people up who have been beaten down. But none of these good deeds can open up the gates of heaven, so we can walk through them. Salvation cannot come by what we do because we have not perfectly kept the holy Law of God—not even close.
But St. Paul has some good news to share with us today. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he wrote that God’s gift of salvation is already ours. He explains this by taking us back to Abraham. God made a promise to Abraham. He said, “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, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 22:17-18).
God made this promise not because Abraham had earned it, not because he had shown himself to be perfect. God made this promise because He is a good and merciful God who loves us, a God who promised to save sinners immediately after the first people He made fell into sin. The promise He made to Abraham was a continuation of that first promise. The gift He gives to you now stems from that first promise. “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son” (Joh. 3:16).
It was only later, some 400 years after God made the promise to Abraham, that He delivered His holy Law to Moses to pass along to the people of Israel. The Law was not put in place as an alternate path to salvation, though some began to think of it this way as time went on. The Israelites later on thought they could please God by their outward behavior, even if there was no faith in their hearts. We see the same attitude in the Jewish religious leaders who actively opposed Jesus’ teaching and work. And we see the same thing today from the people who think God is pleased with them because of how well they have inwardly kept His Commandments.
But if keeping the Law is not an alternate path to salvation, then why did God give it? Paul explains that the Law of God “was added because of transgressions, until the Offspring should come to whom the promise had been made.” The LORD God gave the Law to show the people and remind them why they needed the promise.
If God had not given such a clear standard, etched in stone, what do you suppose would happen? As time passed, the understanding of His will would become weaker and weaker, and consciences would become duller and duller. Then we would have nothing to compare ourselves to but one another, and that is setting the bar pretty low.
God sets the bar high through His Law, very high—too high for us to possibly reach no matter how good we try to be. His Law shows us our sin. It condemns us. That is its chief purpose and function. The Law kills any hope we have of getting ourselves to heaven.
But God’s promise came before the Law. He promised man’s salvation apart from man’s work. He promised to provide an Offspring of Abraham, through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That Offspring was Christ, true God and true Man. When He became Man, the holy Law applied to Him too. But the Law did not break Him like it has broken us. Jesus made His righteousness clear when He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Mat. 5:17).
It was a bold claim, but Jesus backed it up with perfection, perfection in His actions, words, and thoughts. He stepped in to keep the Law in our place. He shouldered our burden. He is our Good Samaritan who saw us beaten and helpless because of our sin and had compassion on us. He came to do for each and every sinner in human history what not one of us had the strength to do for ourselves. Romans 10:4 says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
The righteousness we need to enter heaven is ours by faith in Jesus. Everything we need to be saved is supplied by Him. And He not only kept the Law for us. He also paid the consequences for our breaking of God’s Law. He suffered the wrath and punishment of God that we deserved. He endured the eternal flames of hell in our place. For every single wrong we have done, Jesus says, “I forgive you. I paid for that sin.”
Going back to the Law and relying on our own works after we have heard this, would be like the Jewish man trying to pay the Samaritan for his charity, or like trying to repay an enemy who showed us kindness as though we could undo or improve on the good that had been done. Jesus, the Son of God, perfectly lived, died, and rose again for all sinners. He is the fulfillment of that first and best promise. He is God’s gift for our fallen world and for our sinful hearts.
Of course God wants us to live according to His Commandments. He wants us to help anyone in need and show kindness to all our neighbors. But our salvation does not rely on any of that. Our salvation depends on Him. And that’s what makes us certain of it. I am saved, and you are saved because God tells us so. That’s His promise—His gift—and God’s Gift Has No Strings Attached.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +
(picture from the Outdoor Service on August 25, 2024)
The Fifth Sunday in Lent – Vicar Lehne sermon
Text: St. John 8:46-59
In Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who made you the children of God, dear fellow redeemed:
Looking up who your ancestors are can be really fun and interesting. You can find out that you are descended from a certain nationality, such as Germans, Norwegians, or Irish. You can even find out that you are the descendant of someone famous, such as a king or a well-known general. If you find out things like these, you can end up priding yourself on your ancestry. But how would you react to finding out that you were the descendant of someone infamous? In our reading for today, we find out how the Jews reacted to that news.
The Jews prided themselves on their ancestry. Not only could they all trace their family trees back to Abraham, but their bloodlines remained pure. None of them had married people from foreign nations, like the Samaritans had. Surely, because of this, they had a favorable status in the eyes of God the Father, making them not just children of Abraham but also children of God. But, while it was true that they were the physical descendants of Abraham, this did not actually mean anything to God. God does not look at our physical ancestry but at our spiritual ancestry, and spiritually, the Jews were not children of God, but children of the devil.
Jesus revealed this harsh truth to the Jews in the verses prior to our reading for today, and he revealed it to them very clearly. He said, “You are of your father the devil” (John 8:44). How could Jesus make a such a bold claim like that? Jesus explains, “Whoever is of God hears the words of God. The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God” (verse 47).
Jesus spoke the words of God, and the words of God were the clear truth. In the verses prior to our reading, Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31–32). Why would anyone need to be set free? Because everyone is by nature sinful, which makes everyone a slave to sin and a child of the devil. As a result, the only thing we could do was continue to sin, and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). But God the Father did not want to leave us enslaved to sin and the devil and doomed to face eternal death. He wanted us to be his own dear children and live forever with him in heaven. So, he sent his only begotten Son, Jesus, into the world to break our chains and set us free from sin, death, and the devil. And by believing in him, that freedom becomes ours.
The Jews heard these words of God, but they did not believe them. In fact, they were upset and offended by them. Who was Jesus to say that they were slaves? Even though they were currently living under Roman rule, they claimed that they had never truly been slaves to anyone. Why? Because they could trace their ancestry back to a free man, Abraham, which meant that they were free in the eyes of God. So, the Jews decided to respond to Jesus by attacking his ancestry. They said to him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon” (verse 48)? Jesus was claiming that they were children of the devil? Well, two could play at that game! But the Jews weren’t just claiming that Jesus was actually the one who was a child of the devil. They were also claiming that he was not a pure descendent of Abraham, like they were. He was a mixed race, like the Samaritans were, and therefore, he did not deserve a place in the kingdom of God.
Like the Jews, we don’t like it when our sins are pointed out to us. Because of how much the truth of God’s Word can hurt us, there are times when we are tempted not to believe it. In those moments, we can react like the Jews, and refuse to accept that our sin could be controlling us. After all, we’re free people. We can make our own decisions, decisions that aren’t causing harm to anyone else, and we can choose to stop whenever we want. Besides, Jesus has already forgiven us all our sins. So, what’s the harm in committing a few more sins? This way of thinking might make sense to us in those moments. But in reality, we are just lying to ourselves, like the Jews were, so that we can convince ourselves that it’s okay to continue living in the sin that we love so much. And if we continue to lie to ourselves and refuse to listen to God’s Word, then we are attacking Jesus, like the Jews were. We may not be attacking Jesus’ ancestry, but in those moments, we are claiming that he has not spoken the truth. We are claiming that God is a liar, and what a dark claim to make that is.
Our sinful nature clouds us in darkness, and there’s no way for us to get out of that darkness on our own. Thankfully, Jesus provides us with the solution. He says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). We once wandered in the darkness, and if we stayed in that darkness, we would end up in the eternal darkness of hell. But unlike us, who refused to listen to God’s Word and keep it, Jesus kept his Father’s word perfectly. He was a light that cut through the darkness, a light that seemed to be put out when he was put to death on the cross. But death was not the end for Jesus. Early in the morning on the third day, he rose again from the dead. Jesus defeated death with his atoning death, and now, his light leads us out of the darkness that leads to eternal death in hell and into the light of eternal life in heaven.
The Jews stubbornly refused to believe the words that Jesus spoke. He revealed to the Jews that he would save the world from eternal death by saying, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (verse 51). Jesus had already made a lot of bold claims, but with this claim, it sounded as though he was claiming to be better than Abraham, the ancestor whom the Jews prided their connection to. After all, even Abraham died eventually. How could Jesus claim that everyone who believed in him would never experience death when the greatest man of all, Abraham, could not escape death?
In their unbelief, the Jews thought that Jesus was only speaking these words to bring himself honor and glory. But in reality, it was really the Jews who were doing that. They were seeking honor and glory through their pure ancestral connection to Abraham, which they thought would earn them a place in heaven. But they were completely missing the point. They did not need to be physically related to Abraham. They needed to have a faith like Abraham, a faith that allowed him to see the day of Jesus, which he rejoiced in. As Genesis 15:6 and Romans 4:3 say, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” The Jews may have been physical descendants of Abraham, but they were not living as descendants of Abraham, nor were they living as children of God. They were living as children of the devil.
We may not think that we’ve earned a place in God’s kingdom by being the descendants of someone famous, such as Abraham. But we can be tempted to rely on something else: our membership in our church. We’ve taken instruction classes. We’ve been confirmed as members. We’ve been baptized into the church. Surely all of that is enough to guarantee that we have a place in heaven, isn’t it? But what do we do as members of the church? Do we mean what we say when we repent of our sin in church, and do we recognize how much we need God’s grace, or are we just going to church because we think we are supposed to? Do we continue to stay in the Word outside of church, or do we only hear the Word when we go to church? We may say that we are Christians, but do we live like Christians, or do we continue to sin in our thoughts, words, and actions, despite knowing that what we are doing is wrong? If we do not make time to remain in the Word, and if we don’t repent of our sins, it won’t matter how many instruction classes we’ve taken, if we’ve been confirmed as a member of the church, or if we’ve been baptized into the church. What God looks at is the heart.
Thankfully, despite what the Jews thought, Jesus did not seek honor and glory for himself. He sought honor and glory for you. He followed God’s law to the letter, he only spoke the truth, and he never once dishonored God the Father. He carried out his Father’s will perfectly, even allowing himself to be mocked, tortured, and put to death on a cross. But, unlike when you try to glorify yourself, Jesus’ perfect obedience actually amounted to something. By living a perfect life, Jesus was the innocent sacrifice that was needed to pay the price for your sins. On the cross, he took your sins on himself, and in exchange, he gave you his perfect life, so that you appear perfect before God, your heavenly Father. Jesus was able to accomplish all of this because he is the eternal Son of God. As he confessed to the Jews, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (verse 58).
When the Jews heard Jesus confess that he is God, they were furious. Because they did not believe in him, they thought that Jesus was blaspheming. But through the faith that the Holy Spirit has given you, you know that Jesus spoke the truth. Knowing that Jesus is God is a great comfort for you. Because Jesus is God, you know that he was able to perfectly obey the words of his Father, in every place that you failed. Because Jesus is God, you know that his sacrifice was not for himself but for you. And because Jesus is God, you know that he is with you today and that he continues to give you the blessings that he won for you on the cross through the Word and Sacraments.
Who is your father? You could answer this question by naming your physical father, but when it comes to your soul, the only thing that matters is who your spiritual father is. Because you are by nature sinful, you once would have had to say that your father was the devil. But through the faith that the Holy Spirit has given you through the preaching of the Word and the administering of the Sacraments, faith that is like that of Abraham’s, you know that you are no longer a child of the devil. Because of the saving work of the eternal Son of God, because of the perfect life that he lived and the innocent death that he died on the cross, you know that you are a child of God.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +
(picture from the altarpiece in Weimar by Lucas Cranach the Younger, 1555)
The Fourth Sunday in Lent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Galatians 4:21-5:1
In Christ Jesus, through whom we have “obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (Rom. 5:2), dear fellow redeemed:
Both this week and next, you are going to hear a bit about Abraham, and how he relates to Jesus and to you. Abraham is one of the most prominent characters in the Old Testament. Christians, Muslims, and Jews all claim Abraham as a spiritual father. But as you would expect, they do not all claim him in the same way.
Christians claim him as a father of faith, whose heirs we are because we believe the promise of salvation as he did. Muslims celebrate Abraham’s righteous life and say that their own prophet Muhammed descended from Abraham’s son Ishmael. Jews make the most of their physical descent from the line of Abraham through his son Isaac. These distinctions are some of the very things Paul is addressing in his Epistle to the Galatians.
But first, a little background about Abraham. When he was seventy-five years old, God called him and his wife Sarai to leave his father’s household and go to the land of Canaan. When they arrived, the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7). But to this point, they had had no children. Ten years passed, and eighty-five-year-old Abram was getting anxious. The LORD brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them…. So shall your offspring be” (15:5). And Abram believed the promise.
At the same time, it seems that Sarai was struggling. She was now seventy-five years old. If she hadn’t conceived a child to this point, how could she possibly have one now? She decided to give her female servant Hagar to Abram. If they conceived, she would consider the child of her servant as her own. Hagar did conceive, and she bore a son, Ishmael. Sarai wasn’t as pleased as she thought she would be. And this is not how God’s promise was fulfilled.
God promised a child through Abram and Sarai, and He was going to bring it about, contrary to every expectation, contrary to all human reason. So more years passed. Abram was now ninety-nine and Sarai was ten years behind him. The LORD appeared again to Abram and told him his name would now be Abraham, “for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations,” said the LORD. “I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you” (Gen. 17:5-6). Sarai would become Sarah, “and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (v. 16).
And it happened. By that time the next year, 90-year-old Sarah and 100-year-old Abraham were holding their newborn son Isaac. He was their son, but they could not take credit for him. They knew this was pure gift from the Lord God. Abraham’s child with Hagar came from human planning. Abraham’s child with Sarah came from God’s promise.
Now here comes Paul’s question to the Galatians: Did you come to the saving faith through human effort or through divine promise? Earlier in his letter, he asked the question this way, “Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?” (Gal. 3:2). If their answer was “by hearing with faith,” then he had another question, “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (v. 3).
The problem was that the Galatians were listening to false teachers, who told them that faith in Jesus was a good start. But unless they now followed the Old Testament rules and regulations, they could not be right with God. So were they saved by faith in what Jesus accomplished for them, or by their own efforts, or by some mixture of the two? That’s a very important question.
I think a great number of Christians today believe it is a mixture of the two—Jesus had to do His part, and we have to do ours if we hope to be saved. But that is not what we teach in the Lutheran Church, and it isn’t what St. Paul taught either. As soon as we start to trust in ourselves—even a little bit—for our salvation, we lose sight of what Jesus accomplished for us. This can happen very easily.
We can look at the bad things happening around us, the sins that so many commit right out in the open. We are rightfully alarmed and offended by these things. But there is often another thought that accompanies our concern, something like: “I would never do something like that!” or “If only others were more like me.” And then we don’t sound so different than the Pharisee with his self-righteous prayer: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luk. 18:11).
There is a difficult balance here. Of course we want to do what is good. That is what God demands of us in His Law. We should avoid temptations to sin. We should do nice things for the people around us. We should constantly strive to think, say, and do things better than we have done them in the past. But if we make progress, and if we succeed, we should remember where the power comes from to do these things, and we should remember who deserves the glory.
No matter how well we do in our own view or in the estimation of others, it is not even close to what God requires to get into His kingdom. That is the big misconception among so many Christians today. They think that God’s holiness is not so out of reach, and our works are not so far from perfection. That is not what the Lord’s prophet said. He said, “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isa. 64:6). Or the psalmist, who wrote that the LORD looks down from heaven to see if there are any righteous. And what does He find? “They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one” (Psa. 14:3).
However bad the people around us appear to be, it is pure pride to think that we are better. We are not better. We have the same corrupt heart. The devil wants you to think that you are better. He wants you to take refuge in your own righteousness. He wants you to quietly judge everyone around you and never point the holy Law at your own heart. Jesus does the opposite. He sharpens the Law. He says that maybe you haven’t murdered, but have you held a grudge? Maybe you haven’t committed adultery, but have you looked at someone with lust? Or maybe you have treated your friends well, but what about your enemies?
Remaining in slavery is thinking that we can be right with God through our keeping of His Law. That makes us children of Mt. Sinai, the mountain where God gave His Commandments. But that was a terrifying place to be. The mountain was wrapped in a thick cloud with thunder and lightning and the sound of a very loud trumpet blast. Then the LORD descended on it in fire, and smoke went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain shook (Exo. 19:16-18).
The people who think they can work their way to heaven will one day have to stand before the holy God in all His power. Then they will see how well the glory of their work matches up with His glory. It will be like comparing a child’s scribbles with the work of a master artist, or really much worse.
We cannot find our comfort and confidence through the Law. We can only find it by traveling to another mountain, the mountain of Jerusalem, Mount Zion. Abraham went there long before the holy city was established, and he brought along his son Isaac, the son of promise. God had told Abraham to offer Isaac on a mountain as a burnt offering (Gen. 22:2). As troubling as this was, Abraham obeyed. He carried the fire and knife, and Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice. “[B]ut where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” asked Isaac (v. 7). “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (v. 8).
Isaac did not die that day. God stopped Abraham just before he dropped the knife, and He provided a ram for a burnt offering instead. Some two thousand years later, Jesus the only Son of God carried His own burden of wood to the same mountaintop. There, the Lamb of God was sacrificed on the altar of the cross. There, His blood was shed to wash all the sin of all the world away.
That includes your sin, the guilt you feel for doing so little of what God’s holy Law requires, and the guilt you feel for thinking you have accomplished great things on your own. Jesus took every bit of your unrighteousness on Himself to atone for it, and in exchange He gives you every bit of His perfect righteousness. That is His promise to you by faith in Him.
You are indeed set free from your former slavery to sin, devil, and death. You don’t have to keep a record of your wrongs any more than you have to keep a record of your rights. Jesus is your righteousness. He is your life. To Him, you are no servant or slave that He might push around or give away as He pleases. He has joined Himself to you in order to give you the full inheritance of the heavenly Father.
Yes, you are no longer a child of slavery. You have been born again as a child of promise. The Lord did this for you. There is nothing you have to do to set yourself free. He won you this freedom. “Stand firm therefore,” writes St. Paul—firm in the faith, firm in Christ your Savior.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +
(picture of Abraham viewing the stars from 1919 Bible primer book by Augustana Book Concern)
Circumcision and Name of Jesus – Vicar Anderson sermon
Text: St. Luke 2:21
In Christ Jesus, who when the fulness of time had come, He came down from heaven, was born of flesh and under the law for you, dear fellow redeemed:
When I was studying to go into law enforcement, I went on some ride-along’s with my local police department. On those ride-along’s, I was able to hear the question asked from an officer’s point of view, “do you know the reason why I pulled you over?” This is the question that no one wants to hear because when you hear this question, it means that you have probably done something wrong. And, usually you know you did something wrong. Depending how serious the crime is, someone could find themselves in court. They might get their time reduced, or they might hear that judge bring the gavel down and say guilty. Laws keep us safe from danger. We know that these laws keep us safe yet we usually don’t like to follow them. We also see God’s laws and find ourselves relaxed in following those too. In fact, we have broken every one of them. What will He do to us? Will the perfect judge condemn us? God shows how much he cares about us with the text for today. He knows that we can’t fulfill the Law, so the lawgiver himself has come to fulfill it!
Mary and Joseph waste no time in following the commands of God. The law states that “on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Leviticus 12:3). We see the care that Mary and Joseph had for the Word of God. They were devout believers in His promises. They followed what the law said concerning their new born son. However, this law is more than a Law handed down by Moses. Circumcision started long before this in the command that God gave Abraham in Genesis 17. [God] said to Abraham, “this is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised…Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant (10-12, 14.)”
What is so special about this covenant? This is God giving Abraham a promise and setting Abraham and his descendants apart from the nations around them. This promise is that God would be with him. Abraham would be the father of many nations. His name would be great! There was also the promise of the Savior that would come through him. God told him when he called him that, “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12: 3). Now the Savior had come from the line of Abraham. To keep the promise given to Abraham, Jesus is circumcised, made a member of the people of the covenant, placed under the law. Jesus has no need to obey the law for himself as He is God. The law was given to the people. God told them that they are to keep these laws. When they keep the law they are showing that they trust God. It also shows how they are separate from the heathen nations. The heathen nations did despicable things. If the people of the covenant, God’s chosen people sinned, then they had to repent.
Looking in the Old Testament, it is apparent that many of the Israelites did not follow God’s law. They simply defied them. They were God’s chosen people. Yet they were often at war with God and his laws that He had given them. They were punished for their sins and when they repented, God would come to them as a loving Father to his children. As the Jews attempted and failed often to obey God’s law, they had to bring sacrifices to God. They needed many, many animals to shed their blood. This was done to look ahead to the coming one. But often the Israelites would only go through the motions with these sacrifices and were not actually sorry for their sins. Or they thought that the sacrifice was what did the job. The Israelites deserved the punishment that was given them because of the law that they had broken.
Like the Israelites of old, we see God’s law and we fail to follow them. We work very hard at it, but it never comes to fruition even if we are trying our best. We also can find ourselves going through the motions. We might not think about the prayers that we are saying. Some of the prayers that we say we might not even mean them. If we fail to repent of our sins, then our confession is meaningless. It can be easy to do that if we believe that “God will just forgive me anyway, he knows that I’m trying. He knows that I’m not as bad as other people.” If we don’t repent of sins and are sorry for them, we can go to communion and take it to our harm. This is the danger of getting set in the motions because then why should we be at church at all. This is the danger of being stuck in our sins.
This time of year is a great example of this taking place. Now is the time that people are going to start their new year’s resolutions. We will start them with great anticipation and the hope that they will stay with it. Unfortunately, we are very quick to lose interest in something that could help us. We make the promise and then we break it. We treat our sins the same. We will promise God that we will try our best to keep his law. We make a promise and then we don’t keep it. We lose interest and we keep doing them. We need someone to fulfill the law for us.
Jesus follows the commands of God not for himself, but for sinners. This event is the first time in Jesus early life that he sheds his blood. At eight days old Jesus had already shed blood for you. We know this shedding of blood would have to be more. This is the start. Jesus following the law at eight days old makes him obligated to keep the law. From His infancy to adulthood, He fulfilled the law completely for you. He then shed his blood and gave his life for you on the cross. He didn’t have to do it. He was perfect in every way. But He wanted to do it for you. Only the lawgiver, God in the flesh, could come down and keep the law for you and take away your sins. We see that in our text today. Jesus as a baby, being put under the law.
The name He was given also described His purpose. He is given a name of utmost importance. A name whose definition is the sole reason that he came down from heaven, for our salvation. Mary and Joseph were both told that they would name this child Jesus because “He will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Jesus fulfilled the law to redeem all people. He took on the pain, woe, and suffering for all people of all time. He did not live this life for himself, he lived it for us.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians shows us how important it is that Jesus went under the law for us. Paul writes, “But when the fullness of time had come God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). Because of what Jesus has done, we can go to God as children go to their dear Father. God sees that the law has been completed by His son Jesus Christ. He lived out His life as an act of obedience. This act of circumcision obeyed the Old Testament law for baby boys. This was only the beginning. Jesus continued to obey the Old Testament law up to his death on the cross.
Jesus’ circumcision fulfilled the promise that was given to Abraham and his descendants. With Jesus being circumcised, being brought into the Abrahamic covenant, all families of the earth have been blessed. Now that Jesus has fulfilled the law for us, what about circumcision? Is it needed? We see the battles that Paul fought in the New Testament that this is not the case. Circumcision does not bind us to the promise, but Jesus instituted something else that does. Paul explains that we have been circumcised in another way.
“In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11-12). Your baptism connects you to what Christ has done. In your baptism you are buried with Christ and you now walk in newness of life. Your Savior, God in the flesh, has obeyed the law for you. He began his journey as a baby, going to the cross, completing it.
No one can imagine a lawgiver being the one who has to fulfill his own law. Now we see Jesus our Savior. He was given a name that was known from eternity. He was put under the law for us. We don’t have to despair when we fall short of God’s law. He sent his only Son to obey his law willingly for us and Jesus shed his blood willingly. He is our Savior. His name tells us so. His obedience shows us so. Our sins have been washed away. At eight days old we see how much Jesus loved us. He did this for us in our place. We can begin the new year with no worries since the law has been fulfilled! Amen.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, forevermore. Amen.
+ + +
(picture from “The Nativity at Night” by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490)