The Fourth Sunday of Advent/Christmas Vigil – Vicar Lehne sermon
Text: St. Matthew 1:18-25
In Christ Jesus, who is still with us today, dear fellow redeemed:
The people of this world pride themselves on being able to use their human reason to solve all their problems. They don’t need a God. They’re enlightened. However, no matter how “enlightened” the people of this world are, there are still times when they are faced with problems that they can’t solve on their own. So, what do they do in these moments? They lift their eyes to the heavens and say, “Give me a sign!” Yes, even the so called “enlightened” people of this world, who supposedly don’t need God, are at times faced with problems that cause them to hope that a higher power really does exist that can offer them guidance. However, the “higher power” that the people of this world turn to is usually the universe. The “signs” that the people of this world supposedly receive from the universe can be found in just about anything: a book that has been opened to a specific page; a song that is being played on the radio; how the stars in the sky are ordered and what they mean. However, if they were truly looking for signs that would help them solve their problems, they would not look to the “signs” that the universe supposedly gives them, but to the signs that God definitely gives them in his Word, for God’s signs point to salvation.
In our reading for today, we are told that Jesus being born of the Virgin Mary was a sign that God would save his people from their sins. However, the context in which this sign was promised to be given appears to be a bit strange. The prophecy that the sign would happen was given long ago, and by that time, the nation of Israel had split into two kingdoms: the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom of Judah. The current king of Judah, King Ahaz, had just found out that Israel had joined forces with Syria to wage war against Judah. And so, he was understandably afraid.
Therefore, God instructed the prophet Isaiah to comfort King Ahaz by reassuring him that the house of David would not fall but would be delivered. In addition to these words of comfort, King Ahaz was also told to ask God for a sign so that he would be able to attach his faith in God’s promise to something tangible. However, King Ahaz did not have faith in God, so he refused to ask for a sign, making it appear as though he piously did not want to put God to the test. But God was not fooled, so he responded to King Ahaz by saying through Isaiah, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). This was not a sign that King Ahaz would see in his lifetime, nor would anyone who lived in Judah at that time. But, to those who believed in God, the promise of this sign comforted them and gave them hope for the future, hope that they would not just be delivered from their earthly enemies but also from their sins.
But this sign was not just meant to give hope to the believers who lived in Judah at the time. It was meant to give hope to all believers of all time, including you. The prophecy shows that it was not just the deliverance of his people in the nation of Judah that God had in mind, but also the deliverance of all his people from every nation. By preserving the house of David, God was preserving the line of the Savior, who would come from the house and line of David. That Savior would be no mere man, for a regular man would not even be able to deliver himself, let alone all people. No, that Savior would be God in the flesh, which is what Immanuel means: “God with us.” And this God-man would deliver everyone from their sins, which is what Jesus means: “The LORD saves.”
Even though we were not around to see the sign that God foretold would happen through Isaiah, God has revealed in his Word that it did happen, just as he said that it would. God inspired Matthew to write in our reading for today that “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” (verse 18). The Holy Spirit caused Mary to conceive, despite the fact that she was a virgin, and the baby that was conceived inside her was God in the flesh. Then, as if we needed it to be any clearer that this is how God fulfilled his prophecy to King Ahaz, Matthew goes on to say that “this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet [Isaiah]” (verse 22).
When the God-man, Jesus, came in the flesh, he experienced everything that you do. He didn’t just experience the joys of life, but also the sorrows of life. He faced your temptations and overcame them. He even experienced everything that you rightfully deserved by taking all your sins on himself, suffering your punishment of hell, and dying on the cross in your place. Through all this, Jesus saved you from your sins, and now, life and salvation are yours.
Therefore, whenever you become afraid when faced with your sins and guilt, whenever you are struggling with temptation, or whenever you are going through a difficult time, Jesus assures you through his comforting Word that he has already delivered you from your sins and that he will be there with you to help you overcome your temptations and get through your difficult times. These words of comfort should be all we need to believe in him, but he has also given us tangible signs to attach his promises to, just like he did for King Ahaz. Those tangible signs are the means by which God brings his grace to us: his holy Sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
In holy baptism, the simple means of water is applied to us as his Word is spoken. Since God attaches his Word to the tangible element of water, we know that he is truly with us to give us faith and wash away our sins through those waters. In the Lord’s Supper, the simple means of bread and wine, over which his Word was spoken during the Words of Institution, are fed to us. Since God attaches his Word to the tangible elements of bread and wine, we know that Jesus is truly with us to give us the forgiveness of sins through the bread and wine, which are his true body and blood. It is not the tangible elements themselves that we put our faith in, but they help us to remember what Jesus has truly accomplished through them and that he is still with us.
These are the tangible signs that God has given to us, and how God wants us to receive these signs is shown in Joseph. Our reading for today begins with Joseph finding out that Mary, the woman that he was betrothed to, was pregnant. Using his human reason, he assumed that Mary must have been unfaithful to him and committed adultery. We have the benefit of knowing that it was the Holy Spirit who caused Mary to conceive, but Joseph did not know this at the time. So, assuming that Mary was unfaithful to him was an understandable assumption.
Adultery was very serious in the Jewish community. According to the Old Testament law, if a woman was found guilty of committing adultery, she would be stoned to death. However, Joseph was a just and kind man. He didn’t want Mary to be exposed to public shame and be stoned, so, he decided to divorce Mary as quietly as possible instead, which was the only way to break off a marriage in those days, after which her father would look after her for the remainder of her life.
However, before Joseph could carry out his plan, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him that the one who was conceived in Mary was from the Holy Spirit: the promised Savior who would save his people from their sins whom Isaiah spoke of in his prophecy. Joseph now had two choices: believe what the angel of the Lord said to him and receive the sign of the virgin birth in faith or put his trust in his own human reason and divorce Mary, rejecting the sign. And Joseph, having faith, accepted the sign in faith and went through with taking Mary as his wife, as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
When we try to rely on our human reason more than God and his Word, it only causes us to doubt the words that God says and reject them. A child being born of a virgin? That’s impossible! The evangelists must have actually added this later to make Jesus and Mary seem better than they were. Baptism being a work of God through which God gives us faith and washes away our sins? That’s impossible! Baptism must actually be a human work that symbolizes the washing away of our sins and demonstrates our commitment to God. The bread and the wine in the Lord’s Supper being the true body and blood of Jesus through which we receive the forgiveness of sins? That’s impossible! The bread and the wine must actually symbolize Jesus’ body and blood to remind us of what he did to forgive our sins. And these are only some of the ways in which we can reject what God has revealed to us in his Word.
If we reject God’s signs, like King Ahaz did, then we no longer stand on God’s promises, and our faith cannot endure. Without faith, we lose all the blessings that Jesus, the God-man, won for us on the cross: the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. But when we receive God’s signs in the faith that God has given us, like Joseph did, we know that God has worked through his signs to bring us his blessings.
Because God works through these signs of Word and Sacrament to bring his blessings to us, we know that he is with us today. Jesus didn’t come in the past only to leave us when he ascended into heaven. He is with all of us today, including you. And because Jesus saved you from your sins by his innocent death on the cross and experienced your struggles and hardships, you know that he will continue to bring you the forgiveness of sins and help you through your struggles and hardships today, as well as throughout the rest of your lives, until the day when you enter eternal life in heaven, where you will never struggle or face hardships ever again. In all of these ways that God is with us, we know that God’s signs truly do point to salvation.
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.
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(picture from “Joseph’s Dream” by T’oros Roslin, 1210-1270)
The Last Sunday of the Church Year – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 25:1-13
In Christ Jesus, who has not delayed His return due to disinterest or other distractions but out of patience and love for you and all sinners, so there is time for us to repent (2Pe. 3:9), dear fellow redeemed:
One of the most exciting moments in sports across the board, is the moment just before the action begins. At that moment, anything is possible. The kicker starts his approach to the ball, the referee throws the basketball into the air at center court, the pitcher on the mound begins his windup. But where this moment is most intense is on a racetrack.
The runners are called to the starting line: “On your mark!” They jump up and down a few times and shake their arms. They crouch down and dig their feet into the blocks. They carefully plant their fingers behind the line. Then silence. The anticipation builds. Hearts beat faster. You can hear a pin drop. “Set!” Backs raise, legs straighten, muscle power pushes down to the toes to provide the catapult forward. The runners have to be especially careful right now. This is the time when many get disqualified. They can’t wait. The pop of the gun seems to take forever.
If you remember being in races as a kid, this was the toughest part. “On your mark! Get set!” Sometimes your parent or your coach would hold off on the “Go!” longer than usual. They wanted to teach you discipline. You have to be patient. If a sibling or friend started the race slow like this, they just wanted to see you suffer. You can picture it now: kids anticipating the call and leaning forward, then flailing their arms and falling in a heap on the ground. It’s so hard to wait for that “Go!” while staying ready to explode off the blocks.
That sort of waiting is what we find in today’s reading. Jesus shared this parable with His disciples to teach them and us how to prepare for His return. He speaks about ten virgins who went out to meet the bridegroom in order to join him at the wedding feast. Their description as “virgins” indicates that they were pure in faith, holy by virtue of their connection with the bridegroom.
It is a picture of the righteousness you have because you are united with Jesus. It is a strange reversal. A virgin who joins bodily with another is no longer a virgin. But we whose bodies are joined through Baptism with Jesus’ holy body, change from ones who are sinful and guilty to those who are clean and pure. Paul described this change in his letter to the Corinthian Christians. He wrote, “I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ” (2Co. 11:2).
That is stunning language! Paul was writing at a time that was much like ours, with a culture just as much focused on personal pleasure and sexual permissiveness as ours is. Many of the people who had joined those congregations organized by Paul were ashamed of the things they had done in their past. They wished they could go back and undo what they had done, but they couldn’t.
Paul directed them to the work of Jesus to save them. After listing sins that keep people out of the kingdom of God, sins like sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, greed, and drunkenness, Paul acknowledged the reality, “And such were some of you.” Christians are not those who are unstained by sin. Some have sinned so much, that they might think it is impossible for their many sins to be forgiven. Then Paul continued with this comfort: “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1Co. 6:11).
You know the sins of your past. You wish you could go back and change a lot of things. But even if you did that, you would still be a sinner. You could change your actions in certain situations, you might be able to avoid some things, but other temptations would have come up. You weren’t just a bad choice or two away from perfection, you were far from it.
But in Jesus, you are holy. You were baptized into His victory over sin. Although you were impure, you have become pure. Although you were guilty, you have been absolved. Although you were dead in your sins, you have become alive in Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. He cleansed you and all the members of His church, as Ephesians says, “by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Eph. 5:26-27). That is a description of you, a virgin holding a lamp of faith, called out of the darkness to meet your Bridegroom.
So you are ready, but are you set? All ten virgins were ready at first, but only half of them were actually set. I’ll tell you what being set does not mean. It does not mean being able to say that you were baptized and confirmed in the church, or that you have been a member here your whole life. It does not even mean that you regularly go to church and contribute to the church’s work. Those things do not ensure that you are set.
The important thing is that the flame of your faith is being fueled. Going through the motions or keeping your name on a membership list does not fuel your faith. But humbly repenting of your sin, eagerly hearing the pure Word of God, and receiving the Sacraments—that does fuel your faith.
All Christians must take this seriously. Just because you once had faith, does not mean you will always have faith. The five foolish virgins took their faith for granted, and when the Bridegroom was delayed, they became weary. They did not prioritize fuel for their faith, and when they realized their error, it was too late. The door to the wedding banquet was shut, and they weren’t allowed in.
This is a powerful warning for us. You couldn’t tell the difference between the wise and foolish virgins by looking at them. But there certainly was a difference. At one point, they all had their eye on the finish line; they were all ready to go. But not all of them were set. They relaxed too much. They took their eye off the prize. They became disqualified. They did not finish the race.
And notice that in fact all the virgins—all ten of them—relaxed too much. “They all became drowsy and slept.” The gun did not go off fast enough for them. And here we are, still waiting. The Bridegroom called us out of the darkness into His marvelous light (1Pe. 2:9). The midnight cry has gone out, “Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.” But He has yet to return.
So what are we supposed to do? Jesus says, “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” But how do we watch? We watch by keeping our eyes on the Leader of the race, the Man standing ahead at the finish line. He has been in our shoes. He knows the difficulties and challenges we face. But He never slowed down. He never changed course. He never took His eyes off the prize, not even when the whole world stood against Him, not even when they nailed Him to a cross to suffer and die.
The author of Hebrews writes, “[F]or the joy that was set before him [Jesus] endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). He endured that for you. He kept going, moving forward, for you. The Bridegroom knew what He was competing for; it was for you, His bride, His Church. The course He took was hard, harder than we can imagine, but He finished in victory. He won the victory over sin, devil, and death for you.
You stay ready and set by keeping your eyes on Him, your Savior. You watch for His return by listening to His promises. He speaks them to you today. He is not far away from you. He is present through His Word and His Sacraments to give you His encouragement and strength. He speaks His forgiveness as oil for your faith to keep it burning strong. He gives you His grace when you grow weary and drowsy along the way. He blesses you with His unseen presence now, so that you are prepared to rise up and go when He comes in glory.
That time is approaching and coming soon. The midnight cry was no false alarm. Now is the time to be ready for the Bridegroom’s return. We don’t know if His return will be sooner or later, so we stay set, alert, watchful, by continuing to fuel our faith through the powerful means that God has given us. We wait with patience for that day when a sharp sound will pierce the air, like a bullet from a gun.
Jesus will come “with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God” (1Th. 4:16). And if we are no longer living here on earth, if we are sleeping the sleep of death, that sharp sound will awaken us. Then we will surge with power out of the tomb, up into the sky, and directly to our Lord.
That’s the day that we will “Go!” Until then, we stay Ready, we get Set, and with the help that God provides, we Wait.
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.
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(picture from 11th century painting from the Rossano Gospel)
The Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Luke 17:11-19
In Christ Jesus, who heals the sick and rescues the dying, so they might be His own and live under Him in His kingdom, dear fellow redeemed:
It started with little sores that stuck around, reddish spots, and some skin numbness. He wished it would go away, he wanted to ignore it, but he couldn’t. He went to the priest to have it examined, and the priest confirmed his greatest fear—it was leprosy. He had to leave his job, leave his home, leave his family. The Book of Leviticus describes the protocol for lepers: “The leprous person who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean.’ He shall remain unclean as long as he has the disease. He is unclean. He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp” (13:45-46).
It was a hard reality, but there was no known cure. A person with leprosy had to stay away for the good of others. But he wasn’t completely alone. Lepers often formed their own communities. We see that in today’s reading, when ten lepers called to Jesus outside a village between Samaria and Galilee. We learn something else about this group of men. It was a mixture of both Jews and Samaritans. That probably wouldn’t have happened if this terrible disease hadn’t drawn them together.
In general, the Jews and the Samaritans interacted with each other as little as possible. They had long lists of reasons why the other group was inferior and not worth their time and attention. But “misery loves company,” and these men were miserable. They set aside the animosity they may have felt toward one another and stuck together. But they were still of course on the outside. They were not where they wanted to be. They were part of a community of death, a community of the dying.
And that’s exactly what the world is apart from Christ. It is full of people afflicted by the disease of sin, surrounded by death and facing death themselves. Leprosy is a helpful picture for thinking about how sin works in us. In the Large Catechism, Martin Luther quotes Romans 7:18, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh.” Then he says, “If St. Paul may speak this way about his flesh, we cannot assume to be better or more holy than him. But the fact that we do not feel our weakness just makes things worse. It is a sign that there is a leprous flesh in us that can’t feel anything. And yet, the leprosy rages and keeps spreading” (Part V, paras. 76-77).
Because of nerve damage, a leprous person does not always notice when he cuts himself or gets burned or injured. And we do not always notice when we are getting injured or burned by sin. The more we participate in what is unclean, the less we perceive the damage that is being done to us. We think that we can stay in control of the sin. We won’t let it overcome us. But when we can’t stop consuming what is destroying us, can’t stop doing what we should not do, we are not in control of sin; sin is in control of us.
If one of the lepers in today’s reading denied that he had leprosy, it wouldn’t have changed the fact. And “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1Jo. 1:8). It is important that we see ourselves among those lepers. By nature, we are sinful and unclean (ELH, pp. 41, 61). We are the outsiders. We are the ones standing at a distance, away from all that is good. We cannot change our situation; we cannot save ourselves.
But One has drawn near to our community of death, even coming to live among us, One who has the power to heal us of our sin and save us from death. This One is very different; His reputation precedes Him. He has not been overcome by sin, and when death tried to take Him down, He took down death! “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” we cry.
And why should He have mercy? He isn’t the reason for our troubles. He is not responsible for the state we are in, for the messes we have made in our sin. But He does have mercy. He had mercy upon Naaman, an Old Testament Gentile who was afflicted by leprosy, by having him wash seven times in the waters of the Jordan River until he was clean (2Ki. 5). And our Lord had mercy upon us by bringing us to the cleansing waters of Baptism, where He applied the healing medicine of His holy blood to each one of us.
St. Paul explains this beautifully in Ephesians 2. He writes, “Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh… remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (vv. 11,12). We were on the outside, and we couldn’t get in. We were stuck in our sin and death. Paul continues, “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (v. 13). We were far off from salvation, but Jesus has brought us close to Him.
He accomplished this by perfectly keeping the Law of God, not just for the Israelite people but for all people. And then He went to the cross carrying the whole world’s sin and shed His holy blood to wash it all away. He poured His perfect righteousness and His cleansing blood over you through the waters of Baptism. That is how He transferred you from the community of death in the world to His holy Christian Church, the Communion of Saints. That is how He healed and cleansed you from the disease of sin that was killing you.
But many of the people He has done this for, whom He has joined to Himself in the waters of Baptism, continue on their way and forget what He has done. Like the nine lepers who were healed, they get caught up in “the cares and riches and pleasures of life” (Luk. 8:14). They don’t continue to listen to His healing Word. They don’t remember to give Him thanks. So even though Jesus freed them from the community of death, they have returned to it again. They might feel like they are alive. They might think they are doing important things. But none of it can save them, and none of it will last apart from Christ.
This is what the devil tempts all of us to do. He wants us to walk away from the life we have in Jesus, to give all of that up so we can fit in with the world. We might even feel ashamed sometimes of our membership in the Christian Church. We don’t tell anyone about it. We carefully keep it hidden, so we can fit in with the people who seem to matter. We don’t want them to think we are strange. We don’t want to be left on the outside. We don’t want to be singled out and left all by ourselves.
These are natural thoughts to have. It is difficult to be a follower of Jesus in a hostile world. But even though you may feel like you have to face these difficulties alone, you are not alone. The Samaritan went against the majority and turned back to give thanks to Jesus. He didn’t have the company of his former friends anymore, but He wasn’t alone. Jesus was with him, and Jesus blessed him. “Rise and go your way,” He said; “your faith has made you well.” Or as the Greek word literally reads, “your faith has saved you.”
You are saved by faith in Jesus who conquered your sin and death, and shares with you His life. And you are not the only one who has received this life. Going back to Ephesians 2: “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (vv. 19-21).
Look at how large your community is! You are a fellow citizen with all the saints, all the believers who have gone before you. You are a member of the household of God. You stand on the foundation built by the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus Himself is the cornerstone. You are part of an immense structure, a beautiful building, a holy temple in the Lord. You are most certainly not alone.
You are a member of the body of Christ. It is with Him that you belong. You will always find friendship, acceptance, and purpose in Him. He will not leave you by yourself. He visits you with His mercy in good times and bad, whether you are happy or sad, restful or anxious. He comes right to you through His Word and His Sacraments to cleanse you again with His holy blood and bless you with His promises.
Each time you receive these blessings, you praise Him and give thanks to Him, bowing down at His feet. And He looks upon you with love, and He says, “Rise and go your way; your faith has saved you.”
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.
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(picture from “The Healing of Ten Lepers” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)
The Festival of Pentecost – Pr. Faugstad exordium & sermon
Festival exordium:
Wings. Water. Wind.
The first time we hear about God the Holy Spirit in the Bible is at the beginning of Genesis 1: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (vv. 1-2). “The Spirit of God was hovering.” That makes us think of the way a bird hovers in the sky. Fly forward.
After Jesus was baptized, “the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him” (Mat. 3:16). Once again, the Spirit was hovering over the waters. Fly forward.
Jesus spoke with a man named Nicodemus and said to him, “unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (Joh. 3:5). He spoke about the wind blowing where it wishes, flying wherever it flies, and declared, “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (v. 8). Fly forward.
Ten days after Jesus’ ascension, His disciples heard a sound from heaven “like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting” (Act. 2:2). The Holy Spirit did not appear in the form of a dove, but He revealed His presence by the tongues of fire resting on each disciple. They began boldly to preach God’s truth in Jerusalem, and by the end of the day, three thousand souls believed the truth and were baptized. Fly forward.
When you were brought to the baptismal font, the Spirit of God was hovering over those waters. No one could see Him, but He was there with power. “[B]y the washing of regeneration and renewal” (Ti. 3:5), He caused you to be born again. He made you alive in Christ.
He still comes through the powerful Word and Sacraments, not bound by the laws of nature, not confined to space and time. He flies to you with the grace, forgiveness, and peace that are yours through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And He flies forward on His soul-saving, life-changing mission, adding more members to the church of God.
In praise of His magnificent work, we sing our festival hymn—hymn #399, “O Light of God’s Most Wondrous Love”:
O Light of God’s most wondrous love,
Who dost our darkness brighten,
Shed on Thy Church from heav’n above,
Our eye of faith enlighten!
As in Thy light we gather here,
Show us that Christ’s own promise clear
Is Yea and Amen ever.
O risen and ascended Lord,
We wait fulfillment of Thy Word;
O bless us with Thy favor!
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Sermon text: St. John 14:23-31
In Christ Jesus, whose ascension was the crowning moment of His saving work on earth, and who then sent out the Holy Spirit to distribute this salvation to sinners until the end of time, dear fellow redeemed:
It is very clear to all of you here why you needed God the Son to take on human flesh. You know that you are a sinner, and that you could not satisfy your debt to God. You needed Jesus to take your place, keep the holy Law for you, and die on the cross for your sins. But why was it so crucial that Jesus return to His Father? And why did the Father and the Son need to send out the Holy Spirit?
Jesus said to His disciples, “If you loved Me, you would rejoice because I said ‘I am going to the Father.’” That does not seem like cause for rejoicing. Why would they rejoice when their great Teacher left them? He left them to suffer and die on the cross to make atonement for all sin. He had to go alone, because no one but Him could endure the wrath of God against sin. No one but Him could make peace between God and mankind.
When that work on the cross was complete, Jesus cried out, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” (Luk. 23:46). And the Father received the spirit of His Son. He accepted His Son’s sacrifice. We know He accepted it, because He raised Jesus from the dead on the third day. Jesus’ state of humiliation and suffering had ended. Now all authority in heaven and on earth were given to Him (Mat. 28:18), and He ascended to the right hand of His Father in the flesh.
Since salvation had been won, it was time for these glad tidings to be distributed. Ten days after His ascension, Jesus made good on His promise to send the Holy Spirit. Suddenly the disciples, common men from Galilee, could speak in languages they had never known before. They now stood up and spoke, not to draw attention to themselves, but to draw attention to Jesus and what He had done for all sinners.
And the Holy Spirit did more than give the disciples the gift of multiple languages. Through the Word they preached, the Holy Spirit was also giving the gift of faith to those who listened. We are told that the people “were cut to the heart” when they heard what was said. They did not realize that Jesus was more than a prophet. Now they knew they had crucified the Son of God, and that death could not keep Him in the grave. After what they had done to Him, how could they expect Him to be merciful toward them? “Brothers, what shall we do?” they cried.
And Peter said, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” That sounds simple. All they had to do was say they were sorry for their sins and claim to have faith in Jesus, and the gift of the Holy Spirit would be theirs. But that’s not really what happened. It was not a cause and effect. It was not, “They do their part, and God does His part.” God did it all.
I guarantee that none of the people who were baptized on Pentecost Sunday woke up that day thinking, “It’s about time I admitted that I was wrong about Jesus. I should just believe that He is the eternal Son of the Father who died and rose again, and I should be baptized in the name of the Triune God.” It was the Holy Spirit who led them to repentance and faith and who prompted them to be baptized. All of it was gift; none of it was earned.
The same is true for you. You did not choose to be a believer in Jesus. Your parents or others brought you to the baptismal font and to church where the Holy Spirit worked faith in you. God had to do this work for you, because you were dead in your sins. An unholy person cannot make himself holy. Martin Luther put it this way, “If you yourself were holy, then you would not need the Holy Spirit at all; but since we are sinful and unclean in ourselves, the Holy Spirit must perform His work in us” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 24, p. 169).
That’s why Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give to you.” The world says the kind of peace you want to aim for is peace among nations and communities or an inner peace and calmness. But these kinds of peace are not permanent. The peace that Jesus left with us is the peace of His atoning death which reconciled us with our perfect heavenly Father. This is the peace the Holy Spirit imparts to us through the Word and Sacraments—the peace of sins forgiven, of eternal life secured, of a temporary rest in the grave before the resurrection of the body on the last day.
The Holy Spirit brings you what you cannot get anywhere else. He brings you the gifts of God. But He doesn’t send these gifts directly from heaven to your heart like a bolt of lightning, or through a feeling you have that He is near. He brings you the gifts of God through the Word of God. Jesus says, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.” That is why we come to church and have devotions at home, because it is through the Word that God comes to dwell with us.
And it is through the Word that God teaches us the truth and comforts us. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit “will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.” Unless you have learned “all things” that God has to teach you, you still need to be a student in the school of the Holy Spirit. Unless you are perfectly holy, you still need the Holy Spirit to sanctify you through the Word.
And the Holy Spirit is glad to do this work. He is glad to take the forgiveness and life won for you by God the Son and apply it to you. He is glad to bring you comfort in your distress. He is glad to strengthen your faith in trials. He is glad to guide you on the path of righteousness. He is glad to prepare you for eternal life in heaven.
You can see how important the work of the Holy Spirit is. Without His work, we would have no faith. We would be without hope and without God in the world (Eph. 2:12). We would live for a short time and die and be dead forever. God the Father and God the Son sent out God the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, so that everything Jesus accomplished according to the gracious will of His Father would be applied to sinners.
You and I are some of those sinners, sinners who deserve God’s wrath for our sins, who deserve eternal punishment in hell. But what we have received instead is the cleansing blood of Jesus that washed away all our sins. We have received His righteousness that makes us acceptable to the Father. We have received His mercy and peace and goodwill. By the power of the Holy Spirit through the Word, we have received all the fullness of Christ’s redemptive work, grace upon grace (Joh. 1:16).
This is why we rejoice today. This is why Pentecost is such a pivotal day for the church. This is the day that all the gifts Jesus won for sinners came pouring out of heaven like stores of grain for the hungry, like waterfalls for the thirsty, like rain on parched earth. “Come, Holy Spirit, and fill the hearts of Your faithful people, and kindle in them the fire of Your love.”
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.
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(picture from Saude Lutheran Church stained glass)
The Baptism of Our Lord – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Matthew 3:13-17
In Christ Jesus, who “came by water and blood,” (1Jo. 5:6), who came to fulfill all righteousness and win our salvation from His baptism to His death on the cross, dear fellow redeemed:
What do you want to be when you grow up? If you are not asking that question now, you probably did at one time. Children and adolescents spend a lot of time thinking about that question. What am I supposed to do with my life? What will my future hold? Typically we start with grand ideas. We want to be just like the famous trailblazers and champions we admire. But as we get older, our plans become more realistic, even if our life doesn’t go in the direction we expect.
Tied up in our plans for the future is the question about where we fit in the world. We want to be noticed. We want to be liked. We want to be successful. We want others to think we are special. And that’s a lot of pressure. A report released last week by the CDC said that anxiety and depression are on the rise among teenagers, and it’s way up among teenage girls. Part of the reason for this increase has to do with the pressure that teenagers feel in matters of their sexuality.
Our current culture does not provide a healthy environment for children to mature and grow. It expects them to make life-changing decisions about themselves and their bodies when they aren’t ready to make those decisions. How do we help them with the burdens they carry? How do we settle our own anxious thoughts about our purpose in life and our future?
Today’s reading provides good direction for us. The events happened at a time when hardly anyone knew who Jesus was. His neighbors in Nazareth thought of Him as a kind and intelligent young man. But they didn’t exactly expect Him to be a world-changer. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, and He was probably destined for a very anonymous life (Mat. 13:55).
But that isn’t what John the Baptizer thought. When Jesus made His way to the Jordan River where John was preaching and baptizing, John said something surprising, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” How did John know who Jesus was? We don’t know. What we know is that John was called to prepare the way for the Messiah. And he said that “for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel” (Joh. 1:31).
John and Jesus were also cousins, so it is possible they grew up around each other, and John could see how good and upright Jesus was. Whatever impressions John had about Jesus would now become set in stone. “Let it be so now,” said Jesus, “for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” So John baptized Him.
As soon as Jesus stepped down into the river and had water poured over Him, you and I were assured of a very bright, a very beautiful future. How can that be? When Jesus stepped into the water, He didn’t go for Himself. We can see why John questioned Jesus’ intent to be baptized. John clearly proclaimed that his baptism was for sinners. But what sins did Jesus have to confess?
Jesus had no sins of His own, but He had all of yours and mine. This was no ordinary man who showed up at the river. This was the eternal Son of God clothed in our flesh. Whatever God did in the flesh should have our very close attention. He didn’t go to the Jordan to pass the time. Everything He did had purpose. His baptism was not a small detail in His life. It was the public beginning of His work of salvation. It was His anointing as the Savior of the world.
He stepped into the river “to fulfill all righteousness.” You can’t “fulfill all righteousness.” I can’t “fulfill all righteousness.” But Jesus could fulfill it for all of us. When He entered the water, He stepped in for you and me and every member of the human race. He was baptized to work a great exchange—your sin for His righteousness. He was baptized into your sin, so that you could be baptized into His righteousness.
In other words, His baptism in the Jordan is your future flashing before your eyes. And His journey from the Jordan to the cross and grave is your journey. What I mean is that you do not have to worry about the mark you will make on the world. You do not have to prove that you matter or that you are special. You do not have to create your own identity or determine your own fate. Jesus already addressed these concerns for you.
You can’t see what your future will hold, but you can see what Jesus’ future held. You see how the heavens were opened after His baptism and the Holy Spirit came down like a dove and rested on Him. You see how God the Father gave the stamp of approval to His Son by saying, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
You know how Jesus went on from there to the wilderness to be tempted, how He started teaching about the kingdom of God and healing the sick and the hurting, how His enemies made plans against Him, and eventually brought Him up on false charges before the governor Pontius Pilate. You see how Jesus willingly suffered, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter opening not His mouth. You see how He was nailed to the cross, cried out in anguish, died, and was buried.
That’s not exactly a future to aspire to. Do we really want to walk in those steps? Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mat. 16:24). That is the exact opposite of what we want to do. The world tells us to indulge ourselves—food, drink, entertainment, pleasure—and our own flesh wants it. Why should we fight these desires? Why do we have to take up a cross? Won’t that only lead to heartache and pain?
It is true that following after Jesus brings us trouble. He says the world will hate everyone who trusts in Him, because the world hated Him (Joh. 15:18-19). “In the world you will have tribulation” (Joh. 16:33), He says. But persecution and trouble are not all that our future holds. In fact, Jesus says that these things only last “a little while.”
Jesus’ future did not end with His death and burial and neither will yours. Jesus came to life again on the third day. He undid death. He reversed the curse. Death no longer had dominion over Him (Rom. 6:9). He rose from the dead, and He lives on in glory. That is your future. He won that victory for you.
And all of it starts at baptism. Baptism changed your future and your focus like nothing else in the world possibly could. It had a bigger impact on you than having all your hopes and dreams for this life come true, even more than winning the lottery or becoming the ruler of the whole world. Because at your baptism, Jesus officially made His righteousness, His accomplishments, and His eternal victory over death yours.
Jesus had your sins poured over Him at the Jordan River, so you would have His righteousness poured over you at the font. He was punished by the Father in your place, so you would be forgiven of all you have done wrong. He died, so that you would live. When you were baptized, the Holy Spirit came to rest on you and filled your heart with faith. When you were baptized, God the Father called you His “beloved,” with whom He is “well pleased.”
St. Paul explains that “We were buried therefore with [Christ Jesus] by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). At your baptism, you were set on a new course. The plan for your future was locked in. Your life gained an instant and clear purpose. Because the merciful God chose you. He adopted you as His own. He named you His child and heir with Jesus as your brother.
Everything Jesus earned for you from His baptism to His grave became yours, and it is still yours. No matter how much you have messed up, God has not taken His baptism away from you. All that Jesus did for you is still done. Your future in Him is still secure.
So for the young who feel the pressure of being everything the world says they should be, who think they need to prove their worth and show how special they are, who are tempted to compromise themselves and their beliefs in order to be accepted, we can tell them that God loves them perfectly. He sees the temptations they have to face, how difficult their life is, and He promises that He will never leave them alone. He sent His Son to redeem their life with His, He brought them to the font to receive His blessings and give them new life, and He still meets them in their times of sadness and pain to help and strengthen them by His Word and Sacrament.
That is the promise and comfort that all of us need whether we are looking forward with anxiety or backward with regret. Jesus was baptized for you, to fulfill all righteousness for you. He went to the cross for you and rose again for you. Because of His work, your future is bright. You are baptized into Him. You believe in Him. And “[w]hoever believes and is baptized will be saved” (Mar. 16:16).
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.
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(picture from 1895 painting by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior)
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.
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(picture from “The Nativity at Night” by Geertgen tot Sint Jans, c. 1490)
The Fourth Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. John 1:19-28
In Christ Jesus, who “comes to judge the nations, a terror to His foes,” but “a Light of consolations and blessed hope to those who love the Lord’s appearing” (ELH 94, v. 10), dear fellow redeemed:
I imagine you have a busy week ahead. There will be gifts to wrap and food to make. Maybe there is more decorating to do and cards or letters to send. This is a time of preparation, a time to get everything ready for the big day: Christmas. Perhaps you hope to recapture the feeling of the season from when you were a child, or you want your children or grandchildren to have that feeling now. This is a special time. You want everything to be just right.
Advent is a time of preparation, but the focus is not especially on external things, what is happening around us. The focus is internal, what is happening inside us. The problem with internal things is that they are more difficult to control. I can spend hours wrapping gifts and make them just the way I want them. I can clean my house from top to bottom. I can put everything in its place around me and make it look like I have every detail covered. I can do all these things while being torn up inside by sadness, by pain, by guilt.
That might be where you are right now. That is why Jesus comes to you today. He comes to meet you in your struggle and lift your burdens from you. He comes to bring you forgiveness and hope, comfort and strength. He comes to assure you that you have a merciful Father who loves you and cares for you, and that in His Father’s house are many mansions where He has prepared a place for you (Joh. 14:2).
These are the things that Jesus, the Son of God incarnate, came down to earth to do. John was sent to prepare the people for His coming. He was the “voice” prophesied more than 700 years earlier by Isaiah, the voice who would cry out, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain” (Isa. 40:3-4). How exactly was that highway making—that raising of valleys and lowering of mountains—supposed to come about?
The evangelist Luke writes that John “went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:3). And John didn’t hold back in his Law preaching. “You brood of vipers!” he said to the crowd. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance” (3:7-8). Repentance was the way the people were to prepare for Christ’s coming. It was the way for their hearts and minds to become open to His gracious teaching.
And that is still the way we prepare for Christ’s coming: we repent of our sins. We repent of our valleys of doubt and despair, and we repent of our mountains of pride. But we wouldn’t know this was even necessary if God did not give us His Law. His Law is both written on our hearts and recorded for us in the Bible. There is no question what God’s will is for our lives. There is also no question that we have failed to live up to His Law—failed completely.
But the error we often fall into is measuring our holiness not against God’s Commandments, but against the lives of other sinners. And we can always find others who appear to be more sinful than we are. This is a trick of the devil to get us to think that we are not that bad, that our lives are pretty well in order. But if that were true, then why did Jesus come? Did He come to hang out with the righteous people, or to save sinners? Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (Luk. 5:31-32).
The holy Law of God shows us how sick we are. It shows us how bumpy our road was in the past when we disobeyed God’s commands and how bumpy it will be in the future if we give in to our sinful desires. And through the Law, the Holy Spirit works repentance in our hearts today. He moves us to contrition, to remorsefulness and sorrow, for the wrongs we have done—for the sins we have tried to hide and the sins we have committed right out in the open.
But repentance is not just about admitting sin. It is about avoiding the same temptations going forward. It is about not giving the devil an inch, because he will take a mile and usually a lot more. What good is repentance if you have no desire to stop sinning and do better? John said to the crowd, “Bear fruits in keeping with repentance.” Show in your life how sorry you are for your sin and how you want to live for the God who made you and provides for you.
The people must have trembled when they heard John preach. He was great and powerful in their eyes. They trembled even more when he told them One was coming after him, “the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” “I baptize you with water,” said John. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luk. 3:16,17). In other words, “Don’t ignore my warning. Don’t let this fall on deaf ears. A far more powerful One than me is coming.”
John was a serious preacher, but it was not all gloom and doom. The baptism he administered was given for spiritual comfort. God’s Law was doing its work. The people were sorry for their sins. Now they stepped forward to the Jordan River desiring to receive God’s forgiveness. They believed what John said. They did not want to be caught unprepared when the Christ came. They sincerely wanted to “make straight the way of the Lord.”
But would the way be straight enough for Him? Would He be pleased with what He saw in them? Would they be worthy enough, welcoming enough? Those would have been natural questions to ask, but they were the wrong ones. We get sidetracked in the same way. We want to live our lives for the Lord, but then we focus more on our living than on the Lord. We focus more on our work than on His work.
But it is His work that saves. No matter how well or how much you prepare for Jesus’ coming to you now, it is not enough. You have fallen short of the glory of God. That is why God sent His only-begotten Son. Jesus came to perfectly do for you what you could not do. He had no need to repent, because He was sinless. He could measure His holiness against the Law of God, and it did not condemn Him. Those valleys of doubt and despair, those mountains of pride, could not be found in Jesus. He kept God’s holy Law for you down to the smallest detail.
And He put all your Law-breaking, all your sin, on His shoulders and invited God’s wrath on Himself to spare you from eternal punishment in hell. That is where the Lord’s greatness is most clearly seen—in His suffering on the cross. That is where His glory is found, hidden beneath a crown of thorns and behind all that anguish and shame.
You have a Savior who knows sadness. Isaiah described Him as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:5). You have a Savior who knows pain, who knows guilt, because He took all of yours on Himself. Isaiah says again, “[H]e was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace” (v. 5). This is the peace the incarnate Son of God came to bring, the “peace on earth” that the multitude of angels sang about the night of His birth.
It is the peace He wants you to have in this busy season no matter what troubles you, grieves you, or weighs you down right now. Jesus came for your sake. He came to save you. He came to redeem your soul by shedding His holy blood and remove your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west (Psa. 103:12).
His forgiveness of our sins is why we don’t view repentance as a chore. Repentance is a gift worked in us by the Holy Spirit which prepares us to receive God’s greater gifts—the gifts of His righteousness, peace, and life. He gives these blessings to us now and assures us that we will have them forever in heaven.
So by the power of the Holy Spirit, we “Make Straight the Way of the Lord” today. We push away all doubt. We set aside all pride. We hand over to God everything that has caused anguish and pain to ourselves and to others. And our merciful Lord says, “I forgive you all your sins. I made payment for them long ago by My precious blood. All that I won for you, all that I have, I poured over you at your Baptism. There, I made you My own.”
Your Baptism into Christ means that even though you may feel empty at times, you are not empty. And even though you may feel alone, you are not alone. The Christ, your Savior, has come, and He still comes with gracious tidings of comfort and joy for you.
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.
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(picture from “The Preaching of St. John the Baptist” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1565)