Quinquagesima Sunday – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: St. Luke 18:31-43
In Christ Jesus, who is patient and kind, ever ready to show mercy in our suffering and helplessness, dear fellow redeemed:
How can you tell if you love someone, and how can you tell if they love you? Is it by how they look? This might be the reason for an initial attraction. A girl thinks a boy is handsome, or a boy thinks a girl is pretty. That could be the beginning of a crush—what is sometimes called “love at first sight”—, but that’s not exactly love. Love is much deeper than physical appearance or a feeling of attraction. And love is more than romantic or flattering words.
Today’s Epistle Lesson from 1 Corinthians 13 describes love as selfless action: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (vv. 4-6). “Love at first sight” is more about what you could do for me. Love that flows from Jesus is about what I can do for you.
And what did Jesus say He would do for others? He said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging Him, they will kill Him, and on the third day He will rise.” The disciples did not hear this as love. They heard it as suffering and especially as loss—their loss. They had big plans for Jesus and for themselves as His closest associates. Those plans did not include Jesus’ suffering and death.
Instead of letting Jesus’ plan and promise “sink into [their] ears” (Luk. 9:44), they insisted on their own way. And if they had gotten their way, they might have enjoyed more earthly glory, but neither they nor we would have a Savior. Jesus’ love for sinners compelled Him toward suffering and the cross. Nobody forced Him to go to Jerusalem; He went willingly.
That’s another quality of godly love—it can’t be forced. When love is a “have to,” it is motivated by the Law. When love is a “get to,” it is motivated by the Gospel. The Law says, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, and mind… and your neighbor as yourself” (Mat. 22:37,39). But only the Gospel can move our hearts to show this love gladly and freely. Only when we have been brought to faith by the Holy Spirit, can we bear the fruit of love toward others.
Jesus was acting out of love when He explained what He would do in Jerusalem. He was going there to pay for the sins of all people of all time, even though He had never done any wrong. This was the ultimate act of love, accepting the eternal punishment that everyone else deserved. The disciples in their selfishness would have stopped Him from going to do this, but His love for them and us compelled Him forward.
As He made His way toward Jerusalem, a large crowd went with Him. It was shortly before this that Jesus had raised His friend Lazarus from the dead, and He continued to do other miracles besides. The reports of His miraculous power traveled in every direction, and they also reached the ears of a blind man who lived in or near the town of Jericho in Judea. He was begging by the road outside of town when the crowd passed by with Jesus. As soon as he learned that Jesus was near, he began to cry out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!”
The members of the crowd had referred to Him as “Jesus of Nazareth,” but the blind man called him “Jesus, Son of David.” This tells us that from the reports he heard about Jesus, he was convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, the Savior long-promised to Israel. Though he could not see physically, the blind man “saw” Jesus by faith. He believed what He had heard about Him. He is a wonderful example of what Jesus later said to His disciple Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Joh. 20:29).
This man’s faith shines the more brightly when we think about his situation. He was blind and probably had been his whole life. He had no source of income, so he was forced to beg on the side of the road. If you were in his shoes (assuming he had any), would you be more likely to complain about what God wasn’t doing for you or cling to His promises? Trust Him to provide for you or turn away from Him?
Jesus heard the blind man’s cry for mercy, just as He hears yours. Psalm 34 says, “The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their cry” (v. 15, NKJV). Perhaps no one else knows your particular struggle, your pain, how helpless you sometimes feel. But He does. For you, He was “mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon.” He was treated like the blind beggar on the side of the road that no one wanted to look at or listen to. “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).
He endured all this trouble and suffering, so you would have hope in your trouble and suffering. Maybe you have been hurt or harmed by those who were supposed to love you. Maybe you feel like your efforts to love have been thrown back in your face. That is a lonely place to be in, like being stuck by yourself in the darkness.
Jesus does not leave you alone. He does not withhold His mercy from you. Look how personally He dealt with the blind man. “Bring him here to Me,” He said. Then He asked the blind man this grace-filled question: “What do you want Me to do for you?” This is how Jesus invites you to pray. He says, “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luk. 11:9). No problem is too big or too small for Him. No request is too hard. You don’t always know what is best for yourself, but He does, and He wants you to bring your petitions to Him.
The blind man said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” He said this about his physical sight, but we say the same about our faith. The less we hear Jesus’ Word, the less clear His love for us is. The more we hear His Word, the clearer He is to our faith. Our sinful flesh and the temptations of the world and the devil cloud our faith. We get to thinking too much about human glory like the disciples did. We become bitter dwelling on what we should have received but didn’t. But getting exactly what we want when we want it is not the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus is.
That’s another lesson the blind man teaches us. If you had been blind your whole life and could suddenly see, what would you do? Where would you go? This is what the formerly blind man did: he “followed [Jesus], glorifying God.” Whether physically blind or seeing, what mattered most was that this man believed in Jesus. Jesus said as much, “your faith has made you well.”
When we come to church, one of the first things we do is confess our sins. We acknowledge that our spiritual vision is not as sharp as it should be. Our love is lacking. Our faith is weak. As we confess, we say with the blind man, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” “Let Your mercy be upon me. Let me see Your love. Forgive me all my sins. Show me the light of Your grace.” And Jesus says through the mouth of the pastor, “I forgive you all your sins. Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.”
The faith that you have, that the Holy Spirit worked in you through the powerful Word, is what connects you to the love of God in Christ Jesus. Faith sees Jesus “mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon,” flogged, and nailed to a cross and says, “Jesus did that to redeem me.” Faith hears Jesus cry, “It is finished!” and says, “He finished the work for me to win my salvation.” Faith sees the empty tomb on Easter Sunday morning and declares, “Jesus conquered death for me.”
Jesus did more than tell you He loves you. He showed it. And He keeps showing it by calling you back to the grace of your Baptism by which He joined you to Him, by filling you with comfort through His Word of absolution, and by strengthening you through the Supper of His holy body and blood. He is not about to pass you by, especially in your times of greatest suffering and need. Whether you are in Jerico, Iowa, or Jericho in the Middle East, He comes to you in love through His Holy Word.
We won’t fully understand the extent of His love in this life. Our sinful flesh keeps us from seeing it in all its “breadth and length and height and depth” (Eph. 3:18). But the day will come when we will see Jesus as He is. Like the blind man who had the shadows lifted from his sight, we will look upon Jesus in His glory and see perfect love embodied in Him. 1 Corinthians 13, the great love chapter, describes how this will be: “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (v. 12).
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 “Jesus Healing the Blind in Jericho,” Netherlands 1470s)
The Third Sunday after Michaelmas (Trinity 21) – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: 2 Chronicles 32:1-23
In Christ Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reigns “from everlasting to everlasting” (1Chr. 16:36)—not like “the gods of the peoples of the earth, which are the work of men’s hands,” dear fellow redeemed:
“If God Himself be for me, / I may a host defy;
For when I pray, before me / My foes confounded fly.”
(Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary #517, v. 1)
These are the words of the hymn we just sang, a hymn by the great 17th century Lutheran hymnwriter, Paul Gerhardt. The hymn begins with a conditional statement, “If God Himself be for me / (Then) I may a host defy.” First one thing has to happen—God must be for me—before I may defy a host, a great company, of spiritual enemies. But is it true that God is for me? Can I be sure of that?
There have been many times in life that we questioned if God is for us. Maybe we didn’t seem to fit in anywhere and felt all alone, and we wondered why God didn’t seem to notice or didn’t seem to care. We may have gotten in the middle of a fierce family disagreement, found ourselves in a financial crisis, or dealt with a serious health issue. Perhaps our job was causing great stress, or we lost someone we were very close to. “If God is for me,” we wondered, “why is He letting me experience so much pain and trouble?”
King Hezekiah may have dealt with similar doubts as he watched the great Assyrian army make its way toward Jerusalem. We heard last week how the northern kingdom of Israel was completely overcome by the Assyrians, and whatever Israelites survived were relocated to other places (2Ki. 18:9-12). Now King Sennacherib set his sights on Jerusalem.
After Sennacherib had conquered a number of fortified cities in Judah, Hezekiah tried the appeasement approach. In the parallel account to today’s reading in 2 Kings, Hezekiah told Sennacherib, “Whatever you impose on me I will bear” (18:14). The Assyrian king demanded the payment of three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. To reach this amount, Hezekiah had to strip the gold from the temple doors and doorposts. He sent almost everything he had to the Assyrians. But it wasn’t enough to appease King Sennacherib. The Assyrian army kept coming and camped outside the city.
The people of Jerusalem were not completely unprepared. The very location of the city made it difficult for enemies to overcome it. It was built on the top of Mount Zion, so any enemies had to go uphill to attack it. Besides that, Hezekiah built up the main wall of the city, added an extra wall outside it, and put up towers all along it. He diverted the water through an underground tunnel to the city, so their enemies could not cut off their water supply. He “made weapons and shields in abundance.”
The odds still seemed very bad for Hezekiah and the people. The Assyrian army was 185,000 soldiers strong (19:35). The Assyrian king’s top official mockingly offered Hezekiah 2,000 horses if he could find riders to sit on them (18:23). The same official speaking for Sennacherib also mocked the LORD: “[F]or no god of any nation or kingdom has been able to deliver his people from my hand or from the hand of my fathers. How much less will your God deliver you out of my hand!” They put the same mockery in print in letters sent to Jerusalem: “Like the gods of the nations of the lands who have not delivered their people from my hands, so the God of Hezekiah will not deliver His people from my hand.”
How would the LORD God respond to these insults? Would He respond at all? Was God for Hezekiah and the people of Jerusalem or not? The answer to that question is not in what the LORD would do for them. What God will do in the future is entirely in His hands and done according to His wisdom. Whether or not God was for His people was answered by what He had already done for them.
He had brought them out of slavery in Egypt. He had given them the Promised Land of Canaan. Though they often rebelled against Him and served other gods, He patiently called them back. He sent faithful prophets to preach to them, and He replaced wicked kings with good ones. Besides all that, He continued to repeat the promise that He would send a Savior to redeem sinners. It was clear that the LORD loved His people and did not want them to be destroyed.
We need to answer the question, “Is God for me?” with this same perspective. We don’t find the answer in what He will do for us, as though He needs to prove Himself to us, or how He will address my current problem or pain. We find the answer in what He has already done for us. Romans 8 makes the answer clear, starting at verse 31, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” This is how we know that God is for us: He did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all.
God is for you because the Son of God took on human flesh to save you. God is for you because Jesus perfectly kept the Law on your behalf. God is for you because He took every one of your sins to the cross where He paid for them with His blood. God is for you because He rose in triumph over death and the grave. God is for you because He keeps bringing you the righteousness, forgiveness, and life that He won for you and gives them to you through His Word and Sacraments.
So when you are alone, when you are in the middle of a trial, when you are struggling, when you are under attack, when you feel like nothing will ever be right again, and you question if God is really for you—He is for you. He knows your trouble, and He promises that He will not leave you to fight through it on your own.
He may not address your trouble exactly the way you want or expect, but He will address it in the way that you need. He uses your suffering to build up your endurance in the faith, endurance to produce good character, and character to point you toward hope—the hope of eternal life in heaven, where all suffering, pain, and sorrow will be done away with (Rom. 5:3-4).
Knowing that God is for us makes us confident and bold. We are on the side of our Lord—the winning side. This gives value to all the work we do for Him and our neighbors. He is pleased with what we do. He loves us and has redeemed us from our sins to serve in His name. Unlike the unbelievers of the world, we don’t just focus on ourselves and what we can get in this life. We focus on Him and the blessings He gives us through our service to our families, in our jobs, and in our communities.
As we carry out this work, we are also confident and bold in our prayers. Jesus says, “[W]hatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you” (Joh. 16:23). The model for this boldness is the Lord’s Prayer where we cheerfully demand from our heavenly Father what He has promised to give. We boldly pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and “Forgive us our trespasses.” “I am for you,” He says, “so make your request. I am listening; tell Me your concerns.”
Hezekiah showed this same confidence and boldness (at least outwardly) as the Assyrian army came marching over the hills toward Jerusalem. He encouraged the people in their work saying, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him, for there are more with us than with him. With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the LORD our God, to help us and to fight our battles.”
From an outsider’s view, victory seemed impossible for Jerusalem just as it often seems impossible for us. We can feel like we are surrounded by fierce enemies, outnumbered, like sitting ducks. How can my family survive the attacks of the devil and the world? How can the Church survive? Do I have enough faith to be saved? It does us no good to look inside ourselves, to trust in our own efforts, our own arms of flesh. We trust in the LORD and His powerful Word. He hasn’t lost yet, and He isn’t about to.
Hezekiah prayed fervently to the LORD, and the LORD heard His prayers (2Ki. 19:6,20). Despite all appearances, despite any logical person’s expectations, Assyria did not destroy Jerusalem. Just when the army was preparing to attack, “the angel of the LORD went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians” (v. 35). His army destroyed, King Sennacherib “returned with shame of face to his own land.” Then our reading tells us that “when he came into the house of his god, some of his own sons struck him down there with the sword.” Not only were Sennacherib’s gods unable to overcome the people of Jerusalem; they were unable to save him from the scheming hands of his own sons.
The Assyrians messed with the wrong god when they mocked the God of Judah. This was the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of David and Hezekiah. This is our God, too, the Triune God—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. He cannot be defeated. No matter how much the devil and demons and the powerful kingdoms of the world throw at Him or His people, His holy Church endures. Jesus said that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mat. 16:18).
We stand firm by the power of His Word, His Word that declares us right with Him, justified, children and heirs of His kingdom. Since He is for us, we are most certainly not alone. We are not outnumbered. We are not without hope.
If God Himself be for me, / I may a host defy;
For when I pray, before me / My foes confounded fly.
If Christ, the Head, befriend me, / If God be my support,
The mischief they intend me / Shall quickly come to naught. (ELH #517, v. 1)
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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(woodcut from “Michael Conquering the Dragon” by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1794-1872)
Midweek Lent 1 – Pr. Faugstad homily
Text: St. Matthew 24:1-2
In Christ Jesus, the stone rejected by the builders, which has become the cornerstone of God’s holy house, dear fellow redeemed:
If someone told you that all the buildings in Cresco or New Hampton were going to be dismantled down to their foundations, you would have a hard time believing it. Even if you had no reason to doubt the source of the information, it would be hard to imagine what chain of events would bring about this complete destruction.
The disciples of Jesus were likewise shocked when Jesus told them that the magnificent temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed. Some estimate that the stones of the temple were as large as 37 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 12 feet high (The Lutheran Study Bible, CPH, note for Mark 13:1). The stones were decorated with gold which dazzled in the sunlight. “What wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” said the disciples (Mar. 13:1).
The original and most beautiful temple in Jerusalem was completed by King Solomon in the mid-900s B. C. This stood until around 587 when the Babylonians destroyed it and took the people of Judah into captivity. About seventy years later, a less ornate temple was built again after the Jews were allowed to return and rebuild Jerusalem. This temple remained until King Herod enhanced and expanded it shortly before the birth of Christ.
This temple was a source of great national pride. It gave the Jews the assurance that God must be pleased with them. After all, they made the daily sacrifices that God commanded. They prayed in the temple. They kept the festivals and feasts. But just before today’s reading, Jesus stood up in the temple and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! See, your house is left to you desolate” (Mat. 23:37-38).
He followed this up by telling His disciples privately, “You see all these [buildings], do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” The temple would be utterly destroyed, and not just the temple, but the entire city of Jerusalem. This happened about forty years later in the year A. D. 70, when the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem after an extended siege and laid waste to the city.
The well-fortified city walls did not save the people. The shining temple in the center of the city did not save them. God wanted to save them, but they rejected the salvation He sent. On His way to Jerusalem at the beginning of Holy Week, Jesus wept over the city, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes” (Luk. 19:42). At that time also, He had predicted the destruction of the city, that one stone would not be left upon another. Why would this happen? “Because,” said Jesus, “you did not know the time of your visitation” (v. 44). So many of the people had rejected their Lord of life.
The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple serve as a warning for us that the things which may seem most solid and immovable on this earth also have an expiration date. The powerful countries, officials, and businesses will pass away. The great cities will fall. Our possessions, no matter how valuable; our bank accounts, no matter how full; our homes, no matter how well-built, will one day fall apart, be emptied, and come crashing down.
But there is a deeper lesson here. The people in Jerusalem were trusting in their work for God instead of His work for them. This can happen to us as well. We can quietly compare ourselves with others and feel prideful, saying with the boastful Pharisee, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luk. 18:11). Or we can think that our attendance at church and our regular offerings are pleasing to Him, even if our heart is not really in it.
But God does not want empty actions. He wants repentance and faith. David put it this way in his penitential psalm: “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psa. 51:16-17). That is why Jesus wept over the city—He saw very little repentance and faith among His people who had the Holy Scriptures. They had the truth of God and rejected it.
None of the impressive and beautiful things created by our hands can measure up to the glory of God. None of our works, none of our achievements, none of our abilities can secure for us the favor of our Lord. Only Jesus could do this. Only He could lay the foundation and set the cornerstone for a holy temple that would never fall. Only He could establish a spiritual house for the offering of “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1Pe. 2:5).
Our “spiritual sacrifices,” our prayers, our good works, our acts of Christian love, are “acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” They are acceptable to God because we do them in faith. We know we cannot earn His favor by what we do. We know that we already have favor with Him because of what Jesus did for us. Jesus is “the stone that the builders rejected [which] has become the cornerstone” (Psa. 118:22). He is the Rock on which the Church is built. We stand firmly on Him.
Jesus could not be thrown down. He could not be destroyed. He is the Son of God, through whom all things were created. He is the Lord of life. After the first time that Jesus cleared the temple of all who bought and sold in it, the Jewish leaders asked Him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” They thought He was talking about the temple building itself and ridiculed Him. But Jesus was speaking about His body (Joh. 2:18-21). He would soon die on the cross for all sin, and then He would rise again on the third day. That temple could not be destroyed.
The temple building in Jerusalem was impressive, but it was nothing but an empty structure, a desolate house, without the Lord’s gracious presence. The same is true for our churches. If we no longer focus on Jesus, if we no longer receive His gifts through the Word and Sacraments with repentance and faith, then we have rendered these beautiful structures meaningless. If our confidence as Christians is in a building, then we are no different than the Jews in Jesus’ day who trusted a building more than the Son of God incarnate.
We know that everything we see on earth will one day be gone. Even our bodies will fail and return to dust. But as St. Paul writes, “we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2Co. 5:1). We have a home with God above, a temple that will never be destroyed. By His grace, we will enter His holy household, where we will live in perfect peace and joy for all eternity. Thanks be to God! Amen.
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(picture from “Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem” by David Roberts, 1850)
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.
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(picture from Saude stained glass depicting the wood, knife, and jar with fire for the sacrifice of Isaac)
The First Sunday in Advent – Pr. Faugstad sermon
Text: Genesis 3:14-4:2
In Christ Jesus, the Offspring of the virgin, who was called Immanuel, God with us, dear fellow redeemed:
“The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you.’” What the devil had done was tempt the most special part of God’s creation—mankind—to sin. In the form of or inhabiting a serpent, the devil had approached the first woman with the express purpose of turning her against her Creator. He first tempted her to doubt the Word of God and then to deny the Word of God. She took fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—the one tree God warned Adam not to eat from—, and she ate. Then she gave some of the fruit to Adam “who was with her,” and he ate (Gen. 3:6).
They did not receive what they were looking for. They were hoping to “be like God,” as the devil had promised them. They failed to appreciate that they already were “like God,” made in His holy image (1:26-27). They did receive part of what the devil had promised, the knowledge of good and evil (3:5). They learned that they used to be good as the caretakers of God’s good creation. Now they had become evil, and they viewed God as their enemy.
This is why they went into hiding when they heard Him walking in the garden. They were afraid of Him. What was He going to do to them? Adam surely remembered what God said about that one tree, that “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (2:17). They went into hiding because they did not want to be punished for their sin. They did not want to die. In fact, they already had. They were still breathing, but spiritually, they had died. They were separated from God. They were on the devil’s side now.
But the LORD would not let the devil keep them. Their punishment would not be the same as the devil’s punishment. God extended no grace and hope to the devil, but He did to Adam and Eve. The key verse in today’s reading and perhaps in all of Scripture is verse fifteen. God said this to the devil but for mankind’s benefit: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her Offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.”
Just as the devil had manipulated a woman into disobeying God, so it would be through the Offspring of a woman that the devil’s power would be crushed. Martin Luther called this verse the “first comfort, this source of all mercy and fountainhead of all promises” (Luther’s Works, vol. 1, p. 191). He also suggested that God made the prophecy purposely vague, so that the devil would have to fear every woman going forward since any of them might bear the One to destroy him.
God’s promise terrified the devil, but it gave great hope to mankind. God had not changed His mind about death entering the world through sin. But now He delivered the hope of salvation, that One would come to set everything right again, to overcome sin, devil, and death for all humanity. If Adam and Eve thought another path was open to them, that possibility was closed when God posted “the cherubim and a flaming sword” outside the Garden of Eden to keep them away from the tree of life.
There was no other way to be saved than God’s way. Immediately after this, we are told that “Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived.” They trusted what God said, that salvation would come through the woman’s Offspring. They hoped their firstborn son was this Savior. They called him “Cain,” a name that means “acquired” or “gotten” because they had “gotten a man from the LORD.” But Cain was not the promised One. The devil poisoned his mind with anger and hatred, leading to the murder of his brother Abel.
God’s promise would not be fulfilled for many, many years. Child after child would be born, grow old, and die. Women had pain in childbearing like God said they would, while enduring the imperfect rule of men. Men toiled in pain by the sweat of their face to make a living, before returning to the ground from which they were made. Decade after decade, generation after generation, brief life to certain death. Still no Savior.
God’s people might have wondered if His promise would be fulfilled, except that He reminded them with clearer and clearer prophecies as the time approached. The Savior would come from the line of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah (Gen. 49:10). He would be a descendant of King David (Psa. 110). He would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14). He would be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2). God waited for thousands of years after making His promise, until “the fullness of time had come” (Gal. 4:4).
Then He sent His angel Gabriel to a virgin named Mary. “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,” said Gabriel, “and you shall call his name Jesus” (Luk. 1:31). “How will this be,” asked Mary, “since I am a virgin?” And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (1:34-35). The time had finally come! The woman’s Offspring was here. God had entered His creation, taking on human flesh. The devil was about to be ruined.
And all of that, the dark day when the world was plunged into sin, the beautiful, first promise of God, the history of every joy and sadness, hope and pain, life and death, all of it was in the background and in Jesus’ mind as He rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. “Hosanna to the Son of David!” shouted the people. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mat. 21:9). No one understood what had to be done. No one knew the suffering that Jesus would endure. No one knew what it would take to redeem mankind from the sin that started in Eden.
The death that was brought on the world through a tree had to be undone by death on another tree. The perfection that was lost through sin had to be regained by a perfect sacrifice. The curse of sin had to be directed against One who had never sinned. He had to pay for man’s disobedience. He had to suffer eternal punishment in every person’s place. This is what Jesus, the eternal Son of God, had to do.
He was witness to all that transpired in Eden. He walked with Adam and Eve in perfection and then found them in their sin. He saw all the wickedness that was done from that point on, all the pride, deceitfulness, abuse, unfaithfulness, violence. He was witness to everyone’s sins from Eden onward. And because He is God, He could see even the sins that stretched forward in time, including the sins done in our lifetime, the sins done by us, even our sins today.
What would you think if you had witnessed all that poisonous evil, the terrible pain and destruction, brought about because of mankind’s sins? What would you do? Would you feel compassion for sinners? Or would your anger burn hot against them? Jesus rode forward humbly to His death in every sinner’s place. We hear this Palm Sunday account at the beginning of the Church Year because it teaches us how to think about sin and salvation and Jesus, and how to prepare for His coming.
If any of us is comfortable with our sinning, then we’re not really seeing what Jesus did in Jerusalem. He was not beaten up for anything He had done. He was not driven toward Calvary for His sins. He did not cry out in agony on the cross for His wrongdoing. He was there because of Adam and Eve. He was there because of Cain. He was there because of Abraham and David and Jezebel and Nebuchadnezzar and Mary and Herod and Pontius Pilate—all the sinful people of human history, both prominent and poor, outwardly good and evil. He was there because of you and me, because of our sins.
He was there for you and me. Jesus went to the cross to make satisfaction for our sins. Adam and Eve’s selfishness, shame, and fear—“Put that on Me,” He said. Our lovelessness, our lies, our pride, our pleasure-seeking, our greediness, our despising the holy Word—“I’ll take the punishment,” He said. He paid for the sins of your past, your sins of today, and all the sins that will be done in the future.
This is what God promised right after the fall. This is what He told Adam and Eve and their descendants to look for. This is what He tells us to look to. God kept that first promise from Eden to Jerusalem. We weren’t in the crowd on Palm Sunday, but we should picture ourselves there. While we’re at it, we can picture Adam and Eve standing there in their garments of animal skin with their sons Abel and Seth; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob looking on; David and his descendants watching with joy. We see there a great “cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1), all who waited for God’s promise to be fulfilled.
And we see there all believers who have lived since that time, up to our day and beyond. We stand there, eyes fixed on Jesus, His praise on our lips. We watch Him go forward, carrying the weight of the whole world. He goes to the cross for our sins. He goes to destroy the works of the devil (1Jo. 3:8). He goes there to save us from death.
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 Procession in the Streets of Jerusalem” by James Tissot, 1836-1902)