Cross and comfort accompany Christmas

Posted on January 3, 2016 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the Sunday after New Year

Isaiah 42:1-9  +  1 Peter 4:12-19  +  Matthew 2:13-23

The hymn we just sang (TLH #115 – O Blessed Day When First Was Poured) was about the circumcision of Christ, on the eighth day of Christmas, January 1st, the first blood shed by our Savior and the first reminder that Jesus did not come to escape our pain and suffering, but to embrace it as His own. Even so, the pain that accompanied circumcision was minor compared to the joy and celebration that also accompanied it; another son was added to Israel, another offspring of Abraham—in fact, THE offspring of Abraham who was the true heir to the throne of Israel and to the Old Testament itself. God had kept His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So pain was accompanied by joy for the holy family. And blood was mixed with hope—not unlike the birth of a child. Both cross and comfort accompany Christmas.

That theme is pursued even further in today’s Gospel, where we hear of the horrific massacre of the little boys of Bethlehem—the Holy Innocents, as they’re sometimes called, slaughtered by that monster, King Herod, not to mention the fear of the holy family as they got up in the middle of the night and fled to a foreign country, to Egypt, to escape the massacre. All of which is tempered by the joy and comfort of seeing God’s hand, guiding the events in this story, protecting the Christ-Child and keeping Him safe from harm, for now, so that the Child could grow up and die a “proper” death, on a cross, for the sins of the world.

We’re confronted here with the stark reality of who God is and how He governs the affairs of man. He is not the God who prevents Herod from carrying out his massacre. He is not the God who always steps in and spares the innocent from suffering. Sometimes He does. But not always. He is the God who sometimes allows wicked men to carry out their wicked plans, and who, in most cases, does not tell us the reason why.

What do we know about this case as it’s laid out in today’s Gospel?

First, we know that God foresaw this event, even as He foresees all that happens in our universe, every event, every decision, every act by every man. We’re told specifically that the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem was prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah. God knew ahead of time what Herod would do.

Second, we know that, although God knew what King Herod would do, the one responsible for the wicked slaughter of Bethlehem’s children was King Herod and he alone. The wise men were not to blame. Jesus, Mary and Joseph were not to blame. And God did not wish for it to happen, nor did God intervene in human history to cause it happen, to make Herod do what he did. Wicked King Herod alone, spurred on by the devil, of course, was responsible. He alone is to blame. He caused it to happen, by his own wicked will, together with the soldiers who carried out his wicked orders.

And third, we know that God not only foresaw, not only allowed, but also caused to happen the holy family’s flight to Egypt, and the preservation of His Son there, and the return to Israel, to the city of Nazareth after Herod’s death, as prophesied in Holy Scripture. God foresaw the protection of His Son and He also intervened in human history to make it happen. He sent His angel to Joseph three times to warn Joseph and to guide him, to see to it that he would protect Jesus. Not only that, but, as we’ll hear this coming Wednesday in our Epiphany service, God saw to it that the star of Bethlehem would guide the wise men to where Jesus was, which, on the one hand, so that Jesus might the gifts of the wise men which would pay for the expenses of their flight to Egypt. And God also saw to it that King Herod would die an excruciating death not too long after the holy family fled to Egypt, ensuring that Israel would again be a safe place for God’s Son to live.

Those are the facts of the story.

Now, some people would say that, since God is omnipotent and the sovereign Ruler over all things, He could have intervened to stop Herod from slaughtering those little children, and therefore, God is ultimately to blame for Herod’s massacre, that God is at fault.

The truth is, it’s very easy to blame God for everything that goes wrong in this world, isn’t it? Because He could step in and prevent it from happening, right? But God’s sovereignty is really just a convenient excuse for the real cause of human pain and suffering and death. That cause is human beings, including you and me.

God didn’t intervene to stop Herod, just as He practically never intervenes to stop people from dying of old age. Why? Couldn’t God stop it? Couldn’t God give us a fountain of youth and a cure for every disease? Of course He could. In fact, He did. It grew in the Garden of Eden. It was called “the Tree of Life.” But He took it away from our race when our parents, Adam and Eve, sinned, just as He warned them ahead of time He would do. But they sinned anyway. So God’s reason for allowing death by old age is the same reason for which He allows all the pain and suffering that men endure, including wicked men who carry out their wicked will and bring harm to others, even to God’s believing children: mankind is under a curse.

Do we deserve our curse? Yes, we do. Even little children? Yes, they do. Couldn’t God remove the curse from mankind? Well, yes, He could. But there’s only way in which He could do it. By sending His Son into this world and making Him a curse for us. As St. Paul writes to the Galatians, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”), that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. The blessing of Abraham, when God said to him: in your Seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas, isn’t it?, and at the circumcision of Christ, and also in the flight of the holy family to Egypt: the unfolding of God’s plan to send His Son into the world to remove our curse from us and to bring the blessing of salvation to us through His death on the cross.

Christ suffered for our sins and has removed God’s curse from all who believe in Him. He hasn’t yet removed us from this world with its curse or freed us from the outward effects of that curse. But He has forgiven us our sins and given us eternal life in Christ, so that, no matter what bad things happen to us in this world, they are temporary hardships and crosses for us to bear, but they are not permanent, and they are not punishments from an angry God. Even death is not final. There’s the comfort that accompanies the cross.

And soon God will completely and permanently remove the curse of sin and death from all who believe in Christ. Soon God will intervene to stop all the wicked men who seek to bring us harm, and they will not only be stopped. They will be judged and condemned. Soon. Not yet, but soon. There’s the comfort that accompanies the cross.

Even now, God reigns over human history. He preserves and protects, directs and defends us, and sometimes He intervenes even now, not always allowing wicked men to get away with their schemes. Sometimes He intervenes with punishment for the wicked and with miraculous deliverance for the godly. We have the assurance from Holy Scripture that all things must work together for our good, and that the sovereign God will not allow anything or anyone to harm us beyond the limits set by His wisdom and by His fatherly will, as He demonstrated in the deliverance of the Christ-Child from Herod’s wicked hand.

The Christian celebration of Christmas is neither shallow nor cutesy, like the world’s pretend celebration of Christmas. We don’t ignore the reality of pain and sorrow and suffering in this season when we celebrate the birth of Christ. On the contrary, we know very well that the cross accompanies Christmas. But pain is accompanied by joy. And blood is mixed with hope. Both cross and comfort accompany Christmas. And so, as St. Peter says, we rejoice to the extent that we partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, we may also be glad with exceeding joy. Amen.

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Christ was born to redeem us

Posted on December 27, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas

Isaiah 11:1-5  +  Galatians 4:1-7  +  Luke 2:33-40

It’s the third day of Christmas today, which is also the Feast day of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist, which is why we prayed an extra Collect this morning. But the Sunday after Christmas, with its Epistle from Galatians 4 and its Gospel from Luke 2 historically take precedence over the feast of John because of the importance of the truth revealed in today’s lessons. In our Gospel, we follow the holy family from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, to the Temple, 40 days after Jesus was born, where we hear the testimony of two now-famous elderly saints: Simeon and Anna. You heard today only part of Simeon’s testimony, the part where he blessed Joseph and Mary, and revealed this truth to Mary, “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken against (yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Then we hear about the prophetess Anna who was also there in the Temple that day. Her words aren’t recorded for us directly, but St. Luke tells us that, when she saw Jesus, she gave thanks to the Lord, and spoke of Him to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

It’s that concept of redemption that the Holy Spirit holds before our eyes today and that we’ll focus on for a few minutes, and it’s especially fitting, with the two baptisms that took place this morning. In preparation for Baptism, we reviewed the Biblical meaning of “redemption,” and we focused on the truth confessed in the Apostles’ Creed, spending most of our time talking about the Second Article of the Creed, the theme of which is redemption. Allow me to remind you how we summarize the Second Article in our Small Catechism. What does it mean that, “I believe in Jesus Christ”?

I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord; who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death; that I should be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from death, lives and reigns for all eternity. This is most certainly true.

“Who has redeemed me.” That’s the primary work of Christ. Notice how different that is from the world’s idea of redemption. The world talks about redemption as something a person has to do for himself after he’s messed something up. It’s like a second chance to make up for your mistakes or to do something right. You fail at something, you have to redeem yourself. You lose at something, you seek “redemption.” You commit some terrible sin, so you spend the rest of your life doing good to try to make up for it, and then you supposedly have “redemption.” That’s not at all what Biblical Redemption is.

Redemption is an Old Testament concept. It means “to buy someone or something back; to rescue someone from slavery.” The prime example of it is when God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The price that was paid for Israel’s redemption from that slavery was the blood of many spotless lambs, painted on the doorframes of their homes, at God’s command, which the angel of death saw and so “passed over” their homes when he brought destruction on the Egyptians. Hence the name “Passover.” Passover was a celebration of God’s redemption of His people.

Redemption is also found in the Old Testament in a slightly different context. If a person became impoverished and had to sell some of his property, a close blood relative could come and redeem what had been sold, to bring it back into the family. That’s important. The Redeemer had to be a blood relative.

All of that points to Christ. Just as God redeemed Israel from slavery in Egypt, so Christ would redeem Israel—which means all believers in Christ—from sin, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver—nor with the blood of a lamb, but with His own holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. That’s why He’s called the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

That brings us to the words of St. Paul to the Galatians that you heard this morning, where the Apostle talks about a kind of slavery in which all people once lived.

It’s true, God redeemed the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. But He led them straight from Egypt to a different kind of slavery, to the slavery of the Law of Moses. He led them straight to Mt. Sinai and gave them the Ten Commandments and all the laws of the Old Testament and placed Israel under that Law, commanding them, “You shall obey!” The one who obeys the Law is righteous in God’s sight. The one who obeys will live before God by his obedience. The one who disobeys will surely die.

The law was good. It’s good to worship the Lord God and serve Him only. It’s good to you’re your neighbor and honor parents and to not murder and to not commit adultery and to not steal. But what happened? Israel soon learned that they could not keep the law, not perfectly as it must be kept. The good law of God became a burden to them, because they could not keep it. They were sinners, from the very moment they were born, from the very moment they were conceived.

What was true for Israel, who had the law of God, was certainly also true for the Gentiles, for the non-Jews. They were slaves, too, as St. Paul writes, in bondage under the elements of the world. What are the elements of the world? They are the basic principles by which men live by nature: “If you are a good and decent person, if you try hard enough, if you work hard enough, God will accept you. And if you mess up, then you have to work even harder to redeem yourself, and then God will forgive you.” That’s the philosophy, that’s the religion of all people by nature. It’s up to you to earn a place in God’s house. It’s up to you to redeem yourself, or at least to make yourself worthy of redemption.

And that’s slavery. That’s bondage. It’s the devil’s biggest lie. Because you’re already thoroughly corrupt and sinful from birth. You aren’t a good person in God’s eyes, no matter who you are. And you can’t ever do enough to earn God’s favor or to atone for your sins. You simply can’t redeem yourself.

That’s why you needed a Redeemer in the first place. But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Our Redeemer had to be God’s Son, because no man can redeem another man from sin, death, and the power of the devil. But He also had to be our Brother, born of a woman, our blood relative, who could take our place under God’s law and keep it, because we have not kept it. He had to be our blood relative in order to shed His blood and die, in order to pay the price for our sins, in order to redeem us.

And now what? Now we receive the adoption as sons. How do we receive it? Through faith in Christ our Redeemer and through baptism into His name. As Paul wrote to the Galatians just a few verses earlier, For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”

As my youngest son likes to remind me, he has two fathers. All baptized believers in Christ have two fathers, an earthly one, and a heavenly One who gave His Son into our flesh to be our Redeemer, who is always good and merciful. God the Father gave His Son into our flesh and into death for our sins. How can sin, death, or the devil harm us any longer, if we have been baptized into His name and received redemption through faith in His blood?

This is why the Church celebrates Christmas. This is why Christians gather on Christmas and during this Christmas season, to celebrate the birth of our Redeemer, to hear His Word and to receive His forgiveness and His salvation in Word and Sacrament.

Mark and Jack, look what God the Father has given you! Through Holy Baptism He has adopted you and clothed you with Christ. He has redeemed you. He has made you His sons. Now continue to listen to your Father. Hear His Word, receive His absolution. Live as saints, as sons of God in this world, sons who bear the image of Christ before God. Live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from death, lives and reigns for all eternity.

And may all of us who have been baptized into Christ continue the celebration of Christmas. Christ, our Brother, was born to redeem us, and has given us the best Christmas present of all, redemption, and along with it, a Father in heaven to call our very own. Amen.

 

 

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The truth that defines a Christian celebration of Christmas

Posted on December 25, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Christmas Day

Hebrews 1:1-12  +  John 1:1-14

Dear Christians, saints of God and siblings of Christ our Brother: Christmas Eve, which we celebrated last night, tells the story of Jesus’ birth and reveals to us who He is: a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Christmas Day digs deeper into those key truths about the Child who was born to Mary and placed in a manger. It identifies for us who the Christ of the Bible really is; it defines the celebration of Christmas and it separates the Christian celebration of Christmas from the secular traditions that have corrupted Christmas and turned it into a Christ-less abomination.

So consider with me for a few moments, on this Christmas Day, what St. John, and especially what the Epistle writer to the Hebrews reveal to us about the Christ, so that ours may truly be a Christian celebration of Christmas.

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.

Dreams. Visions. Theophanies. These are some of the ways God gave His word to the prophets in the Old Testament, bits and pieces of knowledge, snippets of revelation. In some cases, we don’t even know how exactly God gave His word to the prophets, who then preached that word to our Old Testament fathers and revealed to them what God wanted them to know about Himself and about His demands and His promises. But from the moment Jesus came into the world, God had a new and better way of communicating with mankind. Because God didn’t have to send His word to Jesus or reveal Himself to Jesus. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

Unlike the prophets of old, Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, didn’t receive the word of God. He was—and is! —the word of God. Jesus didn’t speak from God some of the time, but all of the time, in every word, in every deed, and gave us the perfect revelation of God’s Being and of God’s will, and especially of God’s grace.

whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds

Those two phrases don’t seem to go together. If God the Father made the worlds—made the whole created universe—through His Son, then isn’t the Son already the co-owner of all things, together with the Father and the Spirit? He is! So why does He have to be “appointed heir of all things”? This is the mystery of the incarnation. According to His divinity, Christ already possesses all things from eternity. But Christ, the co-Creator and co-Owner of the universe who pre-existed the universe, was born in time and took on human flesh in order to become the Redeemer of humanity. And so, according to His humanity, born in time as one of us, Christ has to receive everything from His Father, just as we do. As a man, Christ owned nothing until the Father declared Him the Heir—the human Heir of all things.

And of course, if the Son of God is the heir of all things, then there is nothing left for anyone else to inherit, is there? If the Son of God inherits all things, then what is left for anyone else to receive from God? Nothing! And yet Scripture speaks many times of the “inheritance of the saints.” How does that work?

Understand what it means to be made a believer in Christ Jesus. It means that God brings you into the body of His Son, as Scripture often uses the analogy of Christ being the Head of the body, and the individual members of His Church being His mystical body. As a sinner is converted by the Holy Spirit and united with Christ through Holy Baptism, he is now counted by God as being a part of the Son of God, so that everything that the Son of God inherits, the converted sinner who believes in Christ now inherits, even a place in God’s house, even the inheritance of all things, together with Jesus, and never apart from Jesus.

Back to Hebrews. It says that Christ is the brightness of His (the Father’s) glory and the express image of His person and upholds all things by the word of His power

Can you separate the brightness of a light from the light itself? Can you separate the image or the appearance of a thing from the thing itself? And yet that’s how the Bible describes the relationship between God the Father and God the Son—distinct Persons, and yet one God, so that when you see Jesus, you see exactly what God the Father looks like, and when you hear Jesus, you hear exactly what God the Father says. That’s a little bit mysterious and hard to grasp. The Apostle Philip once struggled with it, too. He once said to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father. Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father;

Do you see, then, why it’s utterly impossible to say that those who don’t believe in Jesus still believe in the same God in whom we Christians believe? If Jesus is the express image of the Father and the brightness of the glory of the Father, then to reject Jesus is to reject the Father.

On the other hand, to receive Jesus is to receive His Father as well. And to know Jesus, the express image of God, lying humbly in a manger, showing mercy to sinners, dying on a cross for our sins, is to know God the Father as well. And so, by faith in Christ, we are made children of God.

when He had by Himself purged our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high

The writer to the Hebrews connects Christmas, Good Friday, Easter and Ascension for us. Christ the Lord, who was born at Christmas, purged our sins by His death on the cross. He rose again from the dead and ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father—all of this according to His humanity. First His humiliation, then His exaltation. It’s our Brother who reigns over all things.

having become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they

There was a bit of angel worship was going on in the first century, as we also learn in Colossians 2. But the writer to the Hebrews shows us how foolish that is, because in the Person of Christ, we have the eternal Creator, who took on human flesh for us, who died on the cross for us, who now reigns over all things. And we are invited to trust in Him and to worship Him and to call upon Him as the God-Man, our Brother, who is the one Mediator between God and man. He is far superior to the angels according to His divinity. He has become far superior to the angels also according to His humanity. Why on earth would anyone pray to an angel or worship an angel or think of the angels as anywhere near as important as Christ?

No, the angels themselves don’t want anything to do with being worshiped. They themselves bow down and worship Christ, even as they came down from heaven and worshiped Him when God brought Him into the world on Christmas, because they know who He is: the Son of God, who is also called God and Lord and Yahweh/Jehovah, as the rest of the verses from the Epistle demonstrate, the Son of God who, out of pure grace and mercy, took on human flesh to save His fallen human creatures. That makes Him worthy of all praise and honor and worship, from the angels, but even more, from us whom He came to save.

And so we have come today to praise Him, to honor Him, to worship Him who took on man’s flesh to save man from sin and to bring us to God. And the highest and best way to worship Him is to hear what He says about Himself, to believe it, to believe in Him as our Savior, and to receive the body and blood He gave for us and now gives to us in His Holy Sacrament for the forgiveness of sins. Let us praise the Lord God for His grace revealed in Christ Jesus, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true Man, born of the virgin Mary. This is the truth that defines a Christian celebration of Christmas. This is the truth by which we must be saved. Amen.

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Marvel at God’s Nativity

Posted on December 24, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Christmas Eve

Isaiah 9:2-7 + Micah 5:2-5 + Jeremiah 23:5-6 + Titus 3:4-7 + Matthew 1:18-25 + Luke 2:1-20

We’ve come together tonight to celebrate the birth of Christ, to marvel at God’s Nativity. I’m sure you’ve seen the Nativity scenes that are scattered around Las Cruces, or pictures of Nativity scenes from around the world. Some of you have little Nativities in your homes or outside your homes. Maybe some year we’ll have one here at our church. The Scripture lessons you heard this evening paint the Nativity Scene in vivid colors for us. From Isaiah to Micah, to Jeremiah to St. Paul, to St. Matthew to St. Luke—all the prophets and apostles set up the pieces of God’s Nativity, and, more importantly, they tell us what it means.

The truth is, this Nativity scene was prepared and designed by God Himself from all eternity. Every piece, every detail carved as if by a master craftsman. It begins with a virgin mother named Mary, carrying a child who was conceived by the Holy Spirit of God. Then there’s the godly husband named Joseph, of the house and line of David. Mary and Joseph’s ancestry, their family history, where they lived in Nazareth, their meeting, their betrothal prior to Christ’s conception—all of it was arranged by God in preparation for His Nativity.

The place of God’s Nativity—the little town of Bethlehem—is certainly no accident. It’s where the Christ had to be born, according to Micah’s prophecy. And what brought Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem from Nazareth? In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. Think about that—all the historical events that had to take place from the beginning of the world to put the nation of Israel where it was on the map, to preserve Israel as a nation through many wars and insurrections and exile, to place the Romans in command of the Empire, to get the Roman Emperor Augustus to issue that decree that would place Mary and Joseph at just the right place, at just the right time for the Child to be born, for the Nativity to be set in place.

It was no tragedy that Mary and Joseph found no room in Bethlehem’s crowded inn when they arrived. God the Father provided just the right place for Mary to give birth, in a humble setting where there was a manger. God’s Nativity included a manger, a feeding-trough for animals. It wasn’t a bed fit even for an earthly king, much less for the King of kings, and yet it foreshadowed beautifully the earthly life of humiliation that God chose for His Son, the intentional hiding of Christ’s glory and divinity, so that He might truly dwell among us as one of us, so that He might fulfill all righteousness for us and truly be THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.

So Mary gave birth to the Baby—who still didn’t have a name, by the way, even though His name was planned from eternity and foretold to Mary and Joseph. Like all Jewish baby boys, He would receive His name a week later, on the day of His circumcision. For now, Mary wrapped her beloved, nameless Son, the Son of God, in swaddling cloths and placed Him in the manger. And the basic Nativity scene was in place.

But a good Nativity also includes a few shepherds, and at least one angel, because it was the angel who really spelled out the meaning and the importance of that Baby’s birth for the first time. He appeared on that dark night to the shepherds and drove out the darkness with the brilliant light of the glory of the Lord, because the true Light which gives light to every man, as St. John says, had finally come into the world.

Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This is the meaning of God’s Nativity, and you don’t dare miss it. The Nativity—Christmas Eve—is not about cute displays or pageants or parties. It’s not about traditions or nostalgia. It’s not even about family. It’s about that family, the one God placed in Bethlehem on that night over 2,000 years ago. It’s about that family and how the Child born to that family was born to be a blessing to you and your family. Because the good news of the birth of Mary’s Child wasn’t just for the shepherds. It was for “all people,” as the angel said. And the news of His birth is meant to bring great joy to all people, because of who He is and what He came to do, which is all summed up in the angel’s words: He is a Savior. He is the Christ. He is the Lord.

His birth is the gift of a good and gracious God to a world made up of sinners only, the gift of God With Us, Emmanuel, which is why the whole heavenly host of angels also came down from heaven and sang, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill to men. But the true nature of that Gift is even more astonishing than the birth of God, because the tender Nativity scene would eventually give way to another more gruesome scene of that same Savior, Christ the Lord, hanging on a cross. God sent His Son into the world as a baby, as one of us, to grow up here, to live here, to die here upon a cross, and by His death to make full atonement for the sins of man.

And now, through the words of the angels and the prophets and apostles, as they are preached to you tonight and to people everywhere who hear this Gospel, through the preaching of God’s Nativity, He calls out to you and to men everywhere, Do not be afraid. Let there be peace between God and men. Repent of your sins, and believe the good news, that God gave His Son into this world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved, that you all might be saved, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy, through Holy Baptism, the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.

There’s no room for any kind of superficial Christianity here. If you celebrate the birth of Christ with a nice Nativity scene in your home, if you come to church on Christmas Eve but then go right back to your sin to live in it, if you go right back to *not* hearing the Word of Christ or ignoring the Word of Christ, then you don’t really celebrate Christmas at all, not like the angels did, not like the shepherds did, not like Mary and Joseph did, with awe and thanksgiving and faith. Then for you the Nativity has become nothing more than a worthless tradition, and by such unbelief, you will lose out on the gift of salvation that Christ came to bring.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. God has sent word to you again this night of His grace and mercy, and His desire for all men to be saved by faith in His Son. God has set up His Nativity again for you tonight in the preaching of the Gospel, so that you may rejoice in His gift to the world, so that you may benefit from it and be saved by it and pass it on to your children and to your children’s children; and so that, as Christians, you may have the peace that surpasses all understanding, so that you may have joy in your homes all year round, not because you have a Christmas tree or because you’re surrounded by family and friends, but because you have the Savior, who is Christ the Lord. He has been given to you as a gift, as the Gift. And having the gift of Christ, you will also be given the strength to face the darkness of this world, whether it’s the darkness of persecution, or of loneliness, or even the darkness of death. Because just as God arranged all of history to set His Nativity in place, so God has arranged all the pieces of history so that you should hear of His Nativity, and He will continue to arrange the rest of this world’s future so that you may be kept safe, through faith, from sin, death, and the power of the devil. For to us a Child is born. To us a Son is given. Merry Christmas! Amen.

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Heed the testimony of John

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for Rorate Coeli – Advent 4

Isaiah 40:1-8  +  Philippians 4:4-7  +  John 1:19-28

Every year we hear the testimony of John the Baptist on this Sunday before Christmas, and rightly so. John was sent to prepare the way for the Christ, and even today the Holy Spirit speaks to you through John’s testimony. The testimony of John recorded in today’s Gospel is very simple and straightforward. He confesses plainly what he is not. And he does not deny what he is. And just as it was in the days of John, so it is also today. God demands that everyone must pay attention to the testimony of the baptizer.

Remember who John was: the son of that elderly, godly couple Zacharias and Elizabeth, who were surely dead by the time John was thirty years old and began to attract the attention of all Jerusalem. He lived out in the wilderness alone. He wore camel’s skin for clothing. He ate wild locusts and honey for food. And in his whole life he probably never cut his hair or shaved his beard, like Samson in the Old Testament. He would have appeared strange to the people of Jerusalem.

But the strangest thing about John was not his appearance. It was his preaching and his baptizing. John was preaching a powerful message of repentance and drew large crowds out into the wilderness where he was, on the banks of the Jordan river. And baptizing people for the forgiveness of sins was brand new, not commanded in any of the Old Testament Scriptures. Something new was happening. So the religious leaders felt they needed to investigate. Who are you?, they asked.

The other John, John the Evangelist, in his Gospel, made a big deal about John the Baptist’s testimony to the Jews that day. He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” Remember, there hadn’t been a prophet in Israel in some 400 years, since the days of the prophet Malachi. And Malachi had prophesied that the Lord Himself would come to Israel, referring to Christ the Savior. In fact, if there were any around who remembered, about 29 years earlier, there had been a stir around Jerusalem when some wise men came from the East looking for the Christ who had been born. But no one had heard about Him since. Could this John be the Christ? But John confessed the truth: I am not the Christ.

Are you Elijah? You remember Elijah, that powerful Old Testament prophet who performed many miracles and who preached against the wicked rulers of Israel. John probably did sound a lot like Elijah. And remember, Malachi had prophesied in the very last verses of the Old Testament, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet Before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. And he will turn The hearts of the fathers to the children, And the hearts of the children to their fathers, Lest I come and strike the earth with a curse. But John confessed that he was not Elijah. Why does he say that, when the angel Gabriel had told John’s father that John would come “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” and Jesus Himself would later confirm that John was the Elijah who was to come? Because the Jews weren’t expecting an Elijah, but the Elijah, the same one who was taken up to heaven in a whirlwind, accompanied by a fiery chariot.

Are you the Prophet?, they asked. They may have been referring to the Prophet that Moses said would come back in Deuteronomy 18: The LORD your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear. But the Jews rightly understood that the Prophet Moses talked about was the Christ, and they had already learned from John that he was not the Christ. So they may have just been asking, are you a prophet? And John said, no. How could he say no, when he was clearly sent by God to preach God’s word? Because the office of the Old Testament prophets was to prophesy about future events. The prophets all had one basic job to do: To declare to the people of Israel that, “Someday the Christ will come!” And that was not John’s office or his testimony.

What was John’s testimony? The Jews asked him, Who are you, then? And he did not deny who he was: I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the LORD,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said. Oh, that changes everything. John is not just one prophet among many. John has a special role to play in God’s plan of salvation. He is the voice that announces the arrival of the LORD. And, by the way, here’s another passage that proclaims the divinity of Christ. John was specifically preparing the way for the Christ. And he says, make straight the way of the LORD—that’s the Lord God. That’s Yahweh or Jehovah. Those who claim that Jesus is not true God, or that Jesus is not Jehovah, have to also deny the testimony of John the Baptist.

But how is the way of the Lord made straight? That’s what John has been preaching all along. Repent! That was his message to everyone, to tax collectors and harlots, to kings and rulers, to Pharisees and religious leaders, to all of the people of Jerusalem, to everyone within the sound of his voice, John cried out, “Repent!” You are not good enough to enter God’s kingdom—any of you! You have not kept God’s commandments well enough to be saved by your obedience—any of you! You are all corrupt, you are all sinners, you all deserve God’s wrath on the day of wrath. And yet, you are all—every one of you—being invited by God to have your sins washed away and forgiven for free. You are all being given a Savior from sin, because God wants you all to enter His kingdom. God is providing peace and rest and hope for all of you—for everyone within the sound of my voice. But you have to listen! You can’t deny your sinfulness or go on willfully living in your sins. You can’t trust in yourself. You can’t trust in anyone but in the Lord Christ.

That’s the testimony of John. But that’s not what the Pharisees and those who were sent by them wanted to hear. They didn’t believe John’s testimony. They didn’t believe that they were included among the sinners of the world who needed to be saved by the Christ. And so they didn’t recognize John the Baptist as anyone they needed to pay attention to. They asked him, saying, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

So he told them, I baptize with water, but there stands One among you whom you do not know. It is He who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose. In other words, I am carrying out my God-given duty. But it’s not about me. It’s about the One who is coming after me—not coming long after me, not coming someday, but He “stands among you.” The Christ is here. Now. The LORD is here. And I am pointing you to Him, whether you believe me or not. God has made me a voice to tell you where to find Him, now that He has come, and how to benefit from His coming, by repentance and faith in Him.

That was the testimony of John. And that is the testimony of every New Testament preacher. You are all sinners. And you are all commanded to repent of your sins, and you are all invited to enter the kingdom of God for free, by faith in the Christ who has come. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Repent and believe in Him. Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins.

But where do you find Him, this Christ the Savior, Christ the Lord, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? No longer will you find Him in a manger, or on the banks of the Jordan River. No longer will you find Him out in the desert. And you certainly won’t find Him in that sinful place called your heart. You will find Him, together with the peace and hope and forgiveness that He brings, in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism where He covers a person with His own righteousness, and in the Sacrament of His true body and blood that He instituted for Christians to eat and to drink. Here in this Gospel Christ comes to save sinners from their sins and to raise up for Himself a holy Christian Church—holy, because the members of it have had their sins forgiven by God, and also holy, because its members are being renewed daily by the Holy Spirit to lead holy lives in this unholy world.

Most people didn’t heed the testimony of John the Baptist, but some did, including some of the worst sinners in Israel. And they rejoiced at the coming of Christ, because they found forgiveness with Him. They found God to be a good and merciful Father who gave His Son into death for their sins. Most people today don’t heed the testimony of John the Baptist, either. Most don’t believe in Jesus as the Christ; most don’t believe that God came to earth on that first Christmas, or that God is coming to earth again on the Last Day, or that God still comes to earth through the Gospel and will be here in person among us on Christmas Day, giving His very body and blood in the Mass that is Christ-mass. But some believe. And for you who believe, this is your hope. This is your comfort. This is your time to rejoice. Amen.

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