The perfect Son, making perfect sons and daughters

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany

Isaiah 61:1-3  +  Romans 12:1-5  +  Luke 2:41-52

We have before us today a straightforward, simple account from our Lord’s childhood.  There are only a handful of references to Christ’s childhood in Scripture. He was probably about five years old when He and His parents returned from Egypt to go live permanently in Nazareth. The rest of His youth—until the age of 30! — is summarized for us in St. Luke’s Gospel right before the verses you heard today: the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. And again at the end of today’s Gospel: Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

What does that tell us? It tells us that Jesus was likeable. Friendly. He didn’t keep to Himself; He interacted well with people, as we see from the fact that His parents weren’t at all concerned about Jesus as they left Jerusalem, figuring He was in the company of His relatives and acquaintances, as He must have often been. He was utterly obedient to His parents. Joyful.  Intelligent. Wise. Dependable and reliable. Especially gifted in spiritual matters, keenly interested in the doctrine of Scripture, with a true love and devotion to His heavenly Father and an unshakable trust in Him. The fact that Jesus “grew” in all these things simply means that He didn’t come out of the womb as a mature adult trapped in a baby’s body. He didn’t rely on His divine omniscience, but instead, He set it aside and humbled Himself. He had to learn to speak, learn to read and write; He had to learn facts and information, learn to live in this world, like any child does, except that He did it all without sin, with no youthful stubbornness or rebellion, with no selfishness, with no anger, with no complaining. Jesus was, literally, the perfect Son.

So we really have to think about the events recorded in our Gospel. Because suddenly, and apparently for the first time in His life, the perfect Son wasn’t where His parents expected Him to be.

Imagine the panic that must have struck Mary and Joseph at the end of their first travel day away from Jerusalem. They assumed Jesus was with some of their relatives in the caravan. They didn’t watch over their perfect Son perfectly. That speaks to just how normal their family was, in spite of the spectacular events that surrounded Jesus’ birth. The fact that Jesus was the Son of God doesn’t seem to have come up all that often in their home. It’s not unlike having an adopted son or daughter. It’s not that you actually forget that he or she was adopted. Most days it just doesn’t matter. You don’t even think about it. He’s just “your son.” She’s just “your daughter.” You’re a family. That’s the way it should be.

Except that, in the case of Jesus, He had two fathers to consider: Joseph, his adopted father, and God Himself, His eternal, divine Father. Mary and Joseph were raising their Son Jesus for Someone Else. Their Son had a divine origin and a divine purpose—a purpose that He had to stay behind in Jerusalem to accomplish.

Mary and Joseph hurried back to Jerusalem. They had already gone a day’s journey away, so it took another day to get back. And then, on the third day, they retraced their steps back to the Temple, where they found Jesus, not sitting idly, not worrying about His parents, but actively involved in the affairs of His Father, listening to the teachers of the Law, asking them astute questions, providing astonishing answers. Even at the age of twelve, Jesus displayed His divine majesty, not with miraculous deeds, but with the perfect knowledge of God that only the perfect Son of God could have.

Mary and Joseph, too, were amazed when they saw Jesus sitting there in the midst of the teachers, probably because they figured that Jesus had somehow gotten lost and separated from their company on accident, and that He would be frightened and searching for His parents. Instead, they find Him here in the Temple, happy to be where He is, acting as if it were the most normal thing in the world for Him, as a twelve year old boy from Nazareth, to be discussing matters of God with the Jewish teachers in Jerusalem.

Son, why have You done this to us? Look, Your father and I have sought You anxiously. Mary was right, of course, to call Jesus her Son, and she was right to call Joseph His father, because, legally, he was. But she shows here that she still didn’t grasp the full meaning of the angel Gabriel’s words to her some 13 years earlier, that the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. She should have remembered God’s Word to her. She should have understood that she and Joseph were not the only parents of their Son, but that He had come with a divine purpose.

And that was basically Jesus’ answer to her: Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business? “The Father’s business” includes many things, of course, not the least of which was listening to God’s Word and revealing His Father to mankind. “I must be about His business,” Jesus said. It wasn’t optional. It was His purpose for coming into the world, to show us what God is like: righteous, kind, friendly, intelligent, wise. More than that, Jesus’ purpose was to show us what His Father is like in this: that the Father gave His perfect Son into death on a cross, so that sinners could be saved by faith in Him.

At the time, Mary and Joseph still didn’t understand what Jesus meant. Mary wouldn’t understand at times even later when Jesus was risking His life by preaching and teaching and speaking against the errors of the priests and Pharisees. But now, after all has been accomplished, now you understand, don’t you?

First, you understand that Jesus, the perfect Son of God, had to come into our flesh as the perfect human Son, because we are not perfect sons and daughters, either to God or to our human parents. Always obedient to our parents and other authorities, always selfless, always loving and trusting, always fearing God above all things, always thoroughly devoted to hearing and studying His Word—that doesn’t describe any of you, or me. You are not perfect sons and daughters. You are sinful sons and daughters. But now, by faith in Jesus and by Baptism into His name, you inherit His record. You are marked by His character. You are counted as perfect sons by faith in the Perfect Son.

Then, you understand, too, that Jesus did not come into this world to live for Himself, but to serve sinners, to serve you and me. He had to be about His Father’s business at all times, because His Father’s business was saving sinners, and Jesus is the only Savior of sinners. It’s foolish to imagine, as Roman Catholics do, that, somehow, Jesus is closer to His mother Mary than He is to anyone else. We see already from the age of twelve that His heart was devoted, not to His earthly family, but to His heavenly Father, and to all who would hear His voice. You who hear His voice today—you are His Father’s business. Jesus is spending this Sunday morning in your midst, with His Word and with His own body and blood, that you should hear His voice, repent of your sins, trust in Him as your Savior from sin, and know God through Him.

Finally, we learn from Jesus’ twelve-year-old example just how important God’s Word is to those who believe in Jesus. Christians love to hear God’s Word and study it and grow in it. And since we don’t have the perfect knowledge of God that Jesus had, we must be even more diligent in devoting ourselves to learning and studying God’s Word. That’s why we have our Small Catechism, to be a daily exercise in learning God’s truth. That’s why you have Bibles in your homes, and why we have Bible studies here at church, because if you’re a Christian, if you want to walk in Jesus’ footsteps, if you know Him and believe in Him and love Him, then you will not let your sinful flesh keep you or your children away from the opportunities you have to hear and learn God’s Word. Instead, you must struggle against your flesh, so that you remember Jesus’ love and devotion for His Father’s business even as a young boy of twelve. His devotion to God’s Word both earned for us the forgiveness of our sins, and serves as a model and as a goal for us, and for our children, so that we, who are already counted as perfect sons by faith in the perfect Son, may grow each day in the knowledge of God and in service to our neighbor, as is fitting for sons and daughters of our Father in heaven. Amen.

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The Gentiles have come to the light of Christ

Posted on January 6, 2015 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

Sermon for Epiphany

Isaiah 49:1-7  +  Isaiah 60:1-6  +  Matthew 2:1-12

As I promised on Sunday morning, we’re considering this evening the visit of the wise men, the magi who were led by a star to Bethlehem so that they could worship the newborn King of the Jews. It’s a story filled with wonder, just like the Christmas story itself, and it has rightly been called “the Gentiles’ Christmas.” Since you and I here are (I think) all Gentiles, it makes sense for us to celebrate this festival of Epiphany with extra joy.

The Epiphany is the manifestation or the revelation of Christ Jesus as the Savior, specifically today, as the Savior of the Gentiles. It’s hard for us to understand just what a big deal that was, that Jesus came to bring all the Gentiles, all the nations into fellowship with Him, and thus also into one great fellowship with those in Israel who would put their faith in Him. One great fellowship of mankind, one great Church united by a common faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, and the Savior. Since the days of Adam and Eve, some 4,000 years before the birth of Christ, God had basically let mankind go his own way, and mankind did so poorly that all but Noah’s family had to be wiped out at the time of the Flood. Then, not long after, God divided up humanity into nations at the Tower of Babel, letting all the nations go their own way. He let the race of men do what they wanted to do, which was to pursue their own made-up gods, their made-up religion, to pursue their own sinful and earthly desires, the same godlessness.

The same godlessness would have resulted for the line of Noah’s son Shem, except that God intervened at the time of Abraham and chose him and his descendants, specifically his descendants through Isaac and then Jacob, to be different. Not different in that they were less sinful or more deserving of God’s help and mercy. But different in that God revealed Himself to them and made special promises to them and special covenants with them. All the nations went their own way. All of them sat in the darkness of ignorance, impenitence and unbelief. All of them went to destruction, to perdition.  But Israel God called out from among the nations to be His own, His chosen people, His special people, purely out of divine grace and mercy, so that He might preserve the promise of a Savior who would one day be born of a woman.

So while the nations all went their own way away from the true God, Israel was shown grace, and some in Israel, the remnant, always believed in God and were righteous before Him, not by their own good works, but by faith. But even many in Israel, most in Israel walked in darkness, turned aside form God’s Word and God’s worship, and went their own way. You know (or should know) Old Testament history enough to know that.

Now, we heard on Sunday about God’s solution to Israel’s waywardness: God called His Son Israel out of Egypt. God sent His Son, the true Israel, to be what Israel wasn’t, to be a good Son, a faithful Son, an obedient Son, a new and better Israel. You heard Isaiah say that again tonight in that Messianic prophecy:  And He said to me, ‘You are My servant, O Israel, In whom I will be glorified. It was the Messiah’s mission To bring Jacob back to Him, So that Israel is gathered to Him. It made sense for God to gather Israel. He had spent the last 2,000 years on them. But what didn’t make as much sense to many people at that time, was that God’s plan of salvation stretched beyond Israel’s borders also to those Gentiles whom God had let go their own way for thousands of years. With the birth of Christ, the Gentiles were now invited as well.

Of course, that wasn’t really a new piece of information. You heard Isaiah prophesy the same thing tonight about the Christ: It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob, And to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also give You as a light to the Gentiles, That You should be My salvation to the ends of the earth. And again in Isaiah 60: Arise, shine (O Israel), for Your light has come…The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising. It was a spiritual light that Isaiah prophesied, the light of Christ, in whom the great reunion of humanity had been foretold, the birth of the One who fixes Adam’s fall, who brings the nations back into fellowship with God through faith, and thus with one another, too.

Leave it to God to take that prophecy about a spiritual light of revelation and signal its coming with an actual light, a miraculous light, the light of a “star.”

It was the light of a special star that guided those wise men from some nation in the East to travel to Israel. We don’t know how many of them there were or where exactly they came from. We don’t know what the light was that they saw in the sky, nor do we know exactly how they knew what it meant. We don’t need to know those things or waste our time speculating about them. We just sit back in awe at this story filled with wonder. Those were our forefathers who followed the light of that star. Not that any of us is probably directly related to them by birth. But they were Gentiles, like us. The first Gentiles to seek the Christ who had been born in Bethlehem.

Not that they knew initially to look for Him in Bethlehem. The star (or the light) that they followed seems to have disappeared for a time. So they went to Jerusalem to ask, Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him. The Jews hadn’t seen this light. We can only speculate as to why. And when they heard the story of these wise men, it says that Herod was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. Troubled. Not overjoyed. Not excited. But troubled. They weren’t eagerly waiting for the Messiah to be born, it seems. They were troubled at the thought of his birth. Herod, we know, was troubled out of jealousy and fear for his crown. As for the rest of Jerusalem? Perhaps troubled out of jealousy for their Jewish heritage, because salvation, they thought, wasn’t supposed to be for Gentiles, but for Jews, by keeping the Law. So they didn’t seek the Christ. They didn’t want Him. They didn’t realize their need for them.

Well, most of them in Jerusalem. Some did, like Simeon and Anna, about whom we heard a couple of Sundays ago. It’s likely that the wise men came shortly before Simeon and Anna met Jesus in the Temple. Maybe that’s why they were so anxiously awaiting the Christ in the Temple and were waiting for Him when He came, because they had recently heard of the wise men’s arrival, together with the rest of Jerusalem. Some were troubled at the news of Christ’s birth. Others were relieved beyond words. So it has always been. So it will always be.

The light of the star wasn’t enough to guide the wise men to Christ. It took a different light to lead them to where the Child was, the light of God’s revealed Word, specifically, His Word through the prophet Micah saying that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem.

So off they went. They sought Christ where God’s Word directed them to seek Him, and God blessed their seeking with the renewed light of the star, this time leading them right to place where the Child was—something that no star, in the scientific sense, is able to do. They found Jesus and worshiped Him and laid before Him those precious gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh—expensive gifts, fit for a king. Expensive gifts that Jesus and His family would surely need over the next few years as they lived as refugees in the land of Egypt.

The wise men were the firstfruits from among the Gentiles, signifying the great harvest that would follow. Who would have thought that people from every nation around the globe would one day acknowledge Jesus as their Savior and King? It used to matter who your parents were. It used to matter if you were physically related to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But now, your natural birth doesn’t matter at all. Your native country, your ancestry, your blood line, your color, who your parents were—it doesn’t matter. No nation on earth is superior to another before God, no class of people, no social status. I won’t even speak of “race,” because there is only one race of men, the human one, the sinful human one. Only faith in Christ matters, because in Him the two have become one, the nation of Israel and the rest of the nations. All approach God on the same basis. All approach God only through Christ Jesus, and receive God’s blessing and forgiveness only by faith in Christ Jesus.

Tonight we celebrate the dawn of that new day as God’s grace brought Gentiles into the true worship of God in the Person of His Son, as He graciously led wise men to seek and to find Him. He’s done the same for you by graciously sending forth the light of His Word to you, by bringing you into that great fellowship of faith in Christ through Holy Baptism, by bringing you together with the wise men into the worship of the One who was born in Bethlehem, King of the Jews, the One who was also crucified, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, who now has blessed us with the right to call Him our King, too. Rejoice, O Gentiles, with God’s people! Rejoice with the wise men! And seek Christ, not in the night sky, but in His Word and in His Sacrament. Here you will always find Him, to worship and adore Him, and to receive His grace and blessing. Amen.

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Nothing can hinder God’s good plan for His children

Posted on January 4, 2015 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

I’ll wish you a Merry Christmas one last time today, on this eleventh day of Christmas. Not that the truth of Christ’s birth becomes less important on January 6th; only our emphasis shifts as we focus on other events that God brought about for our salvation, other aspects of divine truth as revealed in the life and teaching of Christ. On this final Sunday in the Christmas season, we celebrate some events surrounding the birth of Christ that don’t exactly fit the world’s idea of a celebration or of a “merry” Christmas, and we learn some lessons that don’t come easy. Suffering surrounds the birth of Christ, and yet nothing can hinder God’s good plan for His children.

God’s good plan in today’s Gospel begins with the departure of the wise men. (We’ll hear about their visit in our service on Tuesday evening.) The wise men left the land of Israel without reporting to King Herod the whereabouts of the Child whose star had appeared over that house in Bethlehem. But Herod would find out soon enough, and God foresaw all that Herod would do. So He sent His angel to warn Joseph in a dream. Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him. No matter how King Herod or the devil himself raged against the Christ-Child, they couldn’t hinder God’s good plan to keep His Son safe.

But why send the holy family completely out of the land of Israel, all the way to Egypt? Matthew tells us that it was in order to fulfill an Old Testament prophecy: …that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” That’s from the Prophet Hosea. The whole verse goes like this:  When Israel was a child, I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son. It’s God referring to the nation of Israel in its infancy, as Jacob (whose other God-given name was Israel) was forced by famine to go down to Egypt for refuge and as Jacob’s descendants multiplied in the land of Egypt, and as God brought His people safely out of Egypt to the land of Israel at the time of Moses. But according to St. Matthew, Hosea’s words also apply to the Messiah, who was the true Son of God and the perfect Israel who was sent to take the place of sinful Israel. Hosea’s prophecy goes on to describe just how well God’s son, the nation of Israel, did after God brought them out of Egypt. They sacrificed to the Baals, And burned incense to carved images. Israel, as a nation, proved to be an unfaithful son to God. But now a faithful Son had been born, the true Son of God, who would always fear, love, and trust in God above all things so that He might cover us all with His righteousness. God’s good and gracious plan required that His Son Jesus retrace the footsteps of the nation of Israel to Egypt and back again, as a testimony to His saving work as Israel’s perfect substitute.

Herod’s wicked plot, designed only to kill Jesus, resulted in salvation for God’s children, because all of God’s children—you and I included—are faithless by nature, as the nation of Israel was. We were like the rest, lost and dead in sins and trespasses. We needed a Savior who would take our place under the Law, a Savior who would be a true and obedient Son of God, a better Israel in whom we could trust, so that by faith in Christ, the true Israel of God, we might be incorporated into Him and counted by God as righteous, being made members of the true Israel, the Christian Church. But all of that only takes place if God’s Son, in His infancy, is forced to flee down to Egypt, to be kept safe there until it’s time to return to Israel. And that’s just how it happened. Nothing could hinder God’s good plan for His Child, and for His children.

But then Matthew tells us of the horror of King Herod’s actions as he sent for all the baby boys of Bethlehem to be torn away from their mothers and slaughtered. Such was his hatred for the Christ-child, that it spilled over onto those innocent children. And so another horrible prophecy was fulfilled, A voice was heard in Ramah, Lamentation, weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, Refusing to be comforted, Because they are no more. Rachel, Israel’s second wife, died centuries earlier giving birth to her second son, Benjamin, right there in the vicinity of Bethlehem. Now this terrible slaughter takes place in fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy.

How do we make sense of such a massacre of innocent little children? There is no making sense of it, just as there is no making sense of the massacre of the 1.2 million tiny babies who were slaughtered in the United States just this past year, and every year, in the slaughter houses of abortion clinics (1.3 billion worldwide in the past 35 years). What we do is to place the blame for it where it belongs: on wicked King Herod and on those who supported him in his wickedness, and on those who commit and support the same kinds of atrocities today. What we do not do, what we must not do, is to put the blame on God.

Of course, the same world that champions abortion wags its finger at God and blames Him for massacres like Herod committed. How could God allow such a thing?!? A better question would be, How can mankind be so wicked? Better yet, How can I be so wicked? Because the same corruption of sin that leads some people to commit such atrocities and murders also dwells in your flesh and mine, causing you to doubt God and blame God and pretend to play God, so that you would tear Him down from His throne and sit in judgment of how He governs the world. No, the best question of all in the face of such human wickedness is this: How could God love this world of sinners, so that He should give His only-begotten Son into our flesh, to suffer and die for people as wicked as we are?

Herod’s wickedness is nothing but an extreme symptom of the same wickedness that dwells in our flesh. But God has had amazing mercy upon us and has called us to repent of our wickedness, to claim it and to renounce it, and to trust in the One who was spared from Herod’s slaughter so that He might spare us from the wrath and punishment that we deserve. And He has spared us. He has forgiven you all your sins in Holy Baptism and continues to forgive us, calling us daily to live in repentance and to receive His forgiveness in Word and Sacrament. Nothing can hinder God’s good plan for His children, and He reveals that plan to you again today, to save you from your sins, to make you His own dear child through faith in Christ, and to preserve you in the true faith unto life everlasting.

But what of those children of Bethlehem? Is there any good for them in all of this, and if so, where is it? Shall we conclude with the Baptists that all children up to a certain (unknown) age automatically go to heaven, like in the Left Behind movies when the supposed rapture takes place and there are no children left in the world, because they’ve all been taken to heaven? We have no Scriptural basis to believe that.

What we do have is the knowledge that these were Israelite baby boys, and as such, circumcised on the eighth day, just like Isaac was, just like Jesus was. That was more than an external rite. It was an external rite with God’s Word and promise attached to it, that those children were now His children. Those children of Bethlehem had the means of grace applied to them. Prayers were said for them by their believing parents. And so we trust that faith was also granted to them, little as they were, and with faith comes righteousness before God. From an earthly perspective, their lives were cut short. But from a heavenly perspective, their lives were spared, as Isaiah says in chapter 57: The righteous perishes, And no man takes it to heart; Merciful men are taken away, While no one considers That the righteous is taken away from evil. He shall enter into peace; They shall rest in their beds, Each one walking in his uprightness.

This is also why we baptize our children soon after they’re born. Because we don’t have a Word from God that all children go to heaven. What we do have is His Word that whoever believes and is baptized shall be saved. What we do have is His promise that faith comes by hearing, and that Baptism works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil and gives eternal life to all who believe this, together with the knowledge from Scripture that infants, too, can believe in Jesus for salvation. Nothing can hinder God’s good plan for His children, and part of that plan is Baptism, prayer, Holy Communion, and a lifetime of studying and learning His Word, so that, whether we live a long life on the earth or a very short one, whether we die a natural death or a violent one, we may always be found in Christ, and thus defy death together with Him.

Finally in our Gospel we have the holy family’s return to the land of Israel, and again, God shows us that nothing can hinder His good plan for His children.

What happened to Herod? What happened to his minions? As the angel said to Joseph in a dream, those who sought the young Child’s life are dead. Those who rage against Christ and against His Church rage for a little while and threaten for a time, and then, sooner or later, they die and face judgment. As the Psalm says, Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the LORD and against His Anointed…He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The LORD shall hold them in derision.

What happened to Jesus after all of Herod’s raging? He was kept safe. He lived and grew up in the small town of Nazareth. His hour had not yet come. But there was an hour to come. It’s not as if God were protecting His Son from all harm and danger and death. No, He was merely protecting Him until He had accomplished His mission on earth, until it was finished. Then the Father would hand His Son over to wicked men who would crucify Him. That was God’s plan all along: not to save Jesus from death, but to save us from death through His death. And nothing can hinder God’s good plan for His children.

Nothing could hinder God’s good plan to get His Son to the cross on time. Nothing could hinder His good plan to see that you were baptized and brought into fellowship with Christ. And nothing will be able to hinder His good plan to get you safely through this vale of tears to your heavenly home. Merry Christmas, one more time! Amen.

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Made like us so that we could be made like Him

Posted on December 28, 2014 by Rev. Paul Rydecki

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Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas

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

This morning we continue our Christmas celebration with Simeon and Anna, those elderly Old Testament saints who had spent so many decades of their life waiting, waiting for God’s Messiah to appear. And finally, He did appear, right there in the Temple in Jerusalem, their eternal God and Creator, just 40 days old. God revealed His Son to Simeon, and then to Anna, and they each rejoiced at seeing Him and worshiped God and gave witness to those around them of who this Child was: The Savior, the Redeemer, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of God’s people Israel.

St. Paul describes to the Galatians in today’s Epistle just how precious was the gift of that baby Boy. He elaborates on the secret that Simeon and Anna already knew, that Christ was born to redeem Jews and Gentiles alike from their bondage to sin, and to give to mankind a gift that everyone needs: the gift of sonship, the gift of adoption, the gift of a heavenly Father who claims them as His children and gives them the inheritance of the sons of God. Paul’s words emphasize this truth which we mentioned on Christmas Day: People are not, by nature, children of God. Rather, we are, by nature, slaves to sin. Jesus, the eternal Word, is the only-begotten Son of God and the heir of all things, and now He has been made like us, so that we might be made like Him.

Paul begins by pointing out the similarity between an underage child and a slave. Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, does not differ at all from a slave, though he is master of all, but is under guardians and stewards until the time appointed by the father. This was especially true in First Century culture. The little child of a rich land owner was the heir of the whole estate, but as long as he was a child, he commanded no one. He made no financial decisions. He wasn’t free to do whatever he wanted. On the contrary, his father would assign guardians and stewards and full-time chaperones to accompany the child everywhere, to make sure he was learning his lessons, to make sure he was behaving. Those stewards didn’t answer to the child, but to the father, so the child was under constant and meticulous supervision and there was nothing he could do about it. He was the heir of the estate, but he had about as much freedom as a slave.

So it was with Israel. Paul says, Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. In other places Paul describes those worldly elements this way: “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle.” They are external rules intended to keep people’s behavior in check. It looks very religious, but it has no power to change the heart, no power to make a person godly or righteous, no power to earn forgiveness of sins. That was the Law of Moses. God had made a covenant with the children of Israel back at the time of Abraham, to be their God, and that they would be His people, His children. But then, at Mt. Sinai, God imposed the Law on Israel as their steward, their guardian, their full-time chaperone. The Law was strict and demanding on Israel, with all its ceremonies and dietary restrictions and rites and rituals and punishments. God was treating them like the young children they were, to train them, to guard and guide them, until they came of age—or rather, until Christ, the true heir, would be born, and come of age.

Simeon and Anna and all the people of Israel since the time of Moses had lived under those strict regulations, those external rules, which were, as James said in Acts 15, a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. In fact, the main purpose of the Law was to show Israel that they couldn’t bear it, they couldn’t keep it, they couldn’t work their way into God’s favor. As for the Gentiles—the Gentiles were completely lost. They had no covenant with God. They had no relationship with God at all. As Paul says to the Gentiles in Ephesus, at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. All the Gentiles had were external rules and principles of their own, “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle.” The best of the Gentiles ended up living an externally decent life, but they had no true fear of God, nor love for God, nor faith in God. That’s how the world went on for hundreds and hundreds of years, with Israel confined and burdened under the Law, unable to save themselves, and the Gentiles completely isolated from God and from His promises and salvation.

But that all changed when Christ was born. 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. The world had sat in darkness for long enough. It was time for the light to appear. The only way to save sinful man was for God’s Son to become a Man, to be born of a woman, just like all of us were. And that’s such an important truth, as we heard on Christmas Eve. If you are born of a woman, then Christ was born for you. If you are born of a woman, then you, too, can be saved.

God’s Son was also “born under the law,” and we see Him keeping that Law already in today’s Gospel as Mary and Joseph took Him to the Temple to do for Him the things required by the Law, to offer the sacrifices demanded by God to redeem the firstborn son. The only-begotten Son of God kept the Law for everyone born of woman, in order to redeem us all from our slavery to sin, death and the devil, in order to make us sons of God, now with all the rights and privileges of full-grown children.

The greatest privilege we now enjoy is the forgiveness of sins through faith in Christ, and along with the forgiveness of sins comes the right to approach God as our dear Father, with all the boldness and confidence of dear children. As Paul says, Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” By dying for your sins on the cross, by calling you to repentance and faith, by forgiving your sins in Holy Baptism, Christ has given you a favorable Father, on whom you can call at all times, in every situation, in time of need, in time of joy, in time of sorrow. You believers in Christ always have a Father who loves you, who hears you, and who is working all things together for your good, not because you’ve earned His favor, but because Christ, your Brother, has earned His favor, and you believe in Christ.

That’s the privilege we enjoy throughout this life. The greatest privilege of all will come at the end of the age. Paul concludes, You are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. An heir is one who inherits the possessions of his father. If God is our Father through Christ, then just contemplate what that means. All things belong to God, even heaven and earth, even life itself. And now, through Christ, all of that is what you will one day inherit.

So can you put up with less for now? Can you live with some sorrow and suffering and loss for a little while? Truthfully, if you are God’s child even now through Christ, then you can and should deny the flesh and say no to serving yourself and yes to serving and loving your neighbor and sacrificing earthly pleasures and comforts for a time, knowing that, soon and forever, all things will be yours.

God is your Father and you are His Son, His child, His heir through Christ. Remember that part. You have no Father in heaven apart from Christ, only an angry Judge who will justly punish you for your sins. Through Christ, that is, through faith in Christ, you have only God’s fatherly favor and love and forgiveness. That’s why Simeon rejoiced. That’s why Anna rejoiced. See what that little Child, born of Mary, has brought you! Stay close to Him. Keep hearing His Word. Keep receiving His Sacrament, and rejoice in His real presence here among us today with bread and wine. He was born to give His life for your life. And He comes now in Word and Sacrament, to give that life to you, and to share His Father with you. Rejoice, you sons of God! Amen.

 

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Christ now stands in our midst

Posted on December 21, 2014 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

On this Sunday before Christmas, our final preparation to celebrate the birth of Christ and to receive the coming Christ rightly, is to meditate on the words of St. John the Baptist, the prophet sent by God to prepare the people of Israel for the arrival of His Son. God sends his voice to us today, to prepare us, too, not just for the coming Christ, but for the Christ who stands even now in our midst.

Now, of course, John prepared no one for Jesus’ birth, except maybe his mother Elizabeth as he leaped for joy in her womb when the newly-pregnant Virgin Mary came to visit her. But fast-forward some thirty years, and there was John, doing the work God gave him to do, on the banks of the Jordan River, preparing people for the public revealing of Jesus as the Christ. By this time, the events in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth had been all but forgotten, and the baby who was born there had disappeared, gone into hiding. The disturbance in Jerusalem over the coming of the wise men and the supposed birth of the Christ had long since faded from the minds of the Jews, and that was by design. The time of the Messiah’s public revelation hadn’t yet begun.

But that was all about to change. Here comes this prophet named John. He’s wearing clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. His food is locusts and wild honey. He doesn’t fit in, and he doesn’t intend to. He has been given a direct call from God to preach repentance, to preach baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and to proclaim the arrival of the Christ.

Repentance is neatly described for us in our Lutheran confessions, based on Biblical usage. A simple definition is printed on the back of your service insert today: This is what true repentance means. Here a person needs to hear something like this, “You are all of no account, whether you are obvious sinners or saints in your own opinions. You have to become different from what you are now. You have to act differently than you are now acting, whether you are as great, wise, powerful, and holy as you can be. Here no one is godly…” John was to accuse all and convict them of being sinners. This is so they can know what they are before God and acknowledge that they are lost. So they can be prepared for the Lord to receive grace and to expect and accept from Him the forgiveness of sins.

This is the true preparation for the coming of Christ, to recognize that you are not good enough to win heaven or to avoid hell, no matter who you are or how good and decent a person you think you are. You need a Savior, and not a 50% or a 90% Savior, but a 100% Savior who will bear all your sins by Himself and who will provide 100% of the goodness and decency you need to stand before God.

That Savior is coming!, declared John. And then finally, one day, that Savior came. He walked right up to John at the banks of the Jordan and asked to be baptized. (We’ll save that account for another day.) Then He went off by Himself again for 40 days to be tempted in the wilderness. That’s when our Gospel account takes place, right at the end of those 40 days. During those 40 days, John’s message had shifted. He was still preaching repentance, still preaching baptism for the forgiveness of sins. But his message had changed from, “Christ is coming!,” to “Christ is here!”

That finally got the attention of the Jewish leaders. They sent a delegation to John, which you heard about in today’s Gospel, to ask him just who he was claiming to be. Apparently their first question to him was, “Are you the Christ?” The Apostle John tells us that John the Baptist denied that claim in no uncertain terms.

Are you Elijah? They meant by that, “Are you literally the prophet Elijah who has come back from the dead?” John denied being that Elijah, even though he was the figurative Elijah whom Malachi had prophesied would come to prepare the way for the Christ—the one who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah, as the angel Gabriel had foretold to John’s father Zacharias and as you heard Jesus declare last Sunday.

Are you the Prophet? They may have been referring to the Prophet Moses had prophesied would come back in Deuteronomy 18, referring to the Christ Himself. John denied being that Prophet, even though Jesus would later declare that John was, indeed, a prophet, and more than a prophet. You also heard that in last week’s Gospel.

Who are you, then?, they asked. I am ‘The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Make straight the way of the LORD,” ’ as the prophet Isaiah said. In other words, John claims to be no one special in and of himself. He, like all true prophets of God, knows that and freely confesses it. I am no one. I don’t matter. And yet you should listen to me. Because when you hear my voice, it is really the voice of God you are hearing, for He sent me. I am not just any voice, but the voice of the Lord crying out to you. He wants you to hear me when I call you to repentance, so that you do acknowledge and turn from your sins. He wants you to hear me announcing the grace of the coming Christ, so that you do let yourself be baptized, so that you do trust in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. And He wants you to recognize me, John, as the very one whom the prophet Isaiah said would come ahead of the Lord.

So it is with all the prophets and apostles and pastors who point to Christ. We are no one special, and we know it better than anyone. You should not follow us or join or stay at or leave a church because of us. But you should listen to us, not because we’re anything special, but because God has sent us so that you may hear His voice through our voice as we point you to Christ.

That’s what John did. The delegation sent from the Pharisees wanted to write John off. Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet? But John just kept pointing his finger away from himself, even away from his divinely appointed task to baptize penitent believers. He points to the One who makes his baptism valid. He points to the One from whose name baptism derives its power. He points no longer to the coming Christ, but to the Christ who has come. 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.

A better translation might be, “It is He who, coming after me, has gotten ahead of me.” Now that Jesus has been revealed in His baptism, His teaching, His ministry has overtaken that of John. From now on, John will decrease, and Jesus will increase. From now on, John will be sending his disciples away to follow Jesus.

That’s the faithful prophet John was, always pointing away from himself, always directing the people to Christ. He is the reason why you should repent. He is the One in whom you should believe. He stood in the midst of the Jewish people for a time, but most of them didn’t know Him. The same Jesus now stands in our midst in a different but equally significant way. He stands here in His Church, in His Word, in His Sacrament. He won’t deal with you directly, as He did when He walked the earth at the time of John, not until He comes again in glory. Instead, He has instituted this office of the holy ministry to deal with you through the voice of His called servants. This is where you find Him until He comes again. Not in your heart. Not under your Christmas tree. Not sitting at the table with your family. Here He gives Himself to you. Here He speaks to you with His voice. Here He is, the one whose sandals even the great prophet John was unworthy to untie. Hear His voice today. And come to the Christ-Mass and spend it with Him this Thursday. Here you will find Him, lying in the manger of His Word, offering to you again His body and blood, born of the Virgin Mary, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. This is where Jesus will be on Christmas, to help and to save you and to hear and accept your songs of praise and worship. Oh, come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord! Amen.

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