Sermon

Service
To download this video, press here to go to the download page. You may need to scroll down to see the download button.		Download Bulletin

Sermon for the week of Advent 3

Isaiah 11:1-5 + Luke 1:39-56

Tonight we pick up the story, one last time before Christmas, of the events leading up to Jesus’ birth—as Mary herself probably recounted it to Luke, so that he could include it in his Gospel.

After Mary heard the angel’s announcement of her miraculous pregnancy, and after also hearing from the angel that her relative Elizabeth was now six months pregnant in her old age, Mary decided to make the journey from Nazareth down to Judea, to visit Elizabeth and surely to compare notes about what the angel had said.

As Mary arrived at Elizabeth’s house, she called out a greeting—maybe the same word the angel had spoken to her, Hail! Greetings! You remember how the angel had told Zacharias that his son would be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb? We see the evidence of that here, because as soon as Mary’s greeting reached John’s ears, even within his mother’s womb, he jumped for joy, because, by the Holy Spirit’s working, he knew he was in the presence of his God, growing in the womb of that woman who had just greeted his mother. As people rightly point out, the very first human being to recognize Jesus as Lord and Savior, apart from Mary herself, was an unborn child.

That wasn’t a wishful guess on Elizabeth’s part. Luke says that she herself was filled with the Holy Spirit at that moment, prompting her to call out to Mary with these inspired words: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy.

Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” calling Mary the “mother of my Lord.” Last week we talked about those who go way, way overboard in honoring (and, in fact, worshiping) Mary. We are not taught by the Christian Church to practice any kind of devotion to her, nor are we taught to pray to her, or to seek help from her. But we certainly don’t deny the words of Gabriel or the Spirit-inspired words that Elizabeth spoke to Mary. We rightly speak of Mary as being “blessed among women,” because God had given her a greater gift than He had given to other women. She was the only one in history whose womb gave human life to Him who is the Life. She was the mother of Elizabeth’s Lord, and hers, and ours. Her womb and her descended-from-King-David genes were the Holy Spirit’s raw material for crafting a human body and soul that was taken up into the Person of the Son of God, so that there is now one Christ who is both true God and true Man, God incarnate as a man, to save men from their sins. Mary was given a vital, intimate role in the incarnation of Emmanuel.

And both Elizabeth and her unborn son knew something else: that the incarnation of God’s Son was something to rejoice over. Why? Not for any earthly reason. Jesus wouldn’t make life on earth better for most, certainly not for John the Baptist, who would one day be put to death for his faithfulness to Christ. But now the Lord God was finally present, not as He is always present everywhere, but tangibly present in human flesh. Not “God-out-there-somewhere,” but God-right-here-in-the-midst of us, to dwell with us in our darkness, to reveal God to us, and most importantly of all, to carry our sorrows, to receive our stripes, to die our death, to make atonement for the sins of all men, and to grant eternal life to all who believe.

Finally, Elizabeth said to Mary, Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord. Mary was blessed—fortunate, enviable—because when the Word of God came to her, she simply believed it. And in believing God’s Word, especially about something that was humanly impossible, Mary was walking in the footsteps of her forefather Abraham, who believed the Lord, against hope, that he and Sarah would have a son in their old age. Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Mary believed the Lord, and she, too, was blessed, credited with righteousness, and held up as an example for all generations to follow.

Then we have the beautiful words of Mary, which the Church has echoed for millennia in the Magnificat. It begins: My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant; For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For He who is mighty has done great things for me, And holy is His name. Mary’s worship—and ours, if it’s genuine—comes from the heart, or the soul, or the spirit (it’s hard to distinguish among such terms). Her worship magnifies, or “acknowledges or proclaims the greatness of” the Lord. Not of herself, but of the Lord. And she’s truly joyful that God has finally fulfilled His promise to send the Christ, her Savior, into the world, and that He chose to do it through her, a “nobody” in the world, who now, by God’s grace, has become, as Elizabeth called her, the mother of the Lord. And because God showed such mercy to her, she also knew that she would be called blessed, that is, remembered fondly by all generations, not because she deserves our honor, but because God had shown her favor, and so we recognize and give thanks for her.

Mary goes on to bless the Lord for how He treats the rest of His believers. And His mercy is on those who fear Him From generation to generation. Mercy, on those who fear Him, in every generation, from Adam and Eve to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to David, to Mary, to you and me, to our children and grandchildren…who fear Him, who listen to Him, who believe in Him, and who obey Him. It’s the same thing God said when He gave the Ten Commandments: For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. In one sense, God’s mercy extends to all men, in that He is moved by man’s wretchedness to help. But this mercy that Mary’s talking about is different. It’s is the special, personal, fatherly mercy for those whom God has brought to faith and who continue now in faith and the fear of God, who fear and revere, not just any god, but the God who sent His Son into the womb of the blessed virgin.

In this sense, God treats those who fear Him differently from how He treats those who don’t fear Him. Mary goes on to show the great contrast: He has shown strength with His arm; He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones, And exalted the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, And the rich He has sent away empty.

It’s very much like Jesus often said, whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. How has God “scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts”? How has He “put down the mighty and sent the rich away empty”? By telling them the truth: All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You want to take pride in yourself? No human being has any reason to do that. God doesn’t let anyone trust in their own works, in their own strength, or in their own riches. God says to the proud, You will surely die in your sins, unless you repent and look to Me for mercy.

That mercy is not far away. God’s mercy entered the world in human form, in the person of Mary’s Son. So despair of yourselves and trust in Him. He has mercy on those who fear Him. He has exalted the lowly and the poor and the despised. He has filled the hungry with good things. As Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

And He does all this, as Mary confessed, out of faithfulness to His own promises—promises which He first made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—the fathers of the Israelite people—and to their seed forever. He promised those patriarchs that, through their Seed, all nations on earth would be blessed. That seed was Christ Himself, the Rod from the stem of Jesse, as Isaiah called Him, the Branch from Jesse’s roots, from the house of David, through David’s daughter Mary. This is the only reason why the nation of Israel has ever mattered in the world, that God, in His faithfulness, gave His Son into the world through that nation, according to His promises made to them long ago. Jesus is the fulfillment of all God’s promises to Israel.

Of course, the same Isaiah to whose prophecies Mary had been alluding in her Magnificat prophesied about how God’s kingdom would extend through the virgin’s Son far beyond the nation of Israel, how the Christ would be a light to lighten the Gentiles, for the creation of one great Church to fill the world, the New Israel that proclaims the God of the Old and New Testaments, the Church made up of sinners only, who recognize their need for mercy, and God’s merciful gift of the Savior who visited Elizabeth long ago, still in His mother’s womb, and in whose presence John the unborn child leapt for joy.

The same joy is for all the humble and lowly who look to Him for salvation. Learn that from Elizabeth’s words, and from Mary’s, and receive the same blessing that those lowly, blessed women received. Amen.

Sermon

Service
To download this video, press here to go to the download page. You may need to scroll down to see the download button.		Download Bulletin

Sermon for the week of Advent 2

Jeremiah 23:5-6 + Luke 1:26-38

Last week we heard how the angel Gabriel stepped into our earthly realm to bring Zacharias the good news that he would have a son, and that his son would prepare the way for the Lord, the King. Today we heard how the holy angel Gabriel stepped for a second time into a world that was unholy, with all its hardship and filth, war and injustice, oppression, poverty, and sin. He only stepped in for a moment, though, to deliver a very important message. Then he stepped back out again. He wasn’t the holy One who was coming to live with us in this dark place. But he did come to announce the birth of that holy One, to a virgin named Mary.

What do we know about Mary? It’s important that we know what the Bible says about her, and what it doesn’t say, so that no one can deceive us into believing things that men have invented about her. For over a thousand years, the devil has been deceiving Christians to believe the wrong things about Mary, to focus their attention on her in a way that God hates and that she herself would have despised. Just two days ago, president Trump joined the Roman Church in celebrating the false belief that Mary was immaculately conceived, that is, conceived without the stain of original sin, a holy girl who was sinless and perfect from birth, who didn’t have to struggle with a sinful flesh like the rest of us, because she had no sinful flesh to begin with. Over the centuries, Mary has been credited with saving our nation, and many nations, from their enemies. She has been called the protector and refuge of the native American tribes (in both continents) and of other nations. She has been credited with one miracle after another, and one apparition after another. She has been called the Queen of heaven and earth, the mother of all Christians, and the one to whom we should pray if we truly want to be saved. She has even been set forth by many as the co-redeemer of the human race. But, I tell you, none of that is taught in Holy Scripture. None of that is consistent with the teaching of Scripture. And, therefore, all of that is blasphemy against God.

Of course, the worship or “hyper-service” that’s given to Mary has gotten so extreme that some have shot, like a rubber band, to the other extreme of ignoring or even badmouthing Mary. But that’s not right, either. The false teachings about Mary are wicked. But Mary herself was far from wicked, and far from insignificant. She was a sinner, like the rest of us, but she is also held up for us as a role model, in many ways, as a believer who was righteous by faith and righteous in the way she put her faith into practice. So let’s consider Gabriel’s words to her that you heard a moment ago, that we may give thanks for Mary rightly, without blaspheming God.

Mary, like Joseph, appears to have been descended from King David. We also know that she lived in Nazareth in Galilee, where Joseph also lived, and that she was somehow related to Elizabeth, Zacharias’ wife, who lived down in Judea. Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but they weren’t married yet, they weren’t living together yet, and they had never slept together, either. Mary was a virgin.

The angel Gabriel startled her with his greeting: Ave, Maria!Hail, Mary! But “Hail” isn’t a term of honor, or of dishonor. It’s just an old form of greeting in English, and Gabriel used the typical word in Greek for saying, “Hello!” or “Greetings!” So, “Hail, Mary!” is okay, but, “Greetings, Mary!” is better. Imagine if all those people who pray the rosary with its “Hail Mary’s” understood that they’re really just saying, “Greetings, Mary!”, which doesn’t even make sense, because Mary isn’t here for anyone to greet.

Greetings, O favored one!, he said or “graced one,” one who has been shown grace. Not “full of grace.” That was always a bad translation. The angel called her “favored one,” one who has been shown grace, who stands in God’s favor, or who has been given a gift of grace. St. Paul uses the same word for all believers in Christ when he writes to the Ephesians in chapter 1, “to the praise of God’s glorious grace, with which he has ‘graced’ or ‘favored’ us in the Beloved,” that is, in Christ. There’s nothing more to the angel’s greeting than that, and nothing less.

The Lord is with you, said the angel, and some Greek manuscripts add the phrase, Blessed are you among women!, which is something you’ll hear Elizabeth say to Mary in next week’s Lesson. To this day we still sometimes refer to Mary as the blessed virgin, not because she has any blessings to give, but because, above all women, she was given a special blessing from God. She would play a unique and special part in His plan to save sinners. Not that she would save or redeem anyone, or have any ongoing role in our salvation, but she would blessed with being entrusted to carry God’s Son in her womb for nine months, give birth to Him, take care of Him until He was an adult, accompany Him at various points of His ministry, accompany Him at the foot of His cross, become an early witness of His resurrection, and find a place among the early disciples in the early Church, who would pass on to the Church all the details we know about Jesus’ early life, now recorded in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels. No other woman in history has had a blessing or a gift like that, and Mary later acknowledged it gratefully.

Of course, Mary knew none of what was to come at this moment. She was confused and frightened by Gabriel’s greeting and by the very sight of an angel. But Gabriel quickly explained: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” (Which is just another way of explaining what “favored one” means.) What does it mean that Mary “found favor with God”?

First, it tells us that Mary was one of those believers in the God of Israel and in His promise to send a Savior, the Christ, to redeem Israel. Many of the Jews had given up waiting for the Christ by that time. But Mary hadn’t. She had faith in God; she trusted in God, “her Savior,” as she would later sing in the Magnificat. And by faith in Him, she had received grace and favor and the forgiveness of her sins.

That faith had also produced in her a willingness to submit to God’s Word and to God’s will. That’s already demonstrated in her proper behavior with Joseph, her “fiancé.” She is engaged to a man, but doesn’t come together with him, or with any man, until after they’re married (until after Jesus is born). Seems so simple, and yet the rest of the world outside of Israel was just as promiscuous as our world has become, and even within Israel there was plenty of adultery going on. So we shouldn’t dismiss Mary’s chastity. She is held up for all young women (and young men) as an example to be followed, an example of faith, humble obedience to God, and chastity. And just to be clear, Mary’s chastity, including her celibacy, mattered until Jesus was born. After that, it’s useless and potentially harmful to claim that Mary remained a virgin for the rest of her life, because it can’t be established from Scripture, it would have no effect whatsoever on our salvation, and it turns into another one of those pointless distractions and into an unhealthy infatuation with Mary’s private life, which God chose not to reveal to us.

Then the angel told Mary the amazing plan God had for her: And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

This is the wonder that Isaiah had prophesied: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son and will call His name Immanuel.” Note several things about Him. He would be the Son of God as well as the Son of Man. He would be born with a pre-determined name that would characterize His entire life: Jesus, Savior. He would be a “King,” the Son of David, but His kingdom would be so much bigger than David’s kingdom ever was. David reigned over the physical nation of Israel. Jesus would reign over the true “house of Jacob,” the Holy Christian Church, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, whom He would bring into His kingdom through faith. And, unlike David’s kingdom, the kingdom of Mary’s Son would have no end, either in extent or in time. It would stretch throughout the universe, and it would last forever and ever.

Mary then asked the obvious question: How will this be, since I do not know a man? Now, unlike Zacharias’ defiant question to Gabriel, for which he was scolded, Mary asks in all honesty, “How will this be?” The idea may have even occurred to her that God wanted her to do something about becoming pregnant. Because otherwise what the angel had told her was humanly impossible.

Ah, but it was not divinely impossible. Nothing is impossible with God, the angel said. The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore also the holy child that will be born of you will be called the Son of God.

Here we see the proper role of the Holy Spirit: He is the Bringer of God’s Word to the world. He did it first in creation. He did it through the words of the prophets. But now He will bring the very Word who was in the beginning with God, and who was God, into the world through a great miracle, causing the eternal person of the Word to take on human flesh in Mary’s womb, so that He is truly the Son of God and the Son of Man in one united Person. And holy, because unlike every other human being born into the world, this one would be “immaculately conceived.” The Roman Church blasphemously claims that for Mary, but it truly belongs only to Jesus. He is the “immaculate conception.”

And so, yes, Mary is the “Mother of God.” Not the mother of God the Father, or of the Holy Spirit, but of the Son of God, who is also true God, and therefore, if the focus is on Jesus, Mary is rightly called the Mother of God. But if the focus of that title is on Mary, as if being the mother of God gave her some kind of authority or position of honor between Jesus and the rest of us, then the same title that is true in and of itself becomes another example of blasphemy against God.

But Mary doesn’t exalt herself at all. She gives us another beautiful example of humble submission to God’s will: Here I am, the Lord’s servant. May it be done to me as you have said. She could only begin to imagine the hardships such a pregnancy would create in her life, how it would change every plan she had ever made. But whatever would come, whatever the Lord’s will was for her, she was ready to accept it. And for that, we give thanks to God, who worked in Mary “both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (cf. Phil. 213). Her words are a model for all Christians of all times of what it looks like to simply believe the seemingly unbelievable promises of God, and to hand one’s life over to Him completely. If you remember Mary like this, then you will remember her well, and do well to remember her, and the blessed role God gave her in bringing His beloved Son into the world! Amen.

Sermon

Service
To download this video, press here to go to the download page. You may need to scroll down to see the download button.		Download Bulletin

Sermon for the week of Advent 1

Malachi 4:1-6  +  Luke 1:5-25

The Advent season always takes us to John the Baptist to help us prepare for Jesus’ arrival. And with good reason. Because that was always John’s purpose. It’s why he was born. He was born to prepare the Messiah’s way.

Six months before the angel Gabriel visited the virgin Mary in Nazareth, to announce to her the miraculous birth of a Son, he visited Zacharias in Jerusalem, also to announce the good news that Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth would have a son. Now, we’re told that Zacharias and Elizabeth were both descended from Aaron, from the tribe of Levi, the tribe of Levitical priests. And we’re also told that they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. That’s high praise for anyone in Israel. It doesn’t mean they weren’t sinners in need of a Savior. It means that they lived in daily contrition and repentance, that their hearts were set on keeping God’s commandments, and that they were well-known for their obedience and godliness. They were model citizens of Israel, and they had God’s favor.

But having God’s favor doesn’t mean everything goes well for you, or that all your prayers are granted. As Gabriel later informs us, they had been praying fervently for a child. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and they were both well advanced in years. We don’t know how old they were, but they were well past the age when married couples usually had their first children, so decades had likely passed with those prayers going unanswered. Why hadn’t God rewarded their righteousness with that special but common gift that He gives freely to so many parents, even those who hate Him?

The answer is all laid out for us in this little story with which St. Luke begins his Gospel. God had a wonderful gift laid up for Zacharias and Elizabeth—just as He had made Abraham and Sarah wait decades before Isaac was born. A very special son would be born to them in their old age.

The setting for the announcement was the temple in Jerusalem. It was Zacharias’ turn to burn incense for a week on the altar of incense, inside the Holy Place, right in front of the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It was a special privilege that fell to the priests by lot, according to their priestly order, to enter the Holy Place and burn incense in the morning and in the evening. It was during Zacharias’ service, while he was alone in the Holy Place, that the angel Gabriel appeared to him and said, Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth. Now, as far as anyone knows, these are the very first words that came from God to man since the prophet Malachi died some 400 years earlier. During that whole time, not one prophet or angel had been sent to Israel to bring them a message from God. So of course Zacharias was afraid! But the angel hadn’t come to harm. He had come to deliver this wonderful bit of news. “Your prayers have been heard! God is going to bless you with a son!”

And more than that. He will be great in the sight of the Lord. In other words, the Lord has big plans for your son. He will accomplish great things. In fact, a few decades later, after John had almost completed his ministry, Jesus would say this about John the Baptist: Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist. Why would this child be so great? Because he would be given the special task of heralding the Advent of the Christ.

To mark him as special, to get people’s attention already from an early age, the angel adds that he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. We have to go back to the Old Testament law to understand what that’s talking about. It’s part of what’s called the Nazirite vow. It was a special vow a person could choose to take to dedicate himself fully to the Lord for a period of time. He wouldn’t cut his hair. He wouldn’t drink any wine or other forms of alcohol. And he wouldn’t allow himself to become ceremonially unclean for any reason. In only a handful of cases, like the judge Samson, or like the prophet Samuel, the Nazirite vow was imposed on a person for his whole life. That’s how special John would be, and it would get people’s attention.

And, Gabriel says, He will also be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. Don’t let anyone try to convince you that an unborn child is less than human, or is unable to have faith. If John could be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb, then he was both a living human being and a believer in the true God. In two weeks we’ll see an example of the Holy Spirit working in John’s heart even before he was born.

Then the angel revealed the most important thing of all, what John’s purpose would be, what he would accomplish for God, the reason for his existence: And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Remember how I just said that the last time a prophet had spoken to Israel was some 400 years earlier, the prophet Malachi? You heard in the first lesson Malachi’s last written words to God’s people, 400 years before Gabriel appeared to Zacharias—words which Gabriel himself quoted to Zacharias: 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. John was the promised Elijah—not the actual prophet Elijah who lived some 800 years before Christ, but the prophet who would come in the “spirit and power of Elijah,” a no-nonsense kind of preacher, a powerful preacher, with a vitally important task: to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, so that, when the Lord comes, He doesn’t have to strike the earth with a curse.

In other words, John’s preaching would turn the people of Israel back to obeying God’s commandments, from the heart and not just with outward obedience, back to caring about their souls and about the coming judgment. His preaching would bring people to see their sins, and to repent of them. His preaching would put the people of Israel back on the path of obedience to God, and on the path of the “wisdom of the righteous,” which means the wisdom that comes from God, the wisdom of understanding that our righteousness itself comes from God, not from ourselves, that we depend on and live by God’s mercy alone, not by our own works, that all men are sinners who need the salvation that only God can bring, and will bring through His promised Messiah, who is, as John later proclaimed, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And so John would get the people ready for the Advent of the Lord Jesus, so that, when He appeared, they wouldn’t sit back lazily and ask, “What do we need Him for?” but instead, having been shown their sins and their dire need for a Savior, they would go running to Jesus for the salvation He was coming to bring.

Sadly, Zacharias didn’t believe the angel’s words, and as a punishment, his tongue was tied, and would remain tied until his wife conceived, and the child was born, and Zacharias wrote down on a tablet the name that the angel had told him to give to the child: “His name is John,” which means, the LORD (Yahweh) is gracious.

And the LORD is indeed gracious, to us as well, because John wasn’t only born to prepare the Messiah’s way for the people of Israel at that time. No, God continues to use the ministry of John, recorded in Holy Scripture, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord—prepared to celebrate Christmas for the right reasons, prepared to live in daily contrition, repentance, and obedience to God’s commandments, and prepared to meet the Lord Jesus when He comes again in glory. Keep preparing! And keep rejoicing at the birth of the one who was born to prepare the Messiah’s way! Amen.