Devotion: 2 Samuel 8-9. Free To Serve Him Without Fear

Wednesday of Septuagesima

Feb. 16, 2022

2 Samuel 8-9

Free to Serve Him Without Fear

The Benedictus (Luke 1:68-9), the song of John the Baptist’s father, is the song of the Church during its daily prayers in Advent and Lent.  It reminds us of the Lord’s promises to His people in the past.  One of those promises was the oath to Abraham that his descendants would be delivered from the hand of their enemies, so they would be free to serve Him without fear.

If you think back on Abraham’s life you can see why he would have been eager to serve God without looking over his shoulder.  The Lord called him first to leave his family and go to the land of Canaan alone.  Once he got there he had to flee to Egypt for relief from a famine.  There he felt compelled by fear to let Pharaoh take his wife, Sarah.  He did the same thing later under pressure from the king of the Philistines. 

Because Abraham believed God’s promise that he would have a descendant through whom the whole earth would be saved, he was under pressure and threat from his neighbors. He longed to be in a land where he could serve God by faith without fear.  And God promised Abraham and his descendants, those who like him believed God’s promise, that the Offspring to come would give them safety from those who hated them.

In David we see an image of this Offspring who was to come and make God’s nation secure.  In chapter 8 David subdues all the nations surrounding Israel.  He defeats the Moabites and Edomites and the armies of Syria.  A nearby king brings David tribute of gold and silver.  And after the neighboring nations are no threat to Israel any longer, David reigns in justice and equity over all Israel. 

In chapter 7 God promised David that one of his offspring would have an eternal kingdom (2 Samuel :12-16).  David had begun to give Israel safety from its enemies, but David’s son would finish the work and give everlasting peace and freedom to those who, like Abraham and David, believed God’s promise and trusted in the offspring God promised.

In the Benedictus we praise God with Zechariah that the Son of David has come.  God raised up a “horn of salvation in the house of His servant David.”  (Luke 1:69)  But this deliverer doesn’t  bring safety in the same way as David his father.  David was a man of war and subdued the surrounding nations by killing their fighting men and setting up garrisons of Israelite soldiers.

Jesus, the horn of salvation in the house of David, delivers us from the hand of our enemies, and enables us to serve Him without fear of death.  “Since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.  For surely it is not angels he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham.”  (Heb. 2:14-16)

In this world the Christian Church doesn’t appear to be free to serve God without fear.  Enemies surround us and threaten us on every side. But we are free, because our Savior has defeated the devil and taken from him the power of death.  By atoning for our sins, He has freed us from death and condemnation.  Death has no dominion over Jesus or us (Rom. 6:9).  Sin has no dominion over us (Rom. 6:14).  We are truly free in this world because we have been set free from sin, death, and the devil. 

Though our freedom is invisible, we can be bold.  We are free from death and the devil.  And when our Savior appears, the glorious freedom we have already will also appear (Rom. 8:20-21).

He canceled my offenses,

Delivered me from death;

He is the Lord who cleanses

My soul from sin through faith.

In Him I can be cheerful,

Courageous on my way;

In Him I am not fearful

Of God’s great Judgment Day.  Amen.  (LSB 724 st. 4)

Grace and Reward. Septuagesima 2022

Septuagesima

Emmaus Lutheran Church

St. Matthew 20:1-16

February 13, 2022

Grace and Reward

Jesu juva!

In the Name of Jesus.

1.

The disciples of Jesus asked Him two questions in the chapter before today’s Gospel.

The first: “How is it possible for anyone to be saved?”

The second: “What reward will we have, since we have left everything to follow you?”

Jesus’ answer to the first question: “With man this is impossible, but all things are possible with God.”

Jesus’ answer to the second question about what reward the disciples would have for leaving everything to follow Him might not be what you expect.

He says:  “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.”  (Matthew 19:28)  You might have expected Jesus to say “There is no reward for good works.  You receive everything by grace alone.”  But it’s not true that there is no reward for good works.  The disciples will have a reward for following Jesus and suffering the loss of their possessions.

And even more: not only the disciples will have a reward, but any Christian who has to leave things behind to be a Christian will have a reward.  And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.  (Matthew 19:29)

However, before you get carried away, there is a “but”: But many who are first will be last, and the last first.  (Matthew 19:30)

That “but” is what the parable of the workers in the vineyard is about. 

2. 

The first will be last and the last will be first because God gives eternal life by grace alone, not because we have earned it.  Yet He still promises a reward for good works.

3.

The last will be first, and the first last (Matthew 20:16). This is the true God’s way.  He calls into being what does not exist.  He casts down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly. 

What kind of man is this vineyard owner?  He starts off the way you might expect.  He needs to hire laborers.  So he gets up early in the morning and goes to the marketplace where you hire them.  The work day begins at 6 in the morning.  A day’s labor is worth a denarius.  Everything so far makes sense.  The vineyard owner hires some men to work a twelve-hour day for a day’s wages.

Then he does something that makes less sense.  He goes out about the third hour to hire more workers.  That would be nine AM, when a quarter of the workday is gone.  Well, maybe he really needs workers in his vineyard.  What will he pay these men?  What is three quarters of a day of labor worth?  The vineyard owner doesn’t say.  “Whatever is right I will pay you.”  The men go work for him because they are happy to get any work.

But then the vineyard owner goes out at the sixth hour and the ninth hour to hire more men.  That is noon and 3 pm.  With one group half the day is gone, with the other ¾ of the day.  Now we know that the vineyard owner is not hiring men because he really needs their labor.  He is obviously what you might call a “bleeding heart”.  He wants to give people work and a paycheck even though he probably doesn’t really need them.

And then the vineyard owner makes a final visit to the marketplace at the eleventh hour, an hour before quitting time.  He finds some people standing around and says, “Why are you standing here idle all day?  They say, ‘Because no one has hired us.’”  And he sends them into his vineyard also.

It’s hard to see how it could be true that they had been waiting all day for someone to hire them.  Who would wait until one hour before work ends?  Surely no one is going to hire you then.  Most likely these men are in the marketplace waiting for the bars to open.  Almost certainly they are people you wouldn’t want to hire.

So what we have seen about the vineyard owner is that he is kind and generous to what many of us would regard as a fault.  He wants to give a paycheck to everyone.  He wants to give His money away.

That’s great, except doesn’t it encourage bad behavior?  Doesn’t it encourage people to wake up at noon instead of at 5 AM?

But it gets even worse, because he has everyone line up at sundown to get their pay.  Payment begins with those who worked the least and ends with those who worked the longest. 

And those who came at the eleventh hour get: one denarius.  You can imagine how those at the back of the line must have felt.  “If the vineyard owner is paying one hour of work so generously, imagine what he is going to pay us!” 

Then he comes to those who worked three hours.  They also get a denarius.

Then to those who started at noon: one denarius.

Then those who started at nine.  One denarius.  Nobody complains.  They all agreed to be paid “whatever is right.”  He paid them all for a day’s work when they hadn’t worked a day.

Finally the foreman comes to those who have worked all day. 

One denarius.  Just as they had agreed.  So the last will be first, and the first last. (Matt. 20:1-16)

But the first aren’t last just because they worked the longest and were paid the same as the people who worked an hour.

They are last because the vineyard owner sends them away when they begin to grumble about him.  Take what belongs to you and go (Matt. 20:14)

Go to a vineyard where the owner isn’t so gracious, since you don’t like grace.  Since you want to earn instead of receiving kindness.  The people who were hired at the beginning liked the wild generosity of the owner when they thought it meant they would get more.  When someone else received more grace than them, they suddenly thought he was terrible and unfair.

Jesus is telling his twelve disciples and everyone who leaves house and family, everyone who has to suffer to be His disciple: “Yes, you will have a reward.  There are earthly rewards and eternal rewards for good works.”

But many who are first will be last.  There are many who think that what they have suffered and what they have done in God’s kingdom earns them more than others. 

And that is not the case.  God gives rewards for good works out of grace, without our earning anything.

And eternal life is not earned by working in God’s vineyard.  Eternal life is given because God, the vineyard owner, is wildly gracious and merciful. He goes out in the early morning, the midmorning, noon, midafternoon, and even an hour before sundown, calling people into His vineyard and give them the denarius of eternal life. 

Nobody earns that wage.  In the previous chapter the disciples asked Jesus, “Who can be saved?”  He answered, “With man this is impossible, but all things are possible with God.” 

The wage of eternal life would be earned by the person who not only sold his possessions but loved God more than his own life.  That is the first commandment.  But the disciples realized they couldn’t keep it.  They were rich men in that respect.  They feared to lose their lives; they loved their lives more than God.  We are rich men too.  It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for us to enter the kingdom of God. 

When we enter God’s vineyard, we aren’t working for eternal life.  He has called us to come receive the reward of eternal life because He is gracious. He has called us to come receive the One who has gone through the needle’s eye.

There is only one person who has earned and merited eternal life, who loved God more than not only His possessions and His own life.  That person God shows us in the Gospel.  He shows His Son lifted up naked on the cross.  His life pours out of Him in red streams from the wounds in His body.  His possessions lie beneath Him in a heap where the soldiers have divided them up.  He gave up His possessions and His life out of love for God and earned the wage of eternal life. 

But God invites us to receive His payment in the Gospel.  He does call us to work in His vineyard, too, but it isn’t our work that earns the payment.  They payment was earned by His Son’s labor, and it is given to us solely out of God’s wild kindness and generosity—His grace alone.

4.

The first will be last and the last.  Jesus was made last for us on the cross as He won our salvation by His agony.  And eternal life is given apart from our works, solely by God’s generosity, His grace.  And yet He promises to reward our good works.

5.

Sometimes we think this is the end of the story.  We can’t earn eternal life by our works.  Even our best works are sinful if God judges them by His Law, because even when outwardly our deeds are according to the ten commandments, inwardly pride and selfish desire keep our works from being truly good.  So what reward can we have for them?

But Scripture teaches repeatedly that good works are rewarded by God.  Even in the catechism we say:  What does God say about all these commandments?  He says, “I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.”  God promises to show love to those who love Him and keep my commandments.  But how can we ever apply that to ourselves if we don’t keep His commandments perfectly?

This isn’t the only place He says such things.  At the end of the sermon on the Mount Jesus says: Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.  (Matt. 5:11-12)  But how can we think we have a great reward in heaven when people speak evil against us for Jesus’ sake?  How can we be sure they aren’t really speaking against us because of our own faults?  And how can we have a reward in heaven for our works when all our works are filthy rags, according to Isaiah 64 verse 6?

Simple. 

God calls you to receive eternal life by His pure grace.  You have not earned it in any way.  But in His kindness He gave His Son to fulfill the Law in your place.  He bore the burden of the day on Good Friday and the burning heat of God’s wrath.  And out of lavish mercy, God invites you to receive this gift, to believe that He justifies you. 

And when you believe it, you are righteous in His sight.  And as you work in His vineyard you have the certain hope that at the end of the day He will give you eternal life, whether you have served him all your life or repented at the eleventh hour.

Yet what you suffer and the works you do in faith in Jesus are not nothing in His sight.  Although if God judged them by the Law they could not earn anything, because the Father is merciful He promises to reward your good works in this life and in the life to come. 

The apostles will have a reward for preaching the Gospel and dying as martyrs.  They will sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel. 

And the book of Revelation tells us that Christians will have a reward for their good works in heaven, given by God’s grace.  And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.”  Blessed indeed, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them (Rev. 14:13).  The good works of Christians are not nothing.  The Holy Spirit says they follow us into eternity.

This is what the hymn of the day sang. 

Since Christ has full atonement made

And brought to us salvation

Each Christian therefore may be glad

And build on this foundation (LSB 555 st. 6)

We can’t earn salvation.  Christ has done it.  But each Christian may be glad for what Jesus has done for us and build on the foundation, doing good works.

So there is great comfort in this.  The gracious God who calls you into His vineyard to labor and bear the heat of the day promises you eternal life out of grace.  But He also promises that He will, out of grace, remember your labor and your suffering and reward you.  He gives you these promises to let you know how pleasing your attempts to do good are to Him, even though they often seem weak and useless in our sight.  No, the Father wants to encourage you as you labor and suffer in this life. 

Your labor in the Lord is not in vain, the Scripture says.  For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.  And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises (Heb. 6:10-12).

So say the Scriptures.  It’s not that you earn eternal life by serving in the Lord’s vineyard, by serving other Christians.  You don’t earn anything.  But God in His great mercy promises to reward your work.

6.

God gives eternal life out of grace alone, for Christ’s sake, through faith.  Yet the good works you do please Him.  He promises to remember and reward them.

Amen.

The peace of God that passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria

Baptism Gives Salvation. Wednesday of Transfiguration 2022.

Wednesday of Transfiguration

Emmaus Lutheran Church

Catechism: “What Benefits Does Baptism Give?”/ St. Mark 16:14-20

February 9, 2022

Baptism Gives Salvation

Jesu juva!

LSB p. 325

What benefits does Baptism give?  It works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.

Which are these words and promises of God?  Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Mark: Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.

In the Name of Jesus.

There is are three stanzas from a Lenten hymn in the old hymnal that seem appropriate for the sermon tonight.  Sadly this hymn did not make it into the new hymnal.

1.  Lord Jesus Christ, my Life, my Light,

My Strength by day, my Trust by night,

On earth I’m but a passing guest

And sorely with my sins opprest.

2.  Far off I see my fatherland,

Where thro’ Thy blood I hope to stand.

But ere I reach that Paradise,

A weary way before me lies.

3.  My heart sinks at the journey’s length,

My wasted flesh has little strength;

My soul alone still cries in me:

“Lord, take me home, take me to Thee!”  (TLH #148 stanzas 1-3)

In this world Christians are oppressed by their sins.  We have a long way to walk before we enter Paradise.  And all the way we are assaulted, attacked, by death and the devil.  Our flesh is weak and prone to fall into sin and to fall from faith in Christ. 

If you have ever read Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, this should sound familiar.  In that book Christian only becomes a pilgrim to the Celestial City because he has a burden on his back that he has to get off.  The burden is the conviction of sin.  And he loses the burden at the beginning of his journey when he becomes a Christian.  And yet the whole way along the road to paradise he is attacked by various dangers.  Bunyan was a Calvinist, so he was wrong about a variety of things.  But he was right that the way is narrow that leads to life, and few find it.  And he was right that your adversary the devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

But the Lord does not leave us without help on this seemingly impossible journey to Paradise.  He gives us divine gifts, and one of them is Holy Baptism.

The last sermon about this dealt with what Baptism is. 

Baptism is not a human idea or a human work.  It is water included in God’s command.  The Triune God says to baptize with water.  Therefore it is not something that comes from us.  Baptism has the authority of the living God behind it.

It is the water combined with God’s Word.  In other words, Baptism is not a handful of water that we do to represent something.  It is water joined with the Word of God, in this case His name.  The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two edged sword.  It is not dead, but it accomplishes the purpose for which He sent it. 

Now today the catechism asks us: What benefits does Baptism give?  Why does God command that His word joined with water be poured on us?

The answer is not: So we can announce before the world that we were born again when we said a prayer asking Jesus into our hearts, as evangelicals say.  Baptism is not a pantomime of something that happened at another time.

Nor is it, like the Pope’s church says, the beginning Sacrament, which gives you grace to begin to live a Christian life and forgives your sins once, but after which you have to get forgiveness in other ways, through penance.

Baptism works “forgiveness of sins

Rescues from death and the devil

And gives eternal salvation

To all who believe this.”

When?  Once at the beginning of your life as a Christian?  No, continually.  “To all who believe this.” 

And what is the proof?  There is no shortage of verses in the Bible that declare that Baptism gives forgiveness, rescues from death and the devil and eternal salvation.  But Luther quotes from Mark’s Gospel:

Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen.  And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.  Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”  (Mark 16:14-16)

But Jesus says those who are baptized and believe will be saved.  He doesn’t say: those who believe will be saved, and then they should also be baptized.  But those who are baptized and believe will be saved.  Baptism is a means through which He gives salvation.  One who does not believe will not be saved through Baptism.  But Jesus has a purpose for saying “those who believe and are baptized.”  In Baptism He gives salvation.

This is no different from saying, “whoever hears the word and believes it will be saved,” which Jesus actually does say in John chapter 5.  It’s not that hearing the word is a work by which you earn salvation alongside of believing.  When you hear the Gospel it declares salvation in Christ, and you believe it and are saved.  Likewise, Baptism proclaims and applies salvation in Christ, and you believe what it promises and does and are saved.

When you are saved eternally, that also means: your sins are forgiven.  To be damned eternally, to be condemned eternally, is to suffer the eternal penalty your sins deserve.  To have your sins forgiven is to be saved forever. 

Similarly, when you are saved eternally, you are also rescued from death and the devil.  Death is the penalty for sin.  When we suffer the pains of aging and then the final struggle of death, that is the first death—the separation of the soul from the body.  It is the wages of sin.  We would not experience this pain and grief if Adam and Eve had not sinned.  But now every one of us is subject to it.  Death pursues us all our lives.  When we are young we aren’t really conscious of it.  As we get older we start to see its shadow.

When I was a little kid my dad would sometimes tell me scary stories from when he grew up in Africa.  In Africa they have wild dogs and apparently sometimes they eat people.  He told me a story of an African being chased by a pack of wild dogs.  The African ran and climbed up a tree.  You would think that he would be safe.  Eventually the dogs would get sick of looking up the tree at him.  But no, the wild dogs are smart.  They would take turns guarding the tree while the other dogs went off and did other things.  And they would wait until the African couldn’t hang on anymore, exhausted by thirst and hunger.  And when he fell out of the tree, that was the end of him.

Death pursues us like this.  And apart from being saved, the inevitable separation of our souls from our bodies is only prelude to the second death, where both body and soul are cast into the lake of fire to suffer eternally.

Finally when you are saved eternally you are saved from the devil.  Scripture continually reminds and warns us that the devil never rests and always seeks to destroy Christians.  It also teaches us that he reigns over and in unbelievers.  They are under his power.  He works in them. 

What a gift, then, God gives us in Baptism.  Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” 

Baptism saves you.  That means it works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation.

As the hymn at the beginning of the sermon said, there is a long way between us and paradise.  Along that way sin attacks us every day.   We don’t always feel the burden.  But every day your sinful nature makes you guilty.  On a good day you might say, “Today I prayed, read my bible.  I didn’t say any harsh words to anyone or offend anyone.  I worked faithfully.  Today was a good day.”  Yet even on that day you sinned in thought, word and deed and those sins would damn you.  Your sluggishness to good works, your depression and doubt about God’s goodness, and also the guilt in which you were born would all condemn you.

But Baptism works forgiveness of sins.  When you were baptized as an infant, all the sins of your whole life were forgiven all at once, because in that water Jesus Christ and the blood and agony with which He atoned for sinners were poured out over you.

So every day that flood rolls over you who believe God’s promise in Baptism, and it carries away the burden of your sin.  It forgives you anew each day so that you are white as snow.  Because God’s Word is in that water, His name was in that water.  Like the snow and rain that comes down from heaven it does not return to Him void but accomplishes the purpose for which He sent it.  And He sent it to forgive your sins.

Every day death stalks you.  But baptism rescues you from death.  By His death Jesus transformed our death.  Our souls are still separated from our bodies. But the terror of death, the agony of knowing we are sinners and that we are being separated from our bodies because we are sinners, and now we must stand before the judgment seat of God whom we have offended—that is what death really is.  That has all been taken away.  Jesus destroyed death by His death.  Now death is slumber, going to rest with Christ and await the resurrection. 

And Baptism rescues you from death, because it gives you Jesus’ victory over death.  His victory over death that He won in His agony on the cross pours over you.  So whether you live or die today you can say with Jesus, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”  As He has paid for the forgiveness of your sins, He has also rescued you from death, and He gives you this rescue in your Baptism.

Every day on the journey to heaven, Satan hunts and stalks you.  He tempts you to sin and depart from God’s Word.  Then He holds up before your eyes the guilt of your sin and God’s strict judgment.  He makes sin seem small and God’s judgment seem light.  Then he works to make you despair, especially near the end.

Baptism rescues you from Satan. So long ago was our Baptism, and like a flood it pours through your life, like the river that makes glad the city of God in Psalm 46, and it carries Satan away.  In Baptism you were snatched out of Satan’s kingdom through the forgiveness of your sins.  Jesus who overcame the devil first in His temptation, then at Gethsemane, and finally by paying for all of your sins on the cross, covers and cleanses you.  There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  And in Baptism God pledges that you are in Christ Jesus. 

For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.  In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead (Col. 2:9-12)

All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus.  Satan is no match for this man.  And in Baptism you were filled in this man, you were placed into him, so that you died and were raised with Him.

Satan has nothing he can say to you and nothing he can do to you.  He cannot condemn you if you are in Jesus.

And every day that you believe Baptism’s promise, you are in Jesus, and you are delivered from the devil.

Every day sin burdens Christians.  Satan attacks them, death pursues them.

But every day, like a stream flowing through your life, Baptism gives you forgiveness of sins and deliverance from death and the devil.

And though salvation seems a long way off, Baptism promises you you are already saved eternally.

Therefore, every day is a day to claim the benefits God promised us when we were carried to the Baptismal font as babies.  Through no choice of our own, purely out of grace, God promised us all that Christ won for us.

Amen.

The peace of God that passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria

Devotion: 1 Samuel 28-29 Compromise Is Rebellion

Tuesday of Transfiguration Sunday

Feb. 8, 2022

1 Samuel 28-29

Compromise is Rebellion

In chapter fifteen the Lord sent Saul on a mission to devote the Amalekites to destruction.  That meant to spare none of them and to destroy all their livestock and possessions as well.  But Saul left their king, Agag, alive, along with some of their livestock.  Samuel arrived and asked why he had not obeyed the voice of the Lord and Saul replied: “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord…but the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen…to sacrifice to the Lord your God.”  (1 Sam. 15:20-21) Samuel responded: “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord?….For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry.”  (1 Sam. 15:22-23)

Rebellion is as the sin of divination.  Saul had his own plans for fighting the Amalekites, and the Lord rejected him as king.  Now, threatened by the Philistine armies, Saul has nowhere to turn.  The Lord will not answer his prayers either by dreams or prophets or the Urim and Thummim on the priest’s ephod.  So Saul turns to divination, and has a witch call up a demon pretending to be Samuel, the prophet whose word Saul ignored when he was alive.  The demon had no comforting words for Saul: “The Lord will give Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons shall be with me.” (1 Sam. 28:19)

This is a solemn warning to those who are called to be pastors and those called to other positions of leadership among the people of God.  Sometimes the Lord’s mission seems impossible.  It appears to us we know an easier way than unrestricted warfare against the devil, the world, and our flesh.  No doubt if Saul had obeyed the Lord’s command it would have upset his soldiers, just as Aaron feared the people of Israel when they demanded he make them idols in Moses’ absence (Ex. 32:1).  However, compromising and partly obeying the Lord was actually rebellion against the Lord, as heinous a sin as divination or witchcraft or idolatry.  Saul was made king by God, and God would preserve him as king.  But Saul did not trust the Lord and tried to preserve himself as king.  Because he persisted in this rebellion, forsaking the Lord, the Lord forsook him.  God no longer answered his prayers, and Saul sought counsel from the devil.

The same danger confronts pastors and leaders in the Church.  Rather than pursue the Lord’s mission according to His command, we seek to preserve the Church by our own means.  We are tempted to find easier ways to get done what we think the Lord wants.  We think we can accomplish His work our own way instead of holding to His Word alone. 

But what if a church or pastor realizes that they have compromised God’s Word and thereby rebelled against the Lord?  That pastor or church can do nothing.  They must come to the Lord and humbly confess their rebellion—not claiming like Saul: “I have obeyed the voice of the Lord”—but confessing like David: “I have sinned against the Lord.”  (2 Samuel 12:13) 

That church or pastor will learn the Lord’s name that he proclaimed before Moses after Aaron made a golden calf, when He showed Moses His back: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.”  (Exodus 34:6-7)

The back of God that Moses saw when he heard God’s name we also see when we look upon our Lord Jesus crucified.  There, when we have rebelled against God and chosen our own way like Saul, we see Him on whom the Lord has laid the iniquity of us all (Is. 53:6).

From depths of woe I cry to Thee,

In trial and tribulation;

Bend down Thy gracious ear to me,

Lord, hear my supplication.

If Thou rememb’rest ev’ry sin,

Who then could heaven ever win

Or stand before Thy presence?  (LSB 607 st. 1)

The Blood of the Covenant. The Transfiguration of our Lord, 2022.

The Transfiguration of our Lord

Emmaus Lutheran Church

St. Matthew 17:1-9

February 6, 2022

The Blood of the Covenant

Jesu juva!

In the Name of Jesus.

1.

The Lord brought the people of Israel out of Egypt. Then He appeared to them on a mountain in fire and smoke and spoke the Ten Commandments in thundering voice.  And the people of Israel were terrified.  They told Moses to go talk to God and come tell them what God said.  But don’t let Him speak to us or we will die, they told Moses.

But after Moses went up and got more of the Law from God, the people had a very different experience of God.  The Lord told Moses to come up with Aaron, his sons, and seventy elders of Israel.

But before they went up Moses sealed the people in to God’s covenant, His promise.  They promised they would keep His commandments, God promised to be their God.  And Moses took the blood of many sacrifices and put it in bowls.  He threw half of it on the altar and threw the rest of the blood on the people.

And he said, “Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words.”  (Ex. 24:8)

Then Moses and Aaron and his sons and the seventy elders of Israel “went up, and they saw the God of Israel.  There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness.  And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank.”  (Ex. 24:10-11)

When the people of Israel saw and heard God before the blood of the covenant was applied, they were terrified and thought they were going to die.

After the blood of the covenant, they saw God, ate and drank in His presence, and He did not lay His hand on them.

The same lesson is before us today at the Transfiguration of our Lord.  Apart from the blood of the covenant that Jesus is going to establish, we cannot draw near to God.  Through the blood of His covenant, we approach Him with boldness and confidence.

2.

The problem is that in our flesh we think we know how to approach God.  We think we are ready.  We are self-confident even if we feel a little nervous.

Two of the men who went with Jesus and saw Him transfigured were later going with Jesus to Jerusalem.  James and John’s mother asked Jesus if they could sit at His right and left hand, on either side of Him, when He became king.  He said to them, “You don’t know what you are asking.  Can you drink the cup I am to drink?”  They said to Him, “We are able.”  (Matt. 20:22).  They were quite confident that they could do anything they needed to do to reign with Jesus.  But they didn’t understand what He was asking, or they wouldn’t have said so assuredly: “We can drink your cup.”  Jesus’ cup was death on the cross, and the wrath of God against the sins of the world.

And Peter and James and John are a little nervous on the Mount of Transfiguration.  Remember how they were nervous when they saw Jesus rebuke the sea?  Now they are a little nervous because they are seeing the eternal glory of God the Son shining from Jesus’ face, and two saints in glory speaking with Jesus.  They are aware that they are out of their league.  But they think Jesus must be showing them this so they can do something.  So Peter offers to build three tents and then they can all just stay on the mountain looking on the glory of God in Jesus’ face.

But that is not why Jesus has brought them up there, so they can build tents and stay there awhile.  The three disciples cannot draw near to God’s glory unless Jesus goes down from the mountain.  He must bring the blood of the covenant that reconciles God and that cleanses His people.

Because Peter, even though he doesn’t realize it, is trying to persuade Jesus to put off His work of splashing that blood on God’s altar and the people of God, he hears a loud, terrifying rebuke.  “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased!  Listen to Him!”

At Mount Sinai when the people heard God’s voice thundering the Ten Commandments, they all trembled in fear and thought they were going to die.  That’s how the disciples are here.  See, they all fall on their faces, fearing exceedingly.

This is how it is for you also when you do what comes naturally and try to approach God on your own, apart from the blood of the covenant, apart from listening to Jesus.  When you try to approach God in a way that makes sense to you, on your own power. 

A little before this Peter confessed that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God.  Jesus praised Peter for this.  He said he hadn’t learned it from human beings, but from the Father in heaven.

Next Jesus told them that He was going to Jerusalem, would suffer, be killed, and be raised on the third day.  Peter said, “No, Lord, this will never happen to you.”  Peter meant well, but he was trying to approach God in a way that made sense to him.  Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan!”

In telling Jesus he wouldn’t suffer, Peter was really being a mouthpiece for Satan.  Here, in suggesting Jesus stay on top of the mountain with Moses and Elijah, he offended God the Father.  This is what we often do too. We don’t listen to the well-beloved Son of God, Jesus.  We depend on our own understanding.  And if God were to follow our advice, Jesus would not go down from the mountain and there would be no blood of the covenant, only God’s voice thundering, condemning us as unworthy to approach Him.

Why is the Father offended at Peter’s suggestion that Jesus linger on the mountain with Moses and Elijah?

Because Jesus is God’s Son who pleases the Father well.  Although He is equal to the Father and shares His own essence, He emptied Himself of His divine majesty and power and came in the form of a servant.  Here we see Jesus looking divine.  The eternal light of life shines from His face like the sun.  That is who Jesus is.  He is so great we have no way to talk about it or conceive of it.  Just consider that He was in the beginning with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  He made all things.  He is equal to the Father in majesty. He is His only Son and the exact representation of His being.

But He became man and was content to be seen and live as an ordinary, poor man.  Jesus never demanded the honor that belonged to Him as God the Son.  He permitted Himself to be dishonored and finally killed.  And He never resorted to His power as God, except to heal and help others.  He put it aside out of love and obedience to His Father.

All because it was the Father’s will that Jesus should sprinkle the blood of the covenant on God’s altar and on us, to enable us to draw near to God and see His glory. 

And the blood of the covenant that unites us to God so that He is pleased with us is not the blood of bulls and goats.  It is His own blood, the blood of God the Son made flesh. 

Through that blood we draw near to God with boldness and confidence because that blood—the blood of God’s Son poured out in death, truly brings our sins to an end.

That is why the Father silenced Peter, why Jesus could not remain on the mountain in glory.  He was only there to show these three disciples who it was that suffered for our sins on the cross.  He was showing them why they could be confident through the blood Jesus would shed.  Because it was not an ordinary man who went down the mountain to die, but the eternal, beloved Son.

He had not come to hide from death and suffering, as we generally do.  He came to endure it so that we could draw near to God and live forever.  That is why Moses and Elijah were talking to Jesus.  Not for fun, but because Jesus’ suffering in our place had been planned before the foundation of the world.  They were looking into the great mystery that they had seen from a distance in their lifetimes—the mystery of our redemption from sin by God’s suffering in our place.

3.

Two comforts follow from Jesus’ transfiguration.

The first is the comfort of eternal blessedness, “the life everlasting” that we confess in the creed.

In the hymn we sang:

                With shining face and bright array

                Christ deigns to manifest today

                What glory shall be theirs above

                Who joy in God with perfect love.  (LSB 413 st. 3)

The Scriptures tell us “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.”  (1 Cor. 13:12)  Now we see God by faith in His Word.  We don’t see Him directly.  In His Word He shows Himself to us giving His Son that we mighty not perish but have eternal life.  In Holy Baptism He promises that the Holy Trinity takes us up and comes to dwell within us.  In the Sacrament of the Altar He tells us that Jesus’ body and blood are given and shed for us, that we have life in Him.  We can’t see God with our eyes.  By faith in His Word we see dimly that He is with us and we live in Him.

But after this life at the resurrection of our bodies, we will no longer see dimly in a mirror.  We will see God face to face.  We won’t see a glimpse like Moses did, and Peter, James, and John, a fleeting, passing glimpse.  We will look on God face to face and we will be satisfied.  We will not long for anything else.  We sang about this blessed vision of God in the introit:

                My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord.

                Blessed are those who dwell in Your house

                Ever singing Your praise!

                For a day in Your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.

                For the Lord God is a sun and shield.

Even if we are doorkeepers in the house of God we will be satisfied forever. 

                As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness,

                When I awake, I will be satisfied with Your likeness.  (Ps. 17:15)

And when we see God’s face, it will change us too.  When Moses came down from the mountain where he saw God, his face shone.  When we see God, we will also be like Him in glorified bodies.

The apostle who saw Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, John, wrote in his first epistle: Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we will see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).

But how can we be certain this comfort is for us?  It is really a great comfort if we can be certain of it.  In this world we can’t see our life in God.  God tells us about it in His Word and Sacraments.  In this world we are in the form of slaves.  We are subject to weakness and age; our bodies break down.  Our lives don’t turn out to be the glorious stories we envisioned for ourselves when we were young.  The truth is they are full of sin, brokenness, and failure.  Sometimes we are able to hide it better from ourselves and others, but that remains the truth about the best of us.

But if we can be sure that we will see God and be satisfied?  If we can be sure that our bodies will be like Jesus’ glorious body?  That could comfort us every day we live in this broken world and in our broken bodies.

But how could you be sure if you had done well enough to be worthy of such an honor?

You could never be sure, except of not being worthy.

But you can be certain of this inheritance because Jesus refused to tarry on the Mount of Transfiguration.  After momentarily showing His three disciples His divine majesty He laid it aside again to serve them and us.  He did not boast of His divine majesty but emptied Himself and went to Jerusalem to be insulted and abused and crucified.  So He could make satisfaction for your guilt and splash God’s altar and you with the blood that makes you pleasing to the Father.

Because He served you, you have a certain guarantee that this glory is yours.  And He confirms it by giving you His body to eat and His blood to drink, testifying that everything He has and does is yours.

4.

There is a second comfort from the Transfiguration of Jesus.  Not only what glory will be ours after this life, but comfort for this life.

After Peter was rebuked by the Father and the three disciples were face down in fear, Jesus touched them and said, “Rise, and do not fear.”  And when they looked up they saw Jesus only.

They did not see Moses and Elijah anymore, or Jesus’ glorious light.  To be sure, Jesus’ glory is always where He is, even if it is hidden.  And where Jesus is are the saints, angels, and the whole company of heaven.  And where Jesus is there are the Father and the Holy Spirit.

But the disciples don’t see any of this, only Jesus saying, “Don’t be afraid.”  Jesus getting ready to go down the mountain to be crucified for their transgressions.

How is this a comfort for us?  Because in this life, we Christians are not so often seeing heavenly visions as we are on our faces because of our sins and failures.  And when we are not laid low with fear because of our sins, we are confronted with the cross.  We don’t see Jesus in our midst, being crucified.  But we see suffering in the church, whether because of persecution or the sin of the church’s members.

And when we fall on  our faces or our life in the church leads not to glory but to darkness, where it seems like God can hardly be present with us, we have this comfort.

We do not look up and see the saints in glory or glory in the face of Jesus.

We see Jesus only.  Jesus in the form of a servant, as He proclaims Himself crucified to congregations of chaotic, sometimes misguided Christians.

As He places His broken body and shed blood in mouths that have been saying the wrong things.

As He places His hand on our heads and says not, “Do not fear,” but “I forgive you all your sins.”

When our life in the church is brokenness and failure, Jesus shows Himself to us as the One who laid aside His glory to heal us with His wounds.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

The Presentation of our Lord 2022. The Little Light of Revelation

The Purification of Mary and the Presentation of our Lord

Emmaus Lutheran Church

St. Luke 2:22-32

February 2, 2022

The Little Light of Revelation

Jesu juva

In the Name of Jesus.

This day was called “Candlemas” in England because in days gone by people would bring all their candles to church to have them blessed for the year.  It was also the tradition even in Lutheran churches for parishioners to hold hand candles during the Divine Service like we do on Christmas Eve or the vigil of Easter.

Why the tradition with candles on this day?  I’m not sure, but it seems likely that it has something to do with the Gospel reading, where Simeon sings that the baby Jesus is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel.”  (Luke 2:32)

Revelation.  The Greek word sounds like “apocalypse.”  It means uncovering, unveiling what is shrouded in mystery.  But the little child Simeon picks up in his arms seems so far from the apocalypse sort of revelation, with stars falling from the sky and beasts coming out of the sea.  If He is a light He seems like a little candle’s light, not the One like a Son of Man with a face like the sun and a voice like the roar of many waters.

It’s like when we sing Simeon’s song, usually.  Traditionally the Nunc Dimittis is the canticle for Compline, the prayer office of the Church at the close of the day.  But some Lutheran invented the custom of singing the Nunc Dimittis after receiving the Holy Supper.  Which is a good custom, because there too our eyes see the Lord’s salvation.  But when we receive Jesus’ body and blood, the light for revelation to the Gentiles does not seem like a rider on a white horse, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but a small light, a faintly burning wick. 

The Sacrament does not seem like the end-of-the-world kind of revelation.

Liturgically, Candlemas is the transition from the season of Christmas and Epiphany to the season of Lent, of Jesus’ passion.  During the past month we have seen who Jesus is, what light is hidden in His flesh.  But in another few weeks we will change our focus to what He came to do on earth.  He did not become man simply to dwell among us as God in the flesh.  He came to release us from death and corruption by His bitter suffering and crucifixion.

2.

So what actually is revealed when Jesu sis brought to be presented in the temple?

All a human eye would see is a small baby, forty days old, held by a young mother.  She and her husband enter the temple courts to do what the Law of God requires.  A sacrifice must be offered to purify her from the uncleanness of childbirth.  And the baby boy must be redeemed.  Every firstborn among the Israelites belongs to the Lord.  Because the Lord slew every firstborn male among the Egyptians in order to take Israel as His firstborn Son.  So the Lord requires that every firstborn male be given to Him, or a substitute be offered.

But this child appears like any other firstborn male in Israel.

The only unique thing about Him is that He is from the poorest class in Israel.  And maybe that isn’t really unique.  The mother after childbirth is supposed to sacrifice a lamb for her purification along with a turtledove.  But if her husband is too poor to afford a lamb, they can offer two turtledoves instead.

That is what Mary and Joseph come to the Lord’s altar with—2 doves, a poor person’s offering.  And this baby.  To they eye nothing glorious, nothing amazing is revealed at Jesus’ presentation—only humility and poverty.

3. 

But what does Simeon see in this child?

He sees his own death.  And he rejoices to see it.  Think about that!

Listen to him again:

He came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus…he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said: ‘Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all people.”  (Luke 2:27-31)

It’s true Simeon also sees in the baby the Lord’s salvation.  But at the same time he sees his death.  He has been told by the Lord he would not die until he has seen the Lord’s Christ.  Now that he has seen Him, it is time to die.

This is the mystery that is revealed in this little child.  He is gentle, like the little tongue of flame on a candle.

And He is a consuming fire.  He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.  “Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made.”  (John 1:3)  And He is the end, the Judge of the living and the dead.

When He comes into the world, He comes for us men and for our salvation.  But as the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: “When Jesus Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.”

Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matt. 11).

But then He turns around and says: If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Mt. 16:24-25).

He is a gently burning candle that we can hold in our hands and rejoice in its light, and He is the consuming fire of the sun that consumes us.

But Simeon did not tremble with terror at the baby or his own death.  He picked up the baby and blessed God and rejoiced to die. 

The baby  is a consuming fire, the brightness of the sun, death, and yet He is all that for.  All the Godhead’s power is in that little child so that He can go to the temple and fulfill the Law for you, beginning with His presentation.

All of the Godhead is in that body so that when He is crucified and His blood streams forth, the Law comes to an end, and His death is strong enough to quench the fire of God’s wrath against you.

Yes, He is the death of this world and your sinful life.  He is the Omega, the revelation of God’s judgment and destruction on Your sin.

But He is also the revelation of God’s saving love, His grace that saves a wretch like me and you.  Not only Mary and Joseph are bringing Him to the temple. 

God the Father presents His Son there as the firstborn who will fulfill the Law and take it out of the way and bring us into His presence as sons forever.

So that when Jesus’ glory is revealed not like a candle but like the sun, and the stars drop from the sky, you will be like Him in glory.

This is why Simeon rejoices to pick up the child and die, to be released not only from his old body but into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

And this is what is revealed to us when we come down to the altar and receive the bread and wine joined with His almighty Word.  It seems like just a little light, a hand candle, like the presentation of Jesus seemed like just the presentation of another poor, small child.

But it is the end and the beginning.  It is the Lord who comes on the last day to judge.  It is the Lord who was judged by God in blood and nails for your sins. Coming to reveal to you your salvation in His death.  Coming to declare you dead and alive.

Coming to present you with Him to His Father, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy and without blemish. 

Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

Epiphany 4 2022. Saved By Sleep

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

Emmaus Lutheran Church

St. Matthew 8:23-27

January 30, 2022

Saved by Sleep

Jesu juva!

In the Name of Jesus.

1.

The disciples followed Jesus into the boat.  Jesus had just healed the man with leprosy and the centurion’s servant.  What do you expect would happen after miracles like that?  There were suddenly a whole bunch of applicants for the job of “disciple of Jesus.”  If the Lord would give me or you this sort of power, just think of how many would-be disciples might fill these pews.

But Jesus doesn’t think like we do.  One man comes to Him, says, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”  But Jesus says: “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  (Matt. 8:19-20)

Jesus commands the sick to get well, cleanses the leper.  But that does not mean following Him is going to be glorious and fun.  The Son of Man has no place to lay His head.  To follow Him is to become homeless in this world.  It is to be persecuted from one place to another.

And the disciples of Jesus follow Him into the boat.  Perhaps they had not listened to what He said to those who were applying to be disciples.

The disciples push off and begin rowing.  In the moonlight the oars slap the black water.  And Jesus drifts off to sleep.

Then, sometime in the night, a storm comes over the sea.  Now the black water is lit up by lightning and the quiet splashing of the oars is replaced by the terrifying roar of the wind.  The boat is concealed by the waves, St. Matthew’s Greek tells us.  The waves are towering over and then falling on the boat with its 12 frightened passengers, and one sleeping occupant.

Is this what it has come to?  The deal was that the disciples were going to be fishers of men.  That’s what Jesus promised.  But as they fight the waves, doubt and fear begin to take over.  Maybe Jesus didn’t really know what was coming when He called them.  Maybe they were wrong when they thought He was more than an ordinary man.

But that couldn’t really be true, because an ordinary man would at least have woken up during the storm!  Jesus must be more than a mere human being, because no man could sleep with waves crashing over him like this.  Even asleep Jesus shows that He is divine.

But why does He sleep so obstinately when His disciples are at their wits’ end, when their lives are hanging by a thread?

So the disciples begin to doubt Jesus. Probably it’s not His power they doubt.  They doubt whether He is concerned about them.

And you have also followed Jesus into the boat.  You followed Him when you were baptized.  You entered His ark, the Holy Christian Church.

And when you were baptized, you said you believed in Him.  You said you believed in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ, His only Son, in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.  You weren’t just saying that you believed the three persons of the Trinity exist.  You believed, you said, that the Triune God is your God.  The Father created you, the Son redeemed you with His blood, the Holy Spirit sanctified you.

But storms break over this boat and you give way to doubt.  Maybe sometimes you doubt whether the Triune God still exists.  More often you begin to doubt if He cares for those who are in the boat.  Because He seems to sleep, like He’s doing it on purpose.

2. 

We said we would trust Him to be our God.  But sometimes—many times?—it seems to us He doesn’t know how to be our God.  Jesus, is this the way you want to be our God?  Our boat is being swallowed by the waves.  Your way of being our God is to use superhuman power to sleep through the whole thing?  That makes no sense at all.  That can’t be right.

So the disciples wake Jesus up.  “Save us, Lord, we are perishing.”

Look, Lord.  If this boat breaks in half, You might be able to keep sleeping underwater, at the bottom of the sea.  But have some pity on us!  We’ll drown.

It’s an accusation against Jesus.  We have a hard time blaming the disciples.  But at the same time they are suggesting that Jesus doesn’t understand about storms and drowning and that He really doesn’t care about them.

They suggest that the One who is able to sleep through this storm doesn’t know what they need.

They got into the boat with Him but now they have lost confidence in Him.

So when Jesus lets them wake Him He rebukes them.  “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” (8:26)

Little faith is better than no faith.  But if faith was the thing we offer God to make Him pleased with us, little faith would be the same as no faith.  If faith were the good work we do for Jesus, it would have to be perfect.  Because God the son deserves perfect faith, because He is completely trustworthy and reliable.

But we don’t trust Him with the trust He deserves.  We can’t even do that.  If Jesus saved us because of our trust in Him we would all perish.  We would sink into the depths.

3.

Jesus does not save us because we believe in Him.  He saves us—therefore we believe in Him.

After rebuking the disciples for their little faith, “He rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.”  (8:26)

When we got in the boat of Jesus’ church when we were baptized, we said, “I believe in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and in the Holy Spirit.”  We said we believed the Triune God existed, but also that we trusted Him as our God.  Our Creator, who made us and provides for us.  Our Redeemer, who became man and rescued us from sin with His death and resurrection.  Our Sanctifier, who makes us holy through faith in Jesus, by means of the Word and Sacraments.

Yet we wonder if He cares for us and we try to help Him be our God because He doesn’t seem to know how to do it.

But it turns out He  knows exactly how to be your God.  You think it would be better if He got up at the first sign of a storm and rebuked it immediately.  Or maybe if He just tested you a little, but not to your limits.

And it is true that all that power is there in Him, even while He is sleeping.  All the might of the Creator, all the fullness of the Godhead.  So that He speaks to the wind and the sea and they are still.  He could speak a word and fill your pockets with money or give you super powers.

But instead He lies there, still as a stone, as the waves are breaking over Him and you in the boat. 

Do you know the reason?  Because He has come to save you from perishing not by rebuking the sea, sickness, and the devil, but by lying still as a stone.

He has come to save you from perishing by taking His divine power and giving it into your death.

On Calvary, a Roman soldier will pierce His heart with a spear.  His mother and John take His body down and weep over Him.  How can He be dead when He is the son of God? 

Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea carry away His dead body and bury Him.  And His disciples weep and wail, but He is insensible to their tears and cries.  Just like He slept through their terror during this storm.

“Why are you fearful, O you of little faith,” He says.  This is just a storm.  See, with a word it goes away.

But sin, death, and hell does not depart from you until I enter into them for you with My great power.

But fear not, that is what I have come to do.  I know how to be your God.  I care for you.

4.

After Jesus rose from His sleep and spoke to the storm there was a great calm. 

The golden evening brightens in the west

                Soon, soon to faithful warrior cometh rest

                Sweet is the calm of Paradise the blest.

                Alleluia!  Alleluia.  (LSB 677 st. 6)

Where the sea had been swamping the boat, now Jesus has arisen and there is utter stillness.  The wind is silent.  The water is placid.

But as marvelous as it was for Jesus to silence the storm with His Word, that was only a temporary calm.

But when He arose from His three day sleep in the grave, he spoke an eternal calm to the disciples.  “On the evening of the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”  When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side.”  (John 20:19-20)

The peace Jesus pronounced to the disciples at His resurrection is the calm, the peace of the forgiveness of sins.  That is why He showed the disciples the marks in His hands and side.  By His death, by being placed in the grave for us, He has given us peace with God.  There is now no condemnation for us in Him.  It is a lasting peace, because those marks of His death can never be taken off Him.  He has died our death.  He brought about peace by sleeping the sleep of death for us. 

But now He speaks the peace of paradise the blest to us in this world of storms and darkness.  When He proclaims through pastors: “I forgive you all your sins in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” He is speaking the calm of the new heavens and earth to you.  Or speaking you into the peace of paradise the blest.

And when He gives you His crucified body and His shed blood in the Sacrament, He silences the storm of the devil’s assaults and the world’s attacks on the Church.  We are tossed about on the waves and have no place to lay our heads in this world.  But in the midst of the storms He gives us the calm of a good conscience when He gives us His body that was placed in the grave for us.

5.

When we follow Jesus into the boat, we follow Him into storms.  We follow Him into death.  Don’t be surprised, don’t be terrified.  The Son of Man has no place on earth to lay His head.

Yet the Lord will not cast us off when we are terrified by the waves swamping the ark of the Church.  He speaks calm and peace.  He forgives us all our sins.  He speaks the new reality of paradise to us in this stormy, terrifying world.

From His voice declaring the new creation we learn courage to face death in love for those around us who are perishing, so that they too may know Him who says: “Peace to you,” and shows the wounds He bore for us. 

Amen.

The peace of God, that passes understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Soli Deo Gloria

Epiphany 3, 2022. Divine-Human Authority

Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Emmaus Lutheran Church

St. Matthew 8:1-13

January 23, 2022

Divine-Human Authority

Jesus

1.

Naaman is a man under authority.  He is under the command of the King of Syria, but he bears the authority of the king with him.  Under ordinary circumstances a man with leprosy would probably not be entrusted with so much authority.  But the Lord gave victory to Syria through Naaman’s command, so the king couldn’t afford to let him go.

But Naaman’s authority, and the King of Syria’s authority, was limited.  They had great authority, but it was still limited. 

You may have heard the story about King Canute of England in the dark ages.  He had his courtiers set up his throne on the beach.  He took his seat on it with his scepter and waved it before the sea and commanded the tide to come no further. 

But the sea did not listen.  Soon the waves crashed into his throne and splashed salt water on his royal robes.  Then the king supposedly said: “See how vain the power of kings is!”  A king or a ruler may be able to force people to do all sorts of things, but he is still subject to the laws of nature and to the predestination of God.  He is not lord over these things.  He is under their authority.

But with God it is very different.  The Scripture says, All things are your servants (Ps. 119:91).  Even people that do not want to serve God or even acknowledge that He exists are His servants.  They fulfill His purposes, whether they want to or not.  And when He gives an order in His divine power, nothing can resist His will.  Not the sea, not the sun. 

When Elisha the prophet speaks the Word of God, even though it comes through his lips to his servant’s ears, and then from the servant’s lips to the ears of Naaman, the dark waters of the Jordan become a healing bath that make Naaman’s leprous skin like that of a newborn baby.

Naaman didn’t understand how this divine authority of God’s Word worked.  He thought his healing depended on the person and presence of Elijah.  He thought Elisha would come out like a magician and do a ritual that would make his leprosy disappear.  Instead Elisha sent God’s Word in the mouth of another person.  But the authority of God’s Word is unlimited.  What it says it does, even if it comes through a human being.

The Gospel reading confronts us with a similar story.  There is another man under authority, a Roman centurion.  But unlike Naaman, he understands that Jesus does not have to go to his house and stand in the same room with his suffering, paralyzed servant to heal him.  The centurion knows that if he tells a soldier to go, he will go; if he tells another “come,” he will come.  And he knows that if Jesus tells paralysis and pain “depart” they will leave his servant, just as obediently as his soldiers obey his commands.  But Jesus doesn’t need to be in the same room with the sick person or send a messenger to him.  He speaks and uncleanness, suffering, death, and all creation obeys Him, regardless of where He is.

The centurion understands that the word of Jesus is the word of God, and He has divine authority.

Jesus has divine authority, but in another sense He does not. 

The centurion and Elisha were men under authority.  The centurion is under the authority of Caesar.  Elisha was under the authority of God.  But Jesus, the eternal Son of God, is not beneath the Father.  He is one substance with the Father, equal to Him in power and authority.

Yet He has laid aside that power and authority.  Jesus speaks and there are many people who reject what He says.  Although He has the authority of the eternal Son of God—because that is who He is—He puts it aside.  He doesn’t compel people to believe in Him.  Doesn’t command stones to become bread. 

Instead, at the very moment He cleanses the leper with His Word, Jesus stretches out His hand and touches the leper.  According to the Law Jesus made Himself unclean with that act.  He put on the leper’s uncleanness in order to heal him.

What kind of authority is that?  Instead of dismissing God’s Law, Jesus is making Himself subject to it.  Instead of merely ordering uncleanness out of the world, He is showing that He wants to take it on Himself.  His eternal divine authority is now present in flesh and blood so that He may take on uncleanness and death on Himself and heal us and make us alive.

Though He is equal to the Father, He has humbled Himself and received authority from the Father to give up His life to cleanse us from impurity.

2.

Jesus has authority from His Father to take uncleanness on Himself and purify us.  What follows from that? 

It follows that all teaching that tells us to sanctify ourselves by our own efforts is false.  Just as you can’t cure leprosy and paralysis by your own will and efforts, you can’t cure spiritual leprosy and paralysis, which are far worse.

Jesus alone has authority to purify us from sin and release us from death.  He doesn’t do it merely by exercising divine power.  He does it by becoming man.  As man and God He carries your uncleannesses.  Isaiah 53 says, “We considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted.”  The Hebrew word for “stricken” is the word the Old Testament uses to describe what happens when a person gets sick with leprosy or some other disease.  The Scripture calls that person “stricken by God.” 

When Jesus was hanging on the cross God struck Him with all the uncleanness of sin.  Though in Himself Jesus is clean, He became an unclean thing, the leper of the world.

And like Naaman experienced cleansing from leprosy when God’s Word joined with the lowly Jordan water, we are sanctified and cleansed in the baptismal water.  In it we are sprinkled clean, not with the ashes of a heifer mixed with water, like God commanded in the Old Testament.  We are cleansed by the body of Jesus given over to death who is in the water, who was stricken for all our uncleanness.  Ge is the eternal Son who was with the Father in the beginning.  But He came to us in flesh and blood and carried all our uncleanness.  He cleanses us in the Baptismal water in his body.  The body that died to remove our uncleanness.  The body that rose to live before God clean and holy forever.

3. 

Jesus was amazed at the centurion’s faith in His authority—so much so that He said, “I have not found such faith in Israel.”

It isn’t like Jesus was sitting around waiting for them to produce faith in Him out of their own spiritual resources.  Did you hear what Jesus said to the leper after he was cleansed: Go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them?  See how Jesus is trying to win the priests to faith in Him?  It’s not the case that nothing was being done for the people of Israel that they might believe.

Jesus the Son of God was in their midst preaching and working miracles, but most of His hearers stubbornly resisted and did not believe in Him.

But the same thing goes on among us.  Jesus is in our midst with His authority as God and man to purify us from sin and release us from death.

And there is faith among us, just as there was in Israel.  That is His promise: His word will not return to Him empty.  It will gather a people who believe in His authority to purify from sin and release us from death and disease at the resurrection.

But there is also unbelief among us, just as Jesus warns.  There are no doubt some in our membership who have no saving faith in Christ at all. 

Many will come from the east and west to sit at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Just as this happened to the Jews, to there will be those in the visible assembly of the Christian Church who will be cast out because they did not actually believe in Jesus, in His authority to purify from sin and declare release from death. 

But even among those who do believe in Jesus, that He is God in the flesh, that what He speaks will surely happen, there is much weakness in faith.  Much stubborn or lazy refusal to acknowledge Jesus’ authority to save and cleanse you from impurity.  Among us there is doubt that what He speaks even from a distance, even through the mouth of a human being, He will surely do—cleanse you, release you from all pain at the last day, raise you from death.

Repent therefore.  Pay more attention to His Word.  Recognize it for what it really is—the word of God, which is not bound.  Which comes with Jesus’ divine, human authority to cleanse you and make you alive.

4.

In the collect we prayed that the Lord would stretch forth the right hand of His majesty to heal and defend us.

When I hear that I picture Jesus stretching out His hand to lay it on me, or all of us, just as He did many times when He was visible on earth to heal the sick.  I also imagine Him stretching out His hand to ward off those who would attack us—as He probably did to the mob that wanted to attack Peter after he struck off the ear of the high priest’s servant.  As He did when He stood between the woman caught in adultery and those who wanted to stone her. 

Except when Jesus stretches out the hand of His majesty to heal an defend us now He stretches it forth from the throne of God, and His hand is full of the glory and omnipotence that we cannot see.  It touches us with mighty power and wards off those who attack us and makes us whole.

But how does Jesus stretch out His hand to us?

His might is at work in His Word that is in our midst.  When He proclaims His coming in the flesh and His death that purifies our uncleanness, His hand stretches out and touches us to heal us and give us life.  His throne is not far away from us in the heaven of heavens.  It is right in our midst as His Word is proclaimed.  And His divine and human authority, the authority He had from the Father to lay down His life for us and take it up again, is with us.  By that authority He raises you up, gives you life, purifies you.

He spoke to the centurion: Go.  AS you believed it has been done to you.  Even though He was not with the centurion’s servant visibly, His Word did what it said. 

So it is with us.  His Word says, “This is my body, which is given for you.”  And it will be so, and you will be healed.  You will be delivered from death and sin.   His Word will say, “Drink of it, all of you.  This is my blood of the New Testament, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”  And it will be so; it will be His blood, and as you drink it you will be forgiven and loosed from sin.  You will be clean.

Jesus said that many will come and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, while the sons of the kingdom will be cast out.  That’s because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were righteous by faith, not by works.  Abraham believed God’s promise about the seed through whom the world would be blessed.  God counted it to him as righteousness.

This centurion was already united to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob because he believed Jesus was the son of God. 

Just as wherever Jesus’ word is, there is He with all His authority, so wherever Jesus is, there is His Kingdom and feast, even if its joys are not visible and tangible.

So when you believe that Jesus is the Son of God you come and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  You come and receive the body and blood of Christ which release you from sickness and death and cleanse you from all impurity.

Let us come and sit down at His feast.  Amen.

The peace of God that passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 

Soli Deo Gloria

Epiphany 2 2022/ Life Sunday. He Revealed His Glory

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany/Sanctity of Human Life Sunday

Emmaus Lutheran Church

St. John 2:1-11

January 16, 2022

He Revealed His Glory

Jesu juva!

In the Name of Jesus.

1.

C. S. Lewis, the Christian author from the early part of the last century, wrote:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”  (The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses)

This is a good quote for the second Sunday after the Epiphany because our Lord in the Gospel reading makes wine.  It is a little scandalous because the wedding guests have already drunk well.  The master of the feast tells the groom that he is being wasteful and stupid because he has waited to serve the best wine until everyone has already drunk enough that they are not going to be able to tell the difference between good wine and the cheap stuff. 

So the wedding guests drank up all the bridegroom’s wine.  One might guess that the guests were doing what people sometimes do when they go to a wedding and there is an open bar.  They drank far more than they were expected to because it was free.  It’s the same principle as going to an all-you-can eat buffet.

Then the wine runs out, which is an embarrassment to the groom.  And at this point Jesus makes 6 stone jars full of good wine.  At twenty or thirty gallons each, this amounts to 120 to 180 gallons.  If my math is right that would mean Jesus made 500 to 750 bottles of wine.  This for people who had already had more than they should have.

Why would He do that?  Isn’t He just encouraging people to abuse alcohol? 

It might seem that way.  But according to this way of thinking God is also encouraging human beings to sin by continuing to let the sun shine on them and sending rain and giving them food and drink and other earthly pleasures.  If He wants us to stop, He should punish us right away.

Jesus is not opposed to people drinking wine, because He created wine.  He is not opposed to sex, because He created marriage so that the man and woman would be one flesh.  He is not opposed to people desiring to build and accomplish things, because He gave us our ability to work and think. 

But like C. S. Lewis says, our desires are too weak.  We are content with making mud pies in a slum when we could go on a vacation at the beach.  We content ourselves with getting drunk, fornicating, or climbing the ladder and boasting about it when He wants to give us more than just some wine at a wedding, but infinite joy.

2.

Jesus said, Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  (Matt. 6:25) And all but the most hardened atheists can see that life is not just filling your stomach and keeping warm. 

But in one way or another we try to have life this way.  When food and clothing are taken care of we try to have life in more complicated forms of self-seeking.  We seek it in pleasure—alcohol, drugs, sex—but also in doing apparently good things that we can boast about.  I built a Fortune 500 company.  I climbed a mountain.  My children all graduated summa cum laude from top tier schools. 

Where does all this lead?  Certainly, to pleasure.  There is pleasure when you put food in your stomach and pleasure when alcohol rises to your head, and by itself this is good.  God created food and drink.  Wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart (Ps. 104).  God created work for human beings too.  So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should enjoy his work, for that is his lot, says Ecclesiastes (3:22). 

But food, drink, work, and wife and children are not life-giving.  They were not meant to be.  When we make them our lives, they bring death.

Sanctity of Human Life Sunday is usually observed the Sunday closest to January 22, the date when the Supreme Court decided that there was a constitutional right to an abortion up until the time when a baby could live on its own outside the womb.  We are observing it today at Emmaus.  Why does there need to be a Sunday saying that human life is sacred?  Because we live in a time when our culture behaves as though human life is no different than animal life.

When the ability to have pleasure from life disappears, our culture says it is good to end it.  When another human being’s life gets in the way of our pleasure, it can be killed under conditions specified by the state.  This is so common in our culture that we hardly notice it.  Infants’ lives in the womb are ended because the mother and father falsely believed that sex was simply about pleasure, not about something greater, about the giving of life.  When life emerged from their misuse of sex, they were terrified into believing that this was a mistake, and that the new life that arose would destroy their lives.

When it comes to the end of life, people not only take their own lives because their seems to be no “quality” left in it, no pleasures left to live for.  Family members are told that not acting quickly to remove loved ones from life support and end their lives is a selfish act.

Not only is life itself not treated as sacred, but also the institution God created in order to bring life into the world and nurture life.  God created marriage so that husband and wife would share one life, become one flesh, so that they would sustain one another’s lives, and when He willed, bring life into the world.  But in our society marriage exists primarily for pleasure.  When marriages cease to be pleasurable, when they seem to bring more suffering than happiness, they end.  What God has joined together, we tear apart. 

When we live for pleasure, as our sinful flesh wants to do, and as our culture assures itself that God wants us to do, we actually have no life at all.  We participate in death.  Sometimes we actually kill.  More often we inflict suffering by neglect and abandonment of those we are called to love. 

But beyond this we actually live in death.  The pleasures we live for fade, and we are empty, cut off from the Giver of those pleasures, the Giver of life.

And this isn’t even something we can correct about ourselves.  Our whole lives our flesh clamors for what will please it.  We are not able in ourselves to forsake this false god that brings death.

3.

But in the Gospel reading the Lord of Life shows us His glory and restores us to life.

The Hebrew word for “glory” literally means “brightness.”  The sun has one kind of glory, says St. Paul, the moon another,  the stars another.  The brightness of God’s glory is not something human beings can see and live, the Lord tells Moses when he asks to see it.

Yet in the Gospel reading we are told: This, the first of His signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested His glory.  And His disciples believed in Him (John 2:11). 

But how did Jesus manifest His glory?  His disciples didn’t see any light proceeding from His face, and the wedding guests, deep in their cups, didn’t notice anything happening at all.

We might say that Jesus revealed God’s power.  He showed that He is God by exercising His power over creation.  He spoke and mere water became wine.

 But the glory and majesty of God is not just that He is powerful, that He is almighty.  His glory and majesty is that He gives.  He gives life without any merit or worthiness in those He gives to.  He gives freely and graciously because, as John tells us elsewhere, God is love.

God manifested His glory by creating the world and everything in it.  That showed His power, but also His love.  God was perfectly happy in Himself.  He didn’t need to create the light, the sky, the waters, the living creatures, and man.  There wasn’t something lacking in Him that He created to fill.  He created out of pure love, to give us existence, to give us Himself. 

Jesus shows this glory at the wedding of Cana.  When the master of the feast tastes the water become wine, he rebukes the bridegroom: You have saved the best wine until now.

We recall that just at the creation God looked at everything He had made and saw that it was very good, so now Jesus turns water into wine that is very good.  He shows His glory as the Creator.  He is the life-giver, who out of pure grace gave us everything in creation to enjoy.

And we are running around trying to satisfy ourselves with drink and sex and ambition, willing to harm others in word or deed to get what we think we need.  And we never find what will make us whole.  But here stands the One who gives graciously to all without finding fault. 

He gives this wedding party more than they deserve, more than most of them know how to use correctly.  Later He will multiply bread and fish and give people to eat as much as they wanted. 

Here is the One who gave you life and will give you more than you can ask or imagine, without condemning you, without turning you away for your sins.

But He hasn’t appeared merely to show His glory as Creator.  He has come to be glorified for you.

He is the only Son of the Father.  He is the exact representation of His being, Scripture says.  When we see Jesus, we see the Father whose glory we are not permitted to see with our eyes, lest we perish.

He is already glorious because He was with the Father from the beginning.  But later in John’s gospel Jesus says, Now is the Son of Man glorified (John 13:31).  He says it at the moment Judas leaves the last supper to betray Him.  If He already has glory, how can He be glorified?  And why is it at that moment?

He is glorified not for His own sake, but yours and mine.  When He is betrayed and crucified, He is glorified.  He is handed over to death and shame for your sins, comes forth victorious, and raises our flesh and blood to the Father’s throne.

But why does He call it His glorification when He is given over to death, and nailed to die in shame on the cross?

Because that is when we most clearly see God.  We see what Jesus’ Father in heaven is like.  He gives His dearest treasure, His own Son, to suffer for those who have forsaken Him.

None of us has this kind of love.  No angel has this kind of love either, unless he has received it from God.  But this is who our God is.  He comes to us in our misery and suffers for our guilt, and makes us a new creation.

Jesus is thinking of this.  This is why when His mother brings up the wine, He says, “Woman, what does this have to do with me?  My hour has not yet come.”  His hour is His death.

At that hour He not only satisfies us with the good things of this creation, but with the infinite joy of the forgiveness of our sins.  He takes us as His own bride and removes everything that could separate us from His love.

4.

This is the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Not just that He is powerful, not just that He is eternal.  But that He is love.

When He is glorified, He is glorifying you.  He is lifted up on the cross with your shame.  When we look on Jesus crucified, our eyes see shame, suffering, weakness, horrible pain.  Our eyes fill with tears when we think of this sometimes.  But by faith we also see Jesus’ glory and our glory.  He is doing away with the shame of our idolatry, with the evil we have done to others while seeking ourselves, with the dishonor we have done God by seeking idols.  His love is greater than our sin.  He does away with it in His flesh.  His love is so great that He does not scorn us in our guilt.  This is His glory.

The disciples saw His glory when Jesus did this miracle.  But we also see His glory today.

When we leave His table we sing, “My eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all people.  A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Have we really seen the glory of the Lord when we return from the altar?

Yes.  We see His glory as Creator.  He speaks, and mere bread is His body, given for us, and the cup of wine is His blood shed for us.

The ransom of the whole word is placed on our humble altar, and given into our sinful mouths.

We receive the Son of God in the flesh who created us out of grace and who was glorified on the cross and glorified us, doing away our sins.

He gives us life in these bodies of death, in this world of death. He not only shows us His glory at Holy Communion, but He gives us to participate in it.

The peace of God that passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria

What is Baptism? Wednesday of Epiphany 1

Wednesday of Epiphany 1

Emmaus Lutheran Church

Matthew 3:13-17/ Catechism: What is Baptism?

January 12, 2022

What is Baptism?

Jesu juva!

What is Baptism?  Baptism is not just plain water, but it is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s Word.

Where is this written?  Christ our Lord says in the last chapter of Matthew: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” 

In the Name of Jesus.

Baptism is one of the two Sacraments of the Christian Church.  Or three, if we want to expand the definition.  “Sacrament” means “mystery” in Latin.  Baptism truly is a mystery.  There is far more to it than meets the eye. 

                All that the mortal eye beholds

                Is water as we pour it

                Before the eye of faith unfolds

                The pow’r of Jesus’ merit

                For here it sees the crimson flood

                To all our ills bring healing

                The wonders of His precious blood

                The love of God revealing

                Assuring His own pardon.  (LSB 406 st. 7)

But a more literal, less poetic translation of Luther’s hymn reads this way:

The eye only sees the water

As people pour it out.

In the Spirit, faith recognizes the power

Of the blood of Jesus Christ.

And for him it is a red flood

Colored with the blood of Christ

Which makes whole all the wounds

We have inherited from Adam

And also committed ourselves.

But more could be said than Luther does in the constraints of meter and verse.  St. Paul says we are baptized into Jesus’ death and buried with Him (Romans 6:3-4).  In Baptism we join Jesus in His death and resurrection.

Jesus says that in Baptism we are born again of water and the Holy Spirit (John 3:5-6) and through this we enter the Kingdom of God. 

Elsewhere St. Paul says that Jesus gave Himself up so that He might cleanse His church through Baptism, and present her to Himself as a bride without spot or wrinkle or any such thing (Ephesians 5:25-27).  Similar to Luther’s hymn, Paul describes Baptism as a washing empowered by and filled with His death and the shedding of His blood, that cleanses us of every stain and imperfection.

So you see that if you take just three of the New Testament’s passages on Baptism, you are face to face with a great mystery and an overwhelming gift.

In Baptism you die and rise again with Christ so that just as Jesus was free from death and sin forever after His resurrection, so a baptized person shares in Jesus’ defeat of death and sin.

A baptized person is reborn and lives by the Holy Spirit.

A baptized person is cleansed from every impurity and blemish.

Critics of this teaching say, “No, no, no.  It isn’t that easy.” 

On the one hand, as you know very well, you have the schwaermer, the swarming spirits who buzz like bees and wasps.  And they say, “How can water do that?  The Spirit must give make you a new creation.  Someone pouring water on you can’t do all that.”

On the other hand, the Papists say, “Yes, Baptism is a mystery in which we are given the Holy Spirit, in which we are cleansed of original sin.  But after we are cleansed, if we fall into mortal sin, our blemishes must be removed again in the Sacrament of Penance.”

So the Catechism begins in a very simple way.  It asks “What is Baptism?”  What is Baptism made up of?  Who instituted Baptism?  Who does what?

Luther teaches us to say, “Baptism is not just water, but the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word.” 

This is important for us to take to heart every day.  Every day when you wake up you are baptized. 

But when you live your life, it doesn’t seem to matter that you are baptized.  Look, we get old like everyone else.  We get sick like everyone else.  We have many regrets in our lives.  We have ongoing sins and weaknesses.  And then you seem to become more holy, the Lord grants you to overcome one sin.  You find so many more.  What difference does it make that decades ago your parents handed you to the pastor and he took three handfuls of water and poured them on your head and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit?”

Here is why it matters.  Baptism is not just plain water.  It is the water included in God’s command and combined with God’s word.

Which word of God is that water they splashed on your head included in and combined with?  Luther points us to the Great commission: “Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

God commanded that Baptism happen.  So the baptismal water is not ordinary water—it’s water poured out by the command of God. 

So when someone says, “Baptism can’t do anything for you.  It’s just water.  Water can’t save anyone.”  They are right.  Water can’t save anyone.  If I sprinkle water on you on my own authority that won’t do anything but get you wet. 

But your Baptism was not done by my authority, or even the authority of the apostles.  It was done at the command of God.  Even evangelicals have to admit this.  This isn’t a human ceremony like lighting incense in church, or lighting these candles.  We may like incense and candles, but God did not command us to do it.  It is a mere human ceremony. 

Baptism is not like that.  It has divine authority.  Jesus solemnly commanded that it be done.

Baptism is not just commanded by God.  The water of Baptism is not just water with God’s command behind it.  It is water “combined with God’s Word.”  God’s Word is wrapped up in the water.  And when the water is poured upon you, you receive the word that is placed into the water like a diamond is placed into the ring. When you put on the ring, you put on the diamond.  When you are baptized, you also put on the Word that is joined with the water.

And what diamond word is in the water?  The Name of God: “The Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 

When Jesus was baptized, as you heard, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended and came upon Jesus in the form of a dove.  The Father’s voice thundered, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” 

The Holy Trinity appeared at the Baptism of Jesus.  The three persons of God revealed themselves almost naked, in a way they had never appeared before.

Why was it that they appeared this way when John baptized Jesus?  You heard Jesus saying what He was there at the Jordan to do: to fulfill all righteousness.

He was going to accomplish righteousness by being baptized as a sinner.  That is a strange way to accomplish righteousness.  But Jesus was going to accomplish righteousness by taking on the whole world’s sins, by confessing as His own the sins of the whole world. 

At the same moment He did that He entered into His death on the cross.  Later on His disciples come and ask Him to sit at His right hand in His kingdom.  Jesus responds, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”  (Mark 10:38) 

He doesn’t say, “the baptism I am going to be baptized with,” but “the baptism with which I am baptized.”  He has been baptized into death at the Jordan by John when He was baptized into the sins of the whole world.

And this is how He accomplishes all righteousness—by taking on sin and destroying it in His death.

And this is why when He is baptized, even though to our eyes sin has not been taken away and He has not died—heaven opens, the Father’s voice declares Him His Son, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus from heaven.  It is like when the floodwaters recede from the earth, and Noah lets out the dove, and the dove does not come back.  And the ark opens, and the world begins again.  Noah comes out and sacrifices to God, and God smells the aroma of the barbecued meat and says, “I will never again destroy the earth.”  He is pleased.

This is what happens when Jesus is baptized.

And when you were baptized, the word of God was in that water that came upon your head.  The water had the name of the Triune God in it.

The triune God was given to you in that water.  Jesus who accomplishes all righteousness, carries all sins, opens the heavens came to you in the water.  The Holy Spirit who descended on Jesus from the open heavens was joined to you.  And the Father whom Jesus pleases—He came to you and became yours.  You could never please Him, but Jesus pleased Him.  He became yours in the baptismal water.

What is baptism?  Not just water, but water commanded by God, and joined with God’s Word.

So all your life you live in this world.  You have sins and regret.  You get sick.  You have weaknesses.  You are a fallen human being.  You are frail.  And it looks to our flesh like the baptismal water made no difference.

And reason says, How can that water you received as a baby do anything?  You need the Spirit to make something of you, to convert you and heal all your wounds.  And when the Spirit comes it can’t be through a handful of water the pastor pours on every baby that’s brought to him.  When the Spirit comes, you will be like Elijah, picked up in one place and transported by the Spirit miles away, able to pray and the heavens close and don’t reign for 3 and a half years.

But baptism is not just ordinary water.  It’s water God commanded to pour out.  It’s water joined with the name of the Trinity.  So when you received it you were given Jesus and with Him the Holy Spirit and the well-pleased Father.  You died and were reborn.  Heaven opened to you.  You became a new creation.

Just as when Jesus was baptized He died and rose again.  Heaven opened when He was baptized and God appeared because it was as though He had already atoned for the sins of the world.  He took them on and He took on the death that comes from sin.

When you were baptized you died with Jesus and rose again a new creation.  We can’t see it yet, but it has happened.  What an unspeakable treasure!  What a great mystery!

The peace of God that passes understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 

Soli Deo Gloria