1.
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. On this third Sunday in Advent we light the
pink candle on the Advent wreath. Even in the midst of this season of repentance,
this Sunday says: “Rejoice in the Lord
always; again I will say, Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4). As we wait, we stop
and realize that we don’t have to wait for everything. God is already giving us
gifts now. This Sunday makes for sort of a bright spot in the Advent season. The message today is entitled, “All Blessed in Jesus,” and is taken
from Genesis 12:1-3, dear brothers
and sisters in Christ.
2.
We turn to a bright spot in the Old
Testament, the time when God called a man named Abram (later, Abraham). Up
until this point, God has pretty much been dealing with all people at once. He
was like a cheerleader shouting into a megaphone at the little end, with the
world at the big end. Even when God was talking to Adam and Eve, he was
speaking to all the people in the world at the time. In Genesis 12, if you
will, God turns the megaphone around. Now he speaks into the big end, directing
his words to the one at the small end: Abram. But, it’s not as if God has
forgotten about the rest of the world. The last of God’s seven promises to
Abram was that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed. Abram had not been a worshiper of the true
God before he received these words. He had been an idolater (see Joshua 24:2),
yet God came to him with these magnificent promises. Abram, for his part, got
up and went when the Lord said, “Go!” He left everything that was familiar, in
many ways his own security and identity. He set out for an unknown destination.
3.
None of this was lost on the
Pharisees in Jesus’ time. They wanted to be like Abraham. Look at the faith
this man had! But, there are also some places in the story of Abraham where his
lack of faith fairly leaps off the page. Despite such incidents, here is what
the Pharisees were doing, and what a lot of people have been attempting to do
with the example of Abraham down through the years: making Abraham’s faith into a good work. It’s as if he deserved the
blessings he received from God because he believed so much and therefore did
such great things.
4.
You and I can also get caught up in this
kind of thinking. Have you ever heard some television preacher say, “God will bless you if you have faith”? It’s
as if your faith causes God to bless you! That was the idea people had about
Abraham at the time of Jesus. We can get it too.
5.
I can’t think of anything that robs
more Christians of more spiritual comfort than trying to make our own faith
into a good work. If that’s what we try to do, then we might as well pluck that
pink candle out of the Advent wreath. We might as well squelch all of the songs
and carols of rejoicing that we will sing in a few days on Christmas. While
we’re at it, why not cancel Easter too? If God’s blessing depends on us
responding to that blessing in a worthy and really faithful way, we will never
get such a blessing. For we will never in this world respond in such a way. Sometimes in our pride, like that of the
Pharisees in Jesus’ day, we would like to pretend things to be otherwise. Yet
we have to admit, especially upon reading the Holy Scriptures, that we are not
going to begin matching the kind of faithfulness God shows us. We need the Good
News of this text, which comes to its high point with verse 3: “In you all of the families of the earth
shall be blessed.”
6.
Suppose a woman shows up at a church
on a weekday, wanting to speak with the pastor. The Pastor has seen her around
town, but he has never seen her in church before. She sits down in his office
and pours out a sad tale that is spiced by confession. Years ago she had an
abortion, she tells him, and it has been bothering her ever since. She doesn’t
know what to do with her guilt. Finally, she has reached the point of seeking
help from someone, anyone. She tells the pastor, “Pastor, you know I’m not a member of your church. Frankly, I don’t even
know what I believe about God. But I’m at the end of my rope. I need some kind
of help. I need some kind of hope, if it’s available. Is there anything that
you can say to me that can help?”
7.
Now comes the question: Can the
pastor tell this woman her sins are forgiven? Can he say that this forgiveness
includes all her sins, including and especially the one that bothers her so
much? Remember, she has admitted that she really doesn’t know what she
believes. The answer to this question is no, he cannot say her sins are
forgiven—IF this blessing is dependent upon faith. She doesn’t have the faith,
therefore there is no blessing for her.
8.
But, thanks be to God, that this is
not the way it is. What the Lord says is like night and day different from
this! “In you,” he promised Abram, “all
the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That certainly includes this
woman. So the pastor can and should tell her that her sins are forgiven by God
on account of Christ. In fact, I tell you the same thing: Since you, too, are
among the families of the earth, it is certain that your sins are forgiven by
God on account of Christ.
9.
Yes, on account of Christ! Think of
what Abram must have thought as he received this promise. The words were not
about him personally. Abram would not personally bless all the families of the
earth. He did not even know them all. In the Bible, it’s always a greater one
who must bless a lesser one; a lesser never blesses a greater (Hebrews 7:7). If
this blessing was going to go to all the families of the earth, it had to come
from someone greater than Abraham. In fact, it had to come from Someone greater
than all the families of the earth, namely, the Lord himself. A few chapters
later, God said more specifically that in Abraham’s Offspring all the nations
of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 22:18). In Genesis 3, after Adam and Eve
had fallen into sin, God promised that the Seed or Offspring of the woman would
come and defeat the devil. This Offspring is none other than our Lord Jesus
Christ. God was now telling Abraham that the woman’s Offspring, the promised
Christ, would come from Abraham’s line. Thus, in Abraham, all the families of
the earth are blessed.
10.
Everything happened as foretold. The
Scriptures stipulate that sin must be paid for, and this is what our Lord Jesus
Christ did. The Scriptures insist that the Law must be fulfilled, and that is
what he did—not for himself, but for us all. Scripture says that the soul that
sins shall die, and he died for us. Then he rose again to proclaim his victory.
The head of the devil was crushed. In the crucified and risen Christ, all the
families of the earth are blessed. That certainly includes you and me, as well
as everyone you meet.
11.
This is Good News, light-the-pink-candle
Good News! God in Christ has blessed all the families of the earth with
forgiveness. Therefore, he has blessed you.
The blessing comes into our lives as we receive his Word, as we are
baptized in his name, and as we receive the Lord’s Supper. Such an outpouring
of God’s love at times strikes folks as too good to be true. Does God really
forgive sins through Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the proclamation of his
Word? When you talk to people who express such doubts, you find that it is not
only these Means of Grace that they have doubts about; they also have doubts
about the grace itself. People can have a hard time believing that God in
Christ has given a blessing that includes all the families of the earth. It
seems too good to be true.
12.
Yet it is exactly what the Bible is
talking about in this text and elsewhere: “in
Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses
against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19). This blessing is received by faith. It
can only be received in faith. It is not received by works. Abraham had not
done anything to deserve the blessings God gave him. He had been an idolater,
turning his back on the true God, worshiping other gods. Still, God came to him
with grace and blessing.
13.
Let’s be clear. The Bible doesn’t
say that the blessing of forgiveness and reconciliation with God will be
received by everyone in the world, whether or not anyone has faith. Faith
receives the blessing and righteousness that God gives in Christ. So it was in the
case of Abraham, who “believed the LORD;
and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6).
Make no mistake, though: the blessing is for everyone.
Christ died for all. He paid for the forgiveness of sins for everyone in the
world. The fact that someone might not receive it doesn’t mean that Christ did
not pay for it. Thus, my faith isn’t the cause of God’s blessing upon me.
Christ is. Therefore, I don’t have to worry about whether I have enough faith
or whether my neighbor has more faith than I have. Any faith in Christ is a
faith that receives Christ.
14.
In the fall of 1862, President
Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation
Proclamation. It was going to go into effect on January 1 of the next year.
The Emancipation Proclamation said
slaves were free. It didn’t matter how they felt about it or how excited they
got about it; they were free by presidential proclamation. The shame would be
if slaves never got word of this news or if they, having heard it, refused to
believe it. Then they would go on acting like slaves, and needlessly so.
15.
God in Christ has pronounced a “not guilty” verdict on the whole world.
In Abraham’s Offspring all the families of the earth are in fact blessed. It
doesn’t depend on how we feel about it at any given moment. The blessing is
there for you, and for all of those around us. It would be a shame if we didn’t
bring them the Word about it. Only God can take care of their believing it, for
He alone touches hearts and converts them through his Word. Ours is the privilege
of bringing people the Good News of Christ.
16.
This is a great time of year to
invite a friend, neighbor, or co-worker to come to church. During this season,
people who wouldn’t ordinarily think about coming to church might take you up
on such an invitation, maybe at first out of nothing more than their general
sense that it is a good time of year to be going. When you approach someone
with this invitation, you don’t have to stop and wonder whether this person is
really one for whom the blessing of God is intended. In Christ, the Offspring
of Abraham, the blessing is for all the families of the earth. Invite somebody
to share in God’s blessing. And don’t forget that by faith you have it too. Amen. And now the peace of God that passes all
understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life
everlasting. Amen.
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