“All Blessed in Jesus” Gen. 12.1–3, Advent 3, Dec ‘18

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.

“Stir Up the Power of Preparation,” Matthew 3.1–12, Advent Midweek 2 Dec. ‘18

1.                 Please pray with me.  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer.  Amen.  The message for our 2^nd Advent Midweek Service is taken from Matthew 3:1-12, where we hear John the Baptist say in verses 2 &3,“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. . . .  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight.’ ” (Mt 3:2–3) The sermon is entitled, “Stir Up the Power of Preparation,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.

2.                A pastor was once visiting with the adult daughter of one of his fellow minister friends and talking about their family Christmas traditions. Here’s basically what she told him: “I’m not crazy about Christmas. In my home, because my father was the pastor, we were so busy with church work we really didn’t have time to enjoy Christmas. It was exhausting.”  I know what she meant. Pastors, and often their families, are so focused on helping others have a wonderful Christmas that they don’t have much time or energy left to enjoy it themselves. One pastor came home from church one Christmas Day, fell to his knees, and prayed, “I thank You, Lord, that this Christmas that You have given me is over.”  Maybe it’s the same for you. Maybe you’re so focused on helping your family, friends, and church have a happy holiday that you wear yourself out and aren’t experiencing the joy of Christmas yourself. If that’s true, maybe it’s time we step back and look at our preparation for the arrival of God’s Son. 

3.                The Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent, the second “stir up” prayer for our midweek, helps us get on the right track: “Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the way of Your only-begotten Son, that by His coming we may be enabled to serve You with pure minds; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.”  Maybe you remember from English class in school that when a sentence begins with an active verb and there’s no subject before the verb, it’s understood that the subject is “You.” So what the collect really says is, “You stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready”—to prepare—“the way.”  If Advent preparations exhaust us, maybe we’ve got it wrong. See, we actually don’t do the preparing. God does.  God prepares us, through Word and Sacrament, so when Jesus comes we serve Him in purity. 

4.                Here’s how God does it.  First, through Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity as we confess our sins.  Christ’s advent, his coming, whether as a baby or at the end of the age, is always in the shadow of judgment. God’s hope for man was that we would love and serve him in holiness forever. It didn’t work out that way. God created us with a mind of our own, and we’ve all freely chosen to love and serve ourselves rather than God. That’s called sin. And sin calls for judgment.  For sinners to get back in fellowship with God and escape judgment, we need to repent. We need to confess our sins. We need to turn from sin and seek God’s forgiveness. That’s the message of John the Baptist. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” John cries (v 3). “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (v 2). 

5.                If we don’t heed his message, we can expect a terrifying encounter with God when Jesus comes: “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (v 12). “Flee from the wrath to come” (v 7). “The axe is laid to the root of the trees” (v 10).  That’s pretty violent and scary stuff! It’s supposed to be. This is God’s Law. God’s intent here through his Law is to move us to see the danger we’re in so that we’ll repent, turn in faith to Christ, and change our ways. As we do, we have God’s assurance of forgiveness.  That’s Gospel, the Good News. Gospel is also part of John’s message. As we repent of our sins, as we are baptized, God’s gift of forgiveness is ours. Mark tells us, “John appeared, baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” All the people “were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Mk 1:4–5).

6.                If you want to be prepared for Christmas, if you want to be prepared to meet the Son of God when he comes, confession, repentance, Baptism, and forgiveness are what you need. And all of these God makes happen through his Word and Sacraments.  You don’t have to buy a thing. God does all the work. He gives us his Word in proclamation and Sacrament. Through these, the Holy Spirit opens our ears to hear and our hearts to receive. As we hear and receive the Good News of Jesus’ suffering and death for our sins, we’re forgiven, we think differently about sin, and we start walking in a new direction, toward God, not away from him.  When that message sinks in, we can relax and have a happy Christmas. 

7.                Second, through Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity as we bear fruit.  I have an insight on this.  It’s that most people, even those who profess to be Christians, think everybody goes to heaven regardless of faith. It’s no longer that you have to be good enough to go to heaven—which is a false doctrine in itself—but you have to be bad enough not to. Only really bad people are barred from heaven. That’s what many people think these days.  But if that’s what we think, we’re not prepared to meet Jesus when he comes. According to the Bible, spending a happy eternity with God is in the context of repentance of sin and faith in Christ, which always leads to bearing the fruit of righteousness. “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance,” John tells the crowds who come to him (Mt 3:8). Otherwise, “Every tree . . . that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (v 10). 

8.                John’s message wasn’t too popular with some people. Herod was more than happy to let John do his preaching and baptizing as long as John required nothing of the king personally. But repentance wasn’t just for the common people or the religious people; it was for the ruling people as well. So when John rebuked Herod for stealing his brother’s wife and having an affair with her, Herod threw John in prison. And later, he ordered that John’s head be cut off.  John’s message still isn’t popular. Many of us like to think of ourselves as Christians but have no real concern for repentance or bearing the fruit of righteousness. We’re materialistic, always wanting more than we have. We’re sexually immoral, even celebrating it in our entertainment. Our culture is becoming meaner and ruder, egged on by popular music, radio and TV talk shows, video games, politicians, and Internet bloggers. 

9.                And if those things aren’t true of us, we’re probably self-righteous. We may think, we’re better than everyone else, and God must be happy with us. Well, he’s not. If you read the Gospels, the people Jesus scolds aren’t the tax collectors and the prostitutes or the thief on the cross dying beside him. No, it’s the self-righteous, those who think of themselves as good. These are the people John calls a “brood of vipers!” (v 7).  The point is, everyone needs to repent, or we’ll end up in the bonfire on Judgment Day. We don’t want this to happen to us. So, we need God to change us through his Word and Sacrament. Through these, we learn repentance and faith and what constitutes the righteous fruit God wants us to bear.

10.             So what kind of fruit are we talking about? One text always comes to my mind, Gal 5:22–23. There St. Paul tells us, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” Elsewhere, Paul says, “The greatest of these is love” (1 Cor 13:13).  But you can’t legislate how the fruit of the Spirit grows, in fact, the fruit of the Spirit grows in different ways. Nobody’s the same. Nobody’s fruit is going to look exactly the same. John told those with extra food and clothing to share with those who had none. He told tax collectors to collect no more than they were authorized to. He told soldiers to be content with their wages and not to threaten or falsely accuse people (Lk 3:10–14).  You could also say the fruit of the Spirit is just living according to the Ten Commandments, loving God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving your neighbor as yourself.

11.             Finally, through Word and Sacrament, God prepares us to serve his Son in purity by giving us the Holy Spirit. John tells us, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Mt 3:11). Now that’s a Baptism to look forward to!  We need the Holy Spirit! We need him because without him we’re dead in our sins and powerless to do anything. We can’t work up repentance and faith. We can’t produce the fruit of righteousness in our lives. Without the Holy Spirit we aren’t alive to God.  We’re helpless. But with the Holy Spirit, who comes to us through the Word and Baptism, we can do and be everything God wants. 

12.             I think key to understanding why this is true is knowing what the Holy Spirit’s name is in Greek. It’s pneuma, meaning “breath” or “air.” If you and I don’t have breath or air, what are we? We’re dead! But with breath or air, we’re alive.  Remember what God did when he made man? Genesis says, “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen 2:7). The breath of life is the Spirit of God without which man is dead. When Adam sinned, you could say the Spirit left; Adam died to God, even though he was still moving around. 

13.             But through the Word of God and Baptism, the Spirit comes back. Life from God is breathed into us once again. We come alive to God and are enabled to serve him and worship him in purity. But without the Spirit, we can’t.  Jesus once had a conversation about this with a Samaritan woman at a well in John 4. She was feeling uncomfortable with some of the things Jesus said. He seemed to know everything there was to know about her. So, she changed the subject. “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you [Jews] say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” Do you recall how Jesus answered? He said, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth” (Jn 4:20–23). 

14.             How do you worship God in spirit and in truth? Clearly it has nothing to do with location, whether on a mountain or in a temple in Jerusalem. But it has everything to do with spirit and truth.  Spirit means life. And this life comes through the Holy Spirit as we hear the truth of God in the Word and are baptized. As we hear, as we are baptized, as we confess our sins and repent, as we believe in Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away our sins, as we bring forth the fruit of repentance, we are ready to serve our Lord in purity and meet him when he comes at the Last Day.  Prayer:  Lord Jesus, through your Spirit, working repentance and faith in our hearts through Word and Sacrament, make us ready to greet you now as we serve you daily, in the hour of our death, and when you come again. In your name we pray. Amen.