Advent Midweek II

Video of Service

Advent Midweek II: The Nicene Creed

“One Lord, Jesus For Us, Our Everlasting King”[1]

December 10, 2025

Text: Second Article of the Nicene Creed

            As we meditate on the Second Article of the Nicene Creed, it may be helpful to the divide it into two parts.  The first part, high and exalted words concerning the full divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, and His unity with God the Father. The second part, words that show His condescension to us in becoming one of us, bearing our sin, and accomplishing our salvation; then dragging our flesh out of death and the grave, and exalting it to the right hand of the Majesty on high. 

            Needless to say, the first part of this article has Arius in the crosshairs.  We hear, already, in the words, “one Lord Jesus Christ,” an echo of the First Article, “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty.”  (In fact, if you’re reading the Advent Scripture readings with us, today you read, “for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” [1 Cor. 8:6; ESV].)  As we said last week, it is a confession of the mystery of God’s unity in plurality.  Father and Son are one God, with the Holy Spirit.  And the Son, not created by the Father (there was never a time when the Son was not), but begotten.  And that from eternity, for as we said, if God is Father, as He is from all eternity, that necessarily requires the Son from all eternity.  And this Son is the only One so begotten.  God has many children by adoption, through Baptism into His Son.  But God the Son is the only One begotten in this way.  Begotten, incidentally, is just an old word for a father’s part in the procreative act.  You know this from the Bible, when you get hung up on the “begats” (so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so on, and so forth).  What sets the Son’s begottenness apart from all those other begats, is not only that this Son is begotten by the Almighty Father, but also that there is no mother, no pregnancy, no birth… until Christmas.

            So, the only-begotten Son… begotten, in fact, before all worlds, which is to say, before creation, eternally.  The Son is not the first creature, as Arius maintained, the first thing to be created.  In fact, if we jump a few phrases to the end of this first part, what do we find, but that all things were made through this very Son.  And that is right.  We read it all over the place in Holy Scripture.  In the Christmas Gospel from John 1, we read, “All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:3).  And Paul says, “by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible” (Col. 1:16).  “And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (v. 17).  Creator.  Sustainer. That is the definition of God.  And the Scriptures apply this definition to the Son.

            And then this cascade of sublime descriptors indicating the full divinity of the Son: “God of God, Light of Light”… like the light radiating from the Sun in the sky… “very God of very God,” again, “begotten, not made.”

            And then the big one… “being of one substance with the Father.”  One substance.  Homoousia, in Greek, of the same being.  Not Homoiousia, of like substance, of like being, but one substance, one being.  This is to say, Father and Son are not two Gods (and the Holy Spirit is not a third).  (Nor, incidentally, are they each parts of God, another heresy for another day, called partialism.  This one is particularly addressed in the Athanasian Creed.)  They are one God.  It is THE profound mystery of the Christian faith.  We can’t comprehend it.  But we live in it.  We live in this reality.  We are baptized into it.  And we wonder at it, worship, and adore it.  We worship and adore Him.

            The second part of this article then turns to the second profound mystery of the Christian faith: This God, the eternal Son of the Father, unites Himself to our flesh and blood.  To save us. 

            You could almost weep at the words, “for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.”  For us men… I hope you aren’t so infected by the spirit of the times (an evil spirit, that one) that you can’t understand that “men” here means “men and women,” mankind, humanity, and so, for you, whoever you are.  He came down from heaven…  That is not a theological statement about the location of heaven in the physical universe, as though heaven is somewhere up there, and we are down here.  That totally misses the point.  This is about God’s condescension for us.  He leaves behind His glory, His majesty.  The Son does not consider His equality with God a thing to be grasped, to be clung to, but empties Himself, pours Himself out, and takes on the form of a servant… our form, our flesh (Phil. 2:6-7). 

            How does He do it?  “(I)ncarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary.”  Incarnate, enfleshed (carne… meat).  By the Holy Spirit, who comes upon the virgin Mary in the preaching of the Angel, so that the Word of the Father passes through Mary’s ear and takes up residence in her womb (see, by the way, how this is a Trinitarian act, as is all of God’s work for us).  And then, the virgin Mary.  No human father.  But, a human mother.  God comes down to be made man of her.  So far down does God come, that… here is a mystery to which every knee should bow, and every tongue confess… God is a Zygote.  A Blastocyst.  An Embryo.  A Baby.  A Man.  For us.  (Some of us quite literally bow as we confess this mystery in the Creed.)

            By the way, the Creed combats another heresy, here.  Docetism, it is called, from the Greek word for to seem.  Unlike Arius, the Docetists had no problem believing that Jesus is fully God.  They just didn’t believe He is really a man.  That would get God’s hands dirty, they thought, with our yucky flesh.  So, they maintained, Jesus was not a man.  He just seemed to be a man.  It looked like He took on our flesh, but He didn’t really.

            Of course, if the Son of God didn’t take on our flesh, neither did He redeem our flesh.  And we are flesh and blood creatures… flesh and blood sinners… so we need a flesh and blood redemption from a flesh and blood Redeemer.  A Redeemer who is also fully God, so that His redemption may be for all the sins of all people, for all of my sins, and all of yours.  So, thank God, that is just the Redeemer we get in Jesus Christ.  And that is the Redeemer we confess in the Nicene Creed. 

            But He isn’t done condescending.  He is not afraid to get yucky with our yuckiness.  Not only does He get down on our level by taking on our flesh.  He goes all the way down into the depths of us.  He has no sin of His own, but He takes on ours in His Baptism in the Jordan.  And what does He do with it?  Crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered, buried.  He puts our sin to death in His flesh.  He goes all the way down to our damnation and death.  He pays for our sins.  He wipes out our debt.  He dies our death.

            And then what?  The third day He rose again.  As the Scriptures said He would.  God highly exalted Him.  Raised Him up out of the grave.  Ascended into heaven… in our flesh.  Blazing the trail for us.  Taking us with Him, so to speak.  Sitting at the right hand of the Father.  That is the place of honor and authority.  He now enjoys the glory and majesty He has always had with His Father in terms of His divinity, but now in the flesh.  And He rules all things for us, seated there on the heavenly throne.  And He intercedes for us.  That is, He prays for us (that is an amazing thing: God prays to God for us).  And He loves us and cares for us, provides for us and protects us.  With all His divine omniscience and omnipotence (His all-knowingness and all-powerfulness).   

            And He is coming back for us.  To judge.  The Last Day.  To set all things right.  Your mother probably taught you that all things come out in the wash.  The reality is that all things come out in the Resurrection.  All will be very good once again, as it was before sin.  And even better.  Because Jesus reigns.  And His Kingdom will have no end.

            And, again, beloved, this is our story.  The Scriptures are all about this.  The Spirit delivers this in His gifts.  God made man for us.  Us, redeemed for God.  God and sinners reconciled in the One Mediator between God and men, the Man, Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5).  Every time we confess this Creed, we are immersed once again in the reality of it.  God keep us in it.  God keep us ever in this faith.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                 

                

             

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[1] Advent Series loosely based on Timothy J. Winterstein, Worshiped and Glorified: A Study of the Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Concordia, 2025).

Second Sunday in Advent

Video of Service

Second Sunday in Advent (A)

December 7, 2025

Text: Matt. 3:1-12

            So, what is crooked in your life that must be straightened out?  What is twisted, perverted, and skewed?  What messes have you made that must be cleaned up?  In what filth have you wallowed that must now be rooted out?  And what is lacking?  What fruit ought you to bear once again?  And what chaff must be blown away, that the pure kernel of wheat be gathered into the barn?  St. John the Baptist, clad in the garb, and eating the grub, of the Prophet Elijah, preaches to you and me that it’s time to prepare.  In the wilderness of this fallen world, he cries to you and me, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2; ESV).

            That is, Jesus is at hand.  He is coming.  He is near.  And wherever Jesus is, there is His Kingdom, His rule, He reign.  Many of you will have visitors to your home this holiday season.  People you love.  People who are important to you.  What will you do in preparation for their coming?  You will straighten up your home.  You will remind everyone to be on their best behavior (and you’ll try to be on your best behavior, too).  You will clean up the messes.  You will sweep, mop, and scrub.  You will root out the filth.  Because those you love deserve a clean and tidy, comfy and cozy home.  And so also, you fill your home with good things.  Good food, and that in abundance.  Pleasant smells.  Festive decoration.  Maybe even gifts.  That is what you do for those you love.  That is what you do for those who are important to you.

            But here St. John the Baptist points to One you love even more, who is more important… unimaginably so… than anyone one else on earth.  He points, and he says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29).  He points, and he declares to you, to me, and to all who have ears to hear, “Behold, your King!”

            So, Advent is the season of preparation.  We prepare to celebrate our King who has come to us as a Baby, in our flesh, born of the Virgin Mary, to be our Savior.  We look back at His incarnation, His coming for us in the flesh, and the great salvation He accomplished, and we order our lives accordingly.  But so also, we look forward.  He is coming again.  He is coming to judge the living and the dead.  To give eternal life to all believers in Christ, but to bid His enemies, those who do not believe in Him, those who reject His forgiveness and salvation, and remain in their sin, to depart into the eternal fire.  And we look to Him now, for He comes to us now.  He is near.  As near as the altar.  We hear Him in His Word.  He comes into us with His body and blood.  This King loves you.  That is why you love Him.  And He is at hand.  So, beloved… prepare. 

            We call this preparation repentance.  Out with all that is bad, evil, and corrupt.  In with Jesus Christ and all the riches of His righteousness.  Repentance has two parts: Contrition and faith.  Contrition: Sorrow over sin.  Christ, your Lord, your loving King, is coming.  And you don’t want to be filled with the filth of sin.  It grieves you, because you know it grieves Him.  You know it killed Him.  But then, faith: You know that He comes precisely to forgive your sins, to cover them with His blood and death, to wash them away in the flood that pours forth from His riven side.  Then, there is a third part, resulting from the faith that grasps this salvation in Jesus.  That is fruit in keeping with repentance.  Walking in the Commandments.  Good works.  Love for your neighbor.  Love for one another. 

            But you know that if you are to repent in this way, you cannot do it on your own, by your own strength, with your own resources.  If you are to repent in this way, God must do it in you.  Okay, how?  Does He just strike you with a lightening bolt from heaven?  Or does He gurgle it up from within you, from the pit of your stomach, or the depths of your heart?  No, that is not how our God works.  We see, rather, how He works in the ministry of St. John the Baptist.

            God sends a preacher.  Now, the preacher is not to preach himself… his own wisdom, his own morality, his own path of salvation.  The preacher is never to be the focus of attention, the star of the show.  Rather, the preacher is to uphold Jesus Christ.  He is always to preach Christ, and the Word of Christ.  Christ is to be the focus of attention, the Star of the show.  The preacher is to preach the Law… that you may know your sin.  That you be warned of sin’s wages: Death, and eternal damnation.  That you know how desperate your plight, and your great need for salvation, for the Savior.  And then the preacher is to preach the Gospel: The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Jesus is coming.  He has arrived.  He is for you.  He is the Sacrifice for your sins.  Behold, the altar of the cross, where the Lamb of God is roasted in the fire of God’s wrath, atoning for all your sins.  He is the cleansing.  He is the cure.  He is risen, and He is your life.  And He reigns.  He is your King.  He rules your heart and your mind, and that graciously.  He sets a place for you at His Table.  He prepares a room for you as a Child of God, and a member of God’s Family.

            What else does John show us about the way God works in us?  “Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Matt. 3:5-6).

            Baptism.  We saw it again this morning.  The washing of water with the Word.  Born anew of the Holy Spirit.  The death of Old Adam, the sinful flesh.  The emergence of the New Creation in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Out with all that is bad, evil, and corrupt.  In with Jesus Christ and all the riches of His righteousness.  By the way, though this Baptism takes place in water, and it is certainly for repentance, it is not merely a Baptism in water, a Baptism for repentance.  John’s Baptism had those things, and it was wonderful.  But it was only a shadow of the full reality of Baptism as it is fulfilled in Christ.  Christ’s Baptism delivers the goods, a Baptism with the Holy Spirit, and fire (think Pentecost!).  John’s Baptism prepares for the coming.  Jesus’ Baptism is the coming!  It is the coming of the Kingdom, the coming of the King!

            And then, what were the people doing as they came to John to be baptized?  They were confessing their sins.  Oh, dear Lutherans, do not say to me that confession is too Roman Catholic.  You love the general confession at the beginning of the Divine Service, and I’m glad we have it, but the reason you love it is that you can hide behind the voices of others in that confession, and you don’t have to get specific, and you don’t have to admit any real sins (although you should… that is what the time of silence is for, and that should also be a part of your preparation before you come to Church.  Take time to meditate on those things, to pray to God, to name your sins before Him, and ask His forgiveness).  But in any case, that isn’t what the people were doing with John at the River Jordan.  They didn’t stand on the shore and speak some confessional formula in unison.  They came one by one to John for Baptism, and said the actual things to him that needed straightening, sweeping, scrubbing, mopping.  You can do the same thing in private confession with your pastor.  At the very least you should do the same thing, getting specific, confessing your actual sins of thought, word, and deed, to the Lord Jesus Christ. 

            And see, it is always a return to Baptism, this repentance, this confessing.  The drowning of the sinful nature.  Contrition.  And then… well, John did it by pointing to the Lamb, but we have this in all its fulness now that Christ has come… the Absolution, the forgiveness of all your sins for the sake of Jesus Christ who died for you, who is risen and lives for you, who loves you and reigns for you.  And the Spirit, who comes to you in the Words of Absolution, and gives you faith in Jesus Christ.  And then the fruits of repentance, the fruits of faith. 

            And then… here is Jesus.  We don’t have it here in our text, but you know that as John is baptizing in the wilderness, who should come along to be baptized into us (that we may ever after be baptized into Him), but the very One John is proclaiming, the very One for whom he is preparing us.  And John points… again, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”  Well, where does that happen for us?  At the altar.  In the Supper.  He comes, this Sacrificial Lamb.  But He is living.  He comes, to take away our sins.  When you come to the Lord’s Supper, you leave those sins behind at the altar.  Out with the bad, the evil, the corrupt.  And then He fills you.  With Himself.  In with Jesus Christ and all the riches of His righteousness.  “Given and shed for you,” He says, as He gives you His body, His blood, “for the forgiveness of all your sins.” 

            Now, be warned.  Do not come to these gifts, to this repentance, with any righteousness of your own, or with your own bona fides, that you are children of Abraham, fine upstanding citizens, or good Missouri Synod Lutherans.  Do not come thinking you can keep what is yours, your old nature, your old self, your autonomy, your old identity… and have the new stuff, too, the good stuff from Jesus.  If you do that, you will show yourself, in reality, a brood of vipers, the offspring of Satan.  No, this is a total cleansing.  A total out with the old.  It is not a sweeping under the rug.  You don’t get to stuff everything away in that one room where you just shut the door, as you often do when visitors come to your home.  Every corner is to be cleansed.  Every nook.  Every crevice.  And then filled with nothing but Christ.  And, understand… He does it.  He works His repentance in you.  By His gifts, His means of grace.  He burns the whole thing down, the whole structure of your old life, with the fire of His Spirit. 

            And then, He builds you anew.  He fills you.  And what is the result?  Fruitful trees.  Works of love.  Wholesome grain, and pure.  Life.  For He lives.  And He comes.  He comes to you, and for you.  Beloved, prepare for it.  Which is to say, repent of your sins, and rejoice.  The Kingdom of heaven is right here, for you.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                 

 

Advent Midweek I

Video of Service

Advent Midweek I: The Nicene Creed

“One God, The Father Almighty”[1]

December 3, 2025

Text: First Article of the Nicene Creed

            For 1700 years now, the one, holy, Christian, and apostolic Church has been confessing some form of the Nicene Creed.  Forged in the heat of controversy at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325; namely to deal with the Arian heresy: The false teaching that the Son was created in time, and that our Lord Jesus Christ is not fully God with the Father; the Nicene Creed is THE statement of orthodox Christianity.  If you are looking for some criteria to measure whether a church body belongs to the One Holy Church of God, this is it.

            Now, I covered the history of this earlier this year on Trinity Sunday.  (That Sunday, incidentally, falls when it does every year because the Nicene Creed was written in late May/early June.)  The newsletter article this month also gives a little more background on the Creed, and, if you want to take a deep dive, you can purchase the book, Worshiped and Glorified, by my dear friend and Matthew’s Godfather, Pastor Timothy Winterstein.  So we won’t spend a lot of time on background in these midweek meditations.  Instead, we’ll let the theology of the Creed permeate our hearts and minds, one article each week.

            What is a Creed?  And why confess it?  The word, creed, comes from the Latin word, credo, and simply means, “I believe.”  So, at the most basic level, a Creed is simply a statement of what you believe.  Whenever you confess the faith, you are speaking a Creed.  That’s one reason Christians who say “No Creed but the Bible,” or “Deeds, not Creeds,” are being ridiculous.  First of all, both those statements are Creeds!  Secondly, the historic Creeds of the Church (the Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian Creeds, known collectively as the Three Ecumenical Creeds), are simply a summary of the teaching of the Bible: Who God is, what He does for us, and who we are in God.  So let’s not make a false distinction between the Bible and the Creed.  The Creed just gives us what the Bible teaches.  And third, you know, if you have no authoritative standard, like the Creed by which to measure your theology, you can believe and teach anything you want, and claim the Bible as evidence.  Take Arius as an example.  He used Bible passages to prove his heresy, that the Christ is not God.  But the fact is, he was misusing those passages, and, in fact, denying the fundamental assertion of Holy Scripture: God made flesh for the salvation of the world.  The Creed keeps us honest.  It keeps us in bounds.  It keeps us in the faith of the Bible, which is to say, in the Christian faith, the faith of Jesus, the faith of our Triune God. 

            But it’s not just this theoretical, abstract theological statement, this Creed.  The Creed is the story of God in relation to man.  It is the story of God as our Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.  And so, it is our story.  When we confess the Creed, we’re telling our story, who we are in God.  When we mediate on the Creed… when we pray it… we’re immersing ourselves in that story.  And then we live in it.  It’s who we are.  It’s our identity.  And see, this is a concrete reality for us.  Because we are baptized into it, born anew into this story, and into this God Whom we here confess: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

            Tonight, the First Article: “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.”

            He is one God, as emphasized in our Old Testament reading, the Shema, the Creed of the Hebrews: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”  (We’ll hear this Oneness echoed in the Second Article, when we confess “one Lord Jesus Christ.”)  This is a confession over against paganism’s many gods, as well as the many gods of our own idolatry.  It is not the case that there are different gods presiding over different places and peoples.  There is no Greek or Roman pantheon.  Nor are the idols beguiling our hearts true gods.  There is one God… not many gods, and not no God… One God, the One we confess in this Creed, the One Who reveals Himself in Sacred Scripture.  We who know the Holy Trinity may also hear in this confession the mystery of God’s unity, His Oneness, even as He is Three Persons. 

            But, specifically, we are speaking here of the First Person of the Trinity, the Father.  And this hits on the central concern of the Nicene Creed.  That God is Father, necessarily means He has a Child… His Son.  God is the Father eternal.  And that means He has a Son from all eternity.  The Son is eternally begotten.  That is to say, Arius is wrong to teach there was a time when the Son was not.  Eternity doesn’t just mean without end.  It also means without beginning.  The Son was with the Father in the beginning.  He is before the beginning.  Always.  He was not created.  He is eternally begotten of the Father.  That is something our finite minds cannot comprehend.  We can only wonder, and worship, believe, and confess.  It is this eternal Father who sent His eternally begotten Son to be conceived by the Holy Spirit (also God), born of the Virgin Mary, in time, to be our flesh, and be our Savior.  The Human Nature of the Son has a beginning: The Incarnation.  We celebrate that at Christmas.  The Divine Nature of the Son does not have a beginning.  He, rather, has that Nature with the Father from all eternity.  More on that next week.

            But there is something else about this confession of God as Father.  In Jesus, His only-begotten Son, He is also now our Father.  He is not just our Father because He created us (although He certainly did).  He is our Father because, in Christ, He has redeemed us, and adopted us to be His own children by our Baptism into Christ.  He loves us.  Enough to purchase us with His Son’s blood and death.  He cares for us.  He provides for us and protects us.  And He can, because He is Almighty, Omnipotent (this, by the way, also being a confession over against the pagan gods, most of whom were not worshiped as almighty, as omnipotent).  Now, our God could use His omnipotence to enslave us, rule over us in tyranny, or destroy us.  But that is not who He is.  The word Almighty here is joined to Father in such a way that we may know our God uses all His omnipotence in love for us, and for our good.  Remember, God is the true and perfect Father.  Don’t measure Him by human fathers.  Even the best of human fathers fall far short of God’s Fatherhood.  Our heavenly Father never fails us. 

            He is the Maker of heaven and earth.  Creation.  Genesis 1 and 2.  You’ll be reading those passages this week if you’re joining us in our Advent devotions, and I pray you are.  Creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing.  God speaks all things into existence, by His Son, the Word, Who would become incarnate.  “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible,” says the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 11:3; ESV).  Now, heaven, here refers to the stuff that is not the earth (that is, the heavens, the stuff up there), and earth to this world and everything in it.  But then we go on to confess that our Father created all things visible and invisible.  The visible part is easy to understand.  That’s all the stuff we see: Creatures, objects, the material universe (sun, moon, and stars, etc.), flesh and blood (the stuff that makes up our fellow human beings).  But then also the things that are invisible.  That is this whole invisible realm of angels and demons (demons, having originally been created as good angels, who then rebelled), of what we think of as heaven, God’s throne, the spirits of the saints, hell, the spirits of the damned, our own spirits, and the eternal God Himself.  It is invisible to our fallen eyes.  But it will be visible to us when our sight is healed, when we cast aside forever this fallen flesh, to be raised anew, and whole, in Jesus Christ, who is risen from the dead.  Don’t think of this invisible realm as somehow less real than the material of this world.  That is the deception with which the devil has beguiled this generation.  It is real.  In fact, in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is even tangible.  And if that is true now, just wait until we are raised from the dead, and given to inhabit the New Creation.  New Creation, healed of the corruption resulting from our sin, restored as our Father always intended it for us, and exalted even beyond the Paradise of Eden. 

            This is our story… the story of God for us.  The story of God with us.  The story of us in God.  Beloved, the words of the Nicene Creed are precious words.  Treasure them.  Believe them.  Pray them.  Live in them.  And then speak them with all the saints of the last 1700 years.  Speak them to yourself, for your own edification, to sustain you in the holy faith.  Speak them to one another, to strengthen and embolden the Church.  Speak them to the world.  This is your witness, your testimony of the one true God.  The day may come when you have to die for this, as so many before us have.  But this I can guarantee… If this is your confession, you will live in it.  Not just now, but forever after.  Unto the Day you see with your own eyes this one God, our Father Almighty, with Jesus Christ His Son, and the Holy Spirit, world without end.  God grant it, and that, soon.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                   

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[1] Advent Series loosely based on Timothy J. Winterstein, Worshiped and Glorified: A Study of the Nicene Creed (St. Louis: Concordia, 2025).

First Sunday in Advent

Video of Service

First Sunday in Advent (A)

November 30, 2025

Text: Matt. 21:1-11

            “Behold, your king is coming to you” (Matt. 21:5; ESV).

            One of the things I find most astounding in Genesis 3, is that… after Adam and Eve have plunged humanity into sin, subjecting creation to the curse… after they’ve rebelled, rejected God and His Word, and run off to hide in fear of Him… in spite of it all… and, in fact, because of it all… the LORD God comes to them.  Not to annihilate them.  Not even to damn them.  But to call them.  To call them out of hiding.  To evoke from them confession.  Yes, to declare to them the full ramifications of their sin.  Pain in childbearing (and in childrearing!).  Chafing under God’s order.  Thorns and thistles.  Bread by the sweat of your brow.  Death.  Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.  That is the Law, and the preaching of it is critical.  But even that is not the purpose for which God came to them.  He came, rather, to seek them.  To rescue them.  To save them.  To give them the Promise, spoken to and against the serpent.  One is coming who will undo all this… this curse, this sin, this death.  “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” O serpent, “and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).  He came to proclaim another coming… the coming of Christ, and His sin-atoning death, by which death would be undone, and Satan conquered forever.  And so to call our first parents to repentance, and to faith in this coming Christ, this Seed of the woman.  A Promise to sustain humanity, now, in the midst of the fall, even as they… we… are exiled from Paradise, stranded east of Eden.  God comes to Adam and Eve, right in the midst of their sin and shame, to do that for them… for us.

            And then He does something else for Adam and Eve, and so for us.  He unclothes them of their fig leaves.  Self-made coverings for sin and shame never work.  And He clothes them, instead, with garments of skin.  Note that very carefully.  The first death in history, in all of creation, is brought about at God’s hand, as a sacrifice to cover our sin and shame.  For, as God says elsewhere, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Heb. 9:22), and “it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev. 17:11).  So He unclothes His sinful humans, now living in death.  And He clothes them anew with what is dead, that they might live.

            Now, this little detour through the Garden and into the wilderness is brought about by these words in our Holy Gospel: “They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them.  Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road” (Matt. 21:7-8; emphasis added).  What is happening in this scene?  Once again, God is coming to those who have rebelled, rejected Him and His Word, and run off to hide in fear of Him.  He is coming, not to annihilate them, or damn them, but to call them, to seek them, to rescue them, to save them.  Yes, to declare to them the full ramifications of their sin.  And, in fact, to suffer those ramifications for them, in their place.  Because He is the Promised Seed of the woman, the One come to undo the curse, our sin, our death.  The One who crushes Satan’s head under His heel, even as He is pierced by the serpent’s venomous fang.

            But the cloaks!  What is happening with the cloaks?  Of course, the disciples and the crowd are honoring Jesus as He rides into Jerusalem.  They are spreading the proverbial red carpet before Him, as is good and right.  Thus also the branches.  They are preparing a royal highway for their Lord.  But what is happening theologically with the cloaks?  There is an illustration, here, of what our Lord did for our parents in the Garden, and what He does for us.  He is unclothing the people of their self-made coverings.  He is sitting on them, and His donkeys are trampling them.  Because they’ll never do.  Sinners require a different covering.  The covering of sacrifice.  For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.  It is the blood that makes atonement by the life.  Jesus Christ, the Seed of the woman… the living God, the eternal Son of the Father… has come to be that Sacrifice.  That we might be clothed with Him.

            That is what happens for us in Holy Baptism.  In Baptism, as Paul says in our Epistle, we “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14).  Or, as he says in Galatians, “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (3:27).  You’ve “put off the old self with its practices,” Paul says again, this time in Colossians (3:9), and “put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (v. 10).  Unclothed of what is yours as you live here in death; clothed anew with Him who died… but now lives!... that you might live.  Stripped of your death, you’ve put on His!,,, the death of the cross.  Stripped of your life, you’ve put on His eternal resurrection life!  Stripped of the fig leaves of your own self-justifications, your own self-righteousness, you’ve put on His justification, His righteousness.  So that you stand before God fully clothed.  And restored.  No longer an exile.  The angel no longer blocks your way to Paradise.  The crucified and risen Lord Jesus brings Paradise to you, right here and now, at the altar.  And soon… soon He will bring you further up, and further in (to steal a line from Lewis), so that you see with your own eyes a sight more glorious than Eden.  Heaven.  And New Creation.

            Why do we wear clothes?  To cover our nakedness.  And why is that important?  Have you ever thought about that?  Why do we desire to be covered?  We desire to be covered because of what happened in the Garden.  We don’t want others to see us naked, because we understand that then our sin, our shame, is exposed.  So our clothes are essentially fig leaves.  Now, don’t misunderstand me.  Please continue to wear clothes this side of the heaven.  In fact, dear Christians, we ought to lead the way in practicing the lost virtue of modesty.  But you know those clothes don’t really cover your sin.  They’re just a stop-gap measure.  Christ covers your sin.  And when Christ covers your sin, the clothes really do make the man and the woman.  Covered with Christ, you are righteous. 

            The Church’s ancient baptismal practice confessed this.  Now, again, let me say, I’m glad we didn’t do this today… the Rainwaters are especially glad!... and it would be entirely impractical for us to do this.  But in the early Church, in the days of baptistries, housed in another room or building, before entering the baptismal pool (and, incidentally, out of sight of most of the people), the person being baptized would be stripped of their clothes, right down to their birthday suit.  Unclothed.  Fig leaves cast aside.  And then all the way down into the water they’d go.  Full immersion.  You don’t have to be fully immersed to be baptized (baptizo in Greek just means washing with water), and we usually don’t immerse in the Lutheran Church, but look at the symbolism of it.  Old Adam, drowned.  Put off the old self, all the way to death.  And then, up out of the water, all in the Name of our blessed Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And then clothed.  With a white garment.  An alb, like the one I’m wearing.  This is the robe of the baptized.  Why?  What does it confess?  You are now covered with the righteousness of Christ.  Unclothed, to be clothed.  Dead, so that you may live. 

            And that is now the daily rhythm of the Christian life.  You are a sinner, and you sin, and so you live in death.  In your sin, the Lord Jesus comes to you, calling you, seeking you, to rescue you, to save you.  He strips you of your self-made coverings whereby you try to cover up your sin and shame.  He sits on them.  He tramples them.  You repent.  You daily die.  It is always a return to the blest baptismal waters.  So that then you emerge again… you rise from death, to be clothed once again with His life and His righteousness.

            Beloved, all your sins are forgiven.  You are covered by the blood and skin of Jesus.  He comes to you.  That is what Advent is all about (Advent means coming).  He came as your Savior, to bear your sin, God in human flesh (we celebrate that coming at Christmas).  He is coming again, to bring you back into His Paradise, and further up, and further in.  And He comes to you now, in Baptism, in His Word, and in the Supper of His body and blood.  Spread your cloaks under Him in confession of sin, beloved.  And be wrapped up in Him as He comes to you in His gracious gifts to cover you with Himself.  “Behold, your king is coming to you.”  “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9).  Amen.  Amen.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                       

Thanksgiving Eve

Video of Service

Eve of the National Day of Thanksgiving

November 26, 2025

Text: Deut. 8:1-10

            You shall remember.  So the LORD commands His people, Israel.  And so he commands you.  Thanksgiving, when you get right down to it, is an exercise in remembrance.  When I say thank you to someone, I’m remembering the nice thing that person did for me.  The way to foster a disposition of gratitude, gratefulness in my heart, is to remember the good things done for me and given to me.  And then to acknowledge them.  That is what thanksgiving is.  And, by the way, such gratitude always requires an object.  That is, someone to thank.  I don’t give thanks to myself.  That would be absurd.  I give thanks to the one who did the good thing for me.  We should always practice that with the people around us who do nice things for us.  Hopefully our mothers taught us that.  But there is Someone else, who does all good things for us, much of it through those very people.  We Christians know that Someone, personally.  And we love Him.  Because He loves us.  He is our gracious Father.  And His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.  And the Spirit of life and grace.  He is our Triune God.

            God commands the Israelites to remember.  But if you’ve spent any amount of time reading the Old Testament, you know the Israelites are so quick to forget.  God did so much for them, the people He formed to be His precious possession.  The gracious call of Abraham.  God’s providence toward the patriarchs.  The Blessing (the Land, the Descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand by the sea, and THE Descendent, the Promised Seed of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head).  Then, slavery, yes, but the Promise of deliverer.  Moses.  The plagues.  The exodus.  Crossing the Red Sea on dry ground.  And now, the specifics listed in our reading: God’s guiding Presence in the wilderness (the pillar of cloud by day, fire by night); manna from heaven (not to mention quail, and water from the Rock… and the Rock was Christ, Paul says [1 Cor. 10:4]); the Word of God, from His own mouth, by which man lives; God’s Fatherly discipline (yes, we should be thankful for that!); and now, in Deuteronomy, on the cusp of a good land, with brooks of water, fountains and flowing springs, valleys and hills, wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive trees, and honey; bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; stones of iron, and hills full of copper.  You shall eat and be full, God says, and therefore you shall give thanks.  Remember, and bless the LORD your God for this good land He has given you.

            But what did the Israelites do?  Time and time again?  Grumble.  Complain.  Reject the LORD’s prophets.  Reject the LORD.  Look for other gods to fill their bellies and tickle their fancies.  We are amazed.  I mean, the miracles these people witnessed!  Only to forget!  And yet, it reminds me of some other people I know.

            God commands us to remember.  But like Israel of old, we are so quick to forget.  So we grumble.  Don’t we?  Even us Christians.  We complain.  Why?  For one thing, we’re just so full.  We have so much.  And so, we’ve developed a sense of entitlement.  Rights.  We deserve it.  And we deserve it in the way, and in the time we want it.  See, this leads to dissatisfaction, bitterness, resentment, and ultimately, despair.  It hurts us, this amnesia with regard to God’s gifts, this ungratefulness.

            What is the cure?  Beloved, remember.  Intentionally.  As a matter of devotion.  As a spiritual discipline.  Remember all that God gives you.  Creation (I mean, Psalm 19 hits it right on the head: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” [v. 1]).  Providence (“The eyes of all look to you, and you give them their food in due season” [Ps. 145:15]).  All the great things you enjoy.  All the great people with whom God has surrounded you.  Don’t despise them.  Your family.  Your friends.  Your neighbors.  Your colleagues.  Your fellow-redeemed, your brothers and sisters in Christ in His Holy Church.  (Do you realize what a glorious privilege it is to be counted in this number?  These people, warts and all.  I confess, I all too often forget.  God open our eyes… and our hearts!) 

            God gives us so much, and we don’t deserve any of it.  He does it “only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in” us.[1]  The Catechism helps us with the specifics.  When our Father in heaven gives us each day our daily bread, what does that include?  It “includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”  For all this it is our “duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him.”

            So, remember those things.  But above all, remember the things of your redemption.  God loves you.  He sent His Son.  Jesus died for you.  He took all your sins away, and put them to death in His body on the cross.  Jesus lives for you.  He is risen from the dead.  He ascended into heaven in your flesh.  He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty in your flesh.  And He rules all things for your good, from the great affairs of the nations and the movements of the cosmos, right down to what each cell of your body is doing at this very moment.  Not to mention, all the things that trouble you.  He has them all handled.  Trust Him.  Every hair on your head, numbered.  Every heartbeat.  Every breath.  He knows them.  He wills them.  He counts them.  He knows precisely how many you will take in a lifetime.  And what we will do for you at the end of that lifetime.  And at the End of the world.  Remember, beloved.  Remember.

            Remembering in the Bible is not simply calling to mind.  It is living in the reality of the thing.  Now, you can remember bad things.  Disappointments.  Sins committed against you.  Sins you’ve committed.  Grudges.  Remembering those things is easy.  We do it by nature.  But I’ll tell you now, that only leads to more bitterness, resentment, and despair.  Don’t do that.  Beloved, you’ve been given so much better than that.  Remember God’s unimaginable goodness to you.  And then you'll be filled with gratitude and joy.  And you’ll extend that goodness to others.  You’ll know that Christ has forgiven you all your sins.  So you’ll forgive others.  And love them.  And pray for them.  And do good to them.  And bless them.  Remember God’s goodness to you, and you will live in that reality.

            The Lord Jesus knows we have trouble remembering, and so He has given us two precious gifts to help us remember.  First, His Word.  He simply tells us, again and again, every time we encounter His Voice in Scripture, and in preaching, and in Christian confession, and in the mutual conversation and consolation of brothers and sisters in Christ.  By this, we know that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3; ESV).  And then, the Holy Supper of His body and blood.  We even call it the Eucharist, from the Greek word that means Thanksgiving.  What does Jesus say?  “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24-25).  That is, live in the reality of My body, given into death on the cross for you, and My blood, poured out for you, for the forgiveness of all your sins, and your eternal life and salvation.  That changes your whole life, beloved.  Forever.

            So… You shall remember.  Our Lord doesn’t give us this commandment because His ego needs the credit for all He’s done for us.  That’s the kind of thing we think we need (we don’t!), but it’s never what God needs.  It is, rather, a Gospel gift when God bids us remember.  For in remembering, we receive.  Remembrance is faith.  And faith gives thanks to God, as it rejoices greatly in the Lord.  Not for God’s sake, but for its own.  For the joy that is in it.  “Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!” (Ps. 106:1).  Remember that, beloved.  Remember it.  And then come to the Great Thanksgiving Feast, and be filled.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.    

             

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[1] Catechism quotes from Luther’s Small Catechism (St. Louis: Concordia, 1986).