Second Sunday in
Advent (C)
December 9, 2018
Text: Luke 3:1-20
At
just the right time, on the cusp of the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4), God sent
His man into the wilderness to preach.
God sent the Voice into the place of emptiness and death to proclaim
fullness and life. The Word of the Lord
came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert, and so he went into all the
region of the Jordan proclaiming a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of
sins. And that is the Christian message,
the kerygma as we call it in theology, the preaching. Baptism for repentance and the forgiveness of
sins. The drowning and killing of Old
Adam. The turning away from sin and
death and unbelief. The returning to the
Lord our God for the forgiveness of sins that He alone can give. And He gives it in the coming One, Messiah,
Jesus, the Christ, for whom St. John prepares the way.
Repentance. That is the great leveler. Every valley is filled. Sinners are forgiven. Our emptiness is filled with Jesus and His
fullness. Every mountain and hill is
made low. The word for “made low” could
actually be translated as “humbled.”
Sinners are humbled. The high and
mighty of this world are cut down to size.
They are cast down from their thrones.
Your pride is cut to the quick.
You and I are made nothing, that Jesus may be our everything. That is what the Word of God does. That is the work of preaching. To cut us down to nothingness, to slay us so
that we are good and dead, that God Himself may make us alive, raise us from
the dead by the preaching of His Gospel.
He is like a refiner’s fire, we heard in our Old Testament (Mal.
3:1-7b). He melts us down and takes away
all that is not gold or silver, all that is not faith, all that is not
Christ. He is like fullers’ soap. He scrubs us clean of our sins and makes us
radiant white with Christ’s own righteousness and holiness. The Word of God straightens out what is
crooked. It calls you on your sin. Convicts you.
And it does not excuse you. That
is not forgiveness. No, it covers your
sin with the blood of Jesus Christ. It
covers your sin with the death of God as the sacrifice of atonement. And even as the Word gives you new life, the
very life of Christ who is risen from the dead, it sets you on the right path
to walk the straight way of His Commandments.
Or as
John puts it, it produces in you fruit in keeping with repentance. That is the fruit is love and good works. Now, this kind of talk makes us nervous as
Lutherans, but it really shouldn’t. Of
course, you are saved by grace alone. We
know that. You are saved because of
Jesus’ fulfilling the Law in your place, dying for your sins on the cross, and
rising again. And we know that He gives
you faith in Himself by sending His man to you, His preacher. He sends His voice into the wilderness of
your sin and death to call you to faith in Himself. He pours out His Spirit on you in the preaching
and in Baptism, and so you come to faith in Christ as God’s own gift, apart
from works. So you rightly say that you
are saved by faith alone. But beloved,
God-given faith is never alone. It is
living and active. It is always busy. It is always overflowing in love and good
works that benefit your neighbor. After
all, faith that has no works, no love, no fruit, is dead, as St. James teaches
us (2:17). And here in our text, we
learn the place of good works in our Christian life. They do not merit us salvation, but they flow
out of our salvation in Christ alone.
And in that sense, while good works are not necessary for salvation,
they are necessary. God does
demand them. We should do them. We should
obey our God’s Commandments, for they are good for us and for our neighbor. And this is
the fruit in keeping with repentance. As
God’s baptized children, forgiven and redeemed by grace alone, this the work
God has given us to do, and which He does in us by His Holy Spirit.
The people who went out to be baptized by John
asked him what this meant for them, concretely.
What does it mean to bear fruit in keeping with repentance? They had heard the warning. Bear fruit, or else the axe is already laid
at the root of the tree, and God will cut you down and cast you into the fire. That is what happens to dead faith, faith
without love. So they asked, what should
we do? Well, first, a general
admonition. We all should be generous and help our neighbor in times of
need. Do you have two tunics? Share with the one who has none. Do you have food on your table and in your
pantry? Give to the one who is
hungry. Faith does that. It provides wherever it sees a lack, because
that is what Jesus has done for us. He
saw our emptiness and He filled us with Himself. He saw our death and He raised us to new
life.
But
then consider your station in life. God
has called you to a very specific place in the world, at a very specific
time. He has surrounded you with real,
concrete people, and he has placed you in relationship to them to do very
concrete tasks. These you are to do
faithfully. The tax collectors, who
routinely fleeced the people, charging more than they had a right to do, and
pocketing the money… the concrete fruit of repentance for them was that they
were not to overcharge. Can you imagine
the shock of the first century people when they came to the tax booth and were
only charged the minimum? Soldiers
routinely abused the commoners around them because they could. They were strong, they had weapons, and the
commoners did not. So they would grab a
person and shake him down. They would
blackmail him, make a false charge and extort money. It was a regular mafia racket. The fruit of repentance for them? Don’t do that anymore. Protect people, which is your job. And be content with your wages.
You
can see how this works out in your own station in life. Be a faithful husband or wife, or a chaste
single person. Raise your children in
the faith and provide for them. Honor
your father and your mother and the earthly government. Get up, go to work, do your job with
integrity, pay your taxes, be content with your wages. Do what God gives you to do. And do it well, because that is love for your
neighbor, God’s love, bestowed on you graciously, pressed down to overflowing
so that you can love those around you.
Don’t live for yourself. Live for
your neighbor. Don’t hoard up the
blessings of the Lord. He blesses you to
be a blessing to your neighbor. Be
generous. Give liberally. God will not forsake you in this. God will bless it. He will not bless miserliness, but He will
always bless your generosity. And He
will never fail to provide for your needs of body and soul. This is the new life you have in Christ. And this life is God’s gift to you.
Now,
all the people were in expectation. They
could sense that the time was ripe. They
could feel it in their bones. Like we
feel during the Advent Season. It is
almost Christmas. We are bursting with
anticipation. The crowds wondered
whether John might be the Christ. But
John is the Voice, and the fruit he bears in keeping with repentance is to
speak what God gives him to speak. He is
ever and always to be pointing us to Jesus.
John is the forerunner. He is the
best man at the wedding. Jesus is the
fulfillment, the Bridegroom come to claim His Bride. John is the last of the great Old Testament
prophets. There is, by the way, a
difference between his Baptism and that of Jesus, not in terms of forgiving
sins, but in this sense: John’s is a Baptism of preparation. Jesus’ is a Baptism of fulfillment. John baptizes with water, in anticipation of
Jesus. Jesus baptizes with the Holy
Spirit and with fire.
That
is to say, Jesus’ Baptism imparts the Holy Spirit, who creates living faith in
the one baptized. Christian Baptism is
God’s instrument for creating faith. It
washes away your sins. It unites you
with Christ. It makes Christ’s death
your own, and Christ’s resurrection life your own. In Baptism, Jesus takes away your sin and
gives you His righteousness in exchange.
And He makes you God’s own child.
He writes the holy Name of God upon you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
because you belong to Him and are precious to Him. That is Baptism in all its fullness.
But
there is also a warning. Jesus also
baptizes with fire. And that is to say,
when our Lord comes with His winnowing fork, if you are not wheat, the fruit of
Christ… if you are, instead, chaff, the weightless husk that flies away in the
wind when the wheat is tossed into the air… Christ will gather you and cast you
into the fire, which is to say, hell.
That is not pleasant preaching, but it is what preachers are given to
say. Herod didn’t like it one bit. John preached God’s Law to Herod. It is not lawful for you to have your
brother’s wife. That is adultery. Repent, or you will be chaff, not wheat. Well, it got John a prison sentence, and
eventually, the loss of his head. So it
goes for voices sent out into the wilderness.
I pray God spares me, but it will not surprise me when the day comes
that it will be illegal for me to preach God’s Word in all its fullness and
truth. That is already the case in so
much of the world, and so many of our Christian brothers and sisters have
suffered. But this, too, suffering
faithfully, is fruit in keeping with repentance. This is what our Lord calls us to do, and He
does it in us by His Spirit.
John
came preaching a Baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and that is
vocation of every Christian preacher.
And that is your confession as royal priests of God. And John still preaches. We hear him again this morning. Repent.
Turn from your sins. Return to
the Lord your God. He is gracious and
merciful. He sends His Son, the Lamb of
God, who takes away the sin of the world.
This preaching prepares us to receive Jesus as He comes to us. Believe in Him, and live. He rescues you from your wilderness emptiness
and fills you with Himself. In the Name
of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Advent Midweek I: “What Child Is This? The Child Who Is a
Virgin’s Great Son”[1]
December 12, 2018
Text: Judges 13:2-7; Luke 1:26-38
Sarah,
Rebekah, Rachel, the wife of Manoah, Hannah, and of course, Elizabeth, the
mother of St. John the Baptist. Six matriarchs
from the Old Testament (true, Elizabeth appears in the New Testament, but she
is an Old Testament figure). All of them
barren, which, for an Old Testament woman was a source of great sadness. A barren woman was even considered by many to
be cursed, so greatly did the ancients value the gift of children. And, of course, these Old Testament mothers
longed to give birth to the One, the Messiah, who would save His people from
their sins. None of them did, but in
every case, the miraculous fruit of their wombs pointed to the great miraculous
conception in the womb of a seventh matriarch: the Virgin Mary. The number seven, a very biblical number, a
number of completion. Mary, the seventh
and greatest, a Virgin, conceived and gave birth to our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Son of Mary. He is the Son of God. God does what is, humanly speaking,
impossible, bringing fruit from the barren, and salvation when the virgin
conceives and bears a Son.
All
of those miraculous conceptions and births from the barren matriarchs point to
this greatest of miraculous conceptions and births. And they all bear some similarity to the
conception and birth of our Lord.
Tonight, we focus in on the nameless wife of Manoah who, at the promise
of the Angel (in fact, the pre-incarnate Son of God Himself), conceives and
bears a son.
That
son, of course, is the mighty Samson.
What an unlikely biblical hero.
The LORD will do great things through him. Dedicated to God from the womb, a Nazirite,
he was not to drink wine or strong drink, nor was he to cut his hair. That is the thing most people know about
him. The actor, Michael Landon, famously
let his hair grow long so he could be strong, like Samson. It was not the hair, though, that made Samson
strong. It was the Word of the
LORD. Samson would “begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges
13:5; ESV). That was the promise.
The
Philistines had been raiding and oppressing the Israelites for forty years. The Israelites had brought it upon themselves,
rebelling against God, worshiping false gods, rejecting the Word of the LORD. But now God sent a redeemer, a judge, a
promised son, Samson, a mighty man. Once
he was attacked by a lion in a vineyard, and he tore the lion limb from limb
with his bare hands (Judges 14:5-6).
This is the Samson who tied 300 foxes together by their tails with
torches and set them lose to burn down the Philistine grain fields (15:4-5). This is the Samson who killed 1,000
Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey (v. 15), who took hold of the Gaza
city gates, doors, posts, and all, and carried them on his shoulders to the top
of the hill (16:3). Of course, we know
of his violent tendencies and his weakness for women. He is not the model saint. As a matter of fact, it is not Delilah’s
cutting his hair that weakens him, it is his falling away from the LORD and his
failure to confess the LORD as the source of his strength that leads to
Samson’s capture and humiliation. Bound,
blinded, mocked, a source of entertainment for the Philistine elite. It is in this condition Samson performs his
greatest feat.
He
dies. And he dies in this way. Placed between two columns, he stretches out
his hands. He takes hold of the columns
and brings down the house on top of the Philistines, so that those whom he
killed in his death were more than those he had killed during his life (vv.
23-31). By his death, Samson defeats
Israel’s enemies. In the shedding of his
blood, this promised son of a barren woman begins to save Israel.
For
all his sins, for all his going his own way, for all the blood on his hands and
lust in his heart, and for all his failure to confess the LORD his God as his
strength, Samson is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. The angel (in this case, Gabriel) appears to
the Virgin Mary and promises she will conceive and bear a Son (Luke 1:31). Her child will be great, not as Samson was
great, with great physical strength, but as the Son of the Most High. For, the angel declares to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the
power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will
be called holy – the Son of God” (v. 35).
The Word enters Mary’s ear and is conceived in her womb. God has become flesh, Jesus Christ, the
Savior.
He is
dedicated to the LORD from His mother’s womb.
He is not a Nazarite, though He will grow up in Nazareth, from the same
Hebrew root. And His strength is not in
His hair, but as was, in fact, the case with Samson, His strength is the
Promise, the Word of the LORD: “you
shall call his name Jesus” (v. 31), which means “YHWH, the LORD,
saves.” For that is what He will
do. He will tear apart the roaring lion,
Satan, not by might, but by being torn Himself.
As Samson used foxes and the jawbone of a donkey, our Lord does not use
conventional weapons in His battle to save us.
He uses a cross and death. He
takes the wood upon His shoulders and carries it up the hill, Golgotha, the
Place of a Skull, to die. Between two
thieves, stretching out His hands, He is bound to the wood, nailed there,
mocked, bleeding, blinded in death, He takes down our enemies by sacrificing
Himself. It is the end of our sin. It is the end of our death. It is the defeat of hell itself. In the shedding of His blood, the Promised
Son of the Virgin saves Israel, saves us, once and for all.
And
unlike Samson, Jesus doesn’t stay dead.
He is risen from the dead, and He will raise Samson, and He will raise
you. From the barrenness of the grave,
the risen Lord Jesus will raise you bodily and give you eternal life.
You? You’re a rather unlikely object of the Lord’s
salvation. You’re not exactly the model
saint. You’re a Samson. Here you were just objecting to Samson being
the picture of our Lord Jesus Christ. I
know how it goes. It’s uncomfortable
thinking of such a wretched man, such a vile sinner, as a picture of the Lord,
but then again, you’re not really in a position to judge, are you? There is blood on your hands, too… The person
you have despised in your heart, the neighbor in need you have failed to help,
your unrighteous anger, your unwillingness to forgive, embittering your
neighbor’s life by your words and actions, failure to speak up for the weakest
and most vulnerable among us. There is
lust in your heart, too… Casual second glances, wicked fantasies, trashy novels
or vile websites, not loving and valuing the spouse God gave you as you should,
or not bearing the cross of chastity in the single life faithfully. You’re rightly disgusted with Samson. But as Nathan said to David, “Thou art the man” (2 Sam. 12:7;
KJV)!
And
yet! And yet… All this our Lord Jesus
did and suffered, all of which Samson was a living picture, Jesus’ cross,
Jesus’ death, the barren tomb, and the victorious resurrection… All of this is
for Samson, and it is for you! It is for
all sinners. And you have been
dedicated, set apart for the Lord from your new birth in the waters of Holy
Baptism. God’s Name is on you. You are not a Nazirite, you are a Nazarene, a
Christian, in Christ and one with Him.
His cross is your death. His
death is your salvation. His
resurrection is your life. Your strength
is not in your hair or your holiness or your works. Thank God for that, because Samson has no
holiness in and of himself, and neither do you.
Your holiness, your strength, is the Promise, the Word of the Lord: Your
sins are forgiven in the Name of the Father, and of the Son +, and of the Holy
Spirit. This is my body, given for you. This is my blood, shed for you for the
forgiveness of sins. If you locate your
strength within yourself, it will lead to bondage, humiliation, and death. But Christ is your strength. He is your salvation. Believe it and confess it. And in that strength, God does great things
through you. He loves your neighbor with
your hands. He provides for your
neighbor through your hands. You are the
mask of God, dear Christian, dear little Christ, as He provides for your
neighbor through you.
Yes,
for all your sins, for all your going your own way, for all the blood on your
hands and lust in your heart, you are forgiven in the Name of Jesus. And you are the picture of Christ to your
neighbor. See what God does with
barrenness? He brings life to the desert,
sinners to repentance, the unbelieving to faith. Jesus raises the dead to eternal life. Through the cross and Good Friday, to Easter
and the resurrection of all flesh on the Last Day. God gave this Child for this very purpose. He is your life. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son
(+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and many of the
thoughts in this sermon are from Ralph Tausz, What Child Is This? (St. Louis: Concordia, 2018).
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