Who Is a God Like You?

Text: Micah 7:18-20

In the book of Exodus, shortly after the Golden Calf, Moses was immensely distressed by the Lord’s decision to no longer lead Israel Himself but with an angel, instead. This was to be received by the people as discipline for their idolatry. Although they would suffer in this way, the Lord would, of course, remain with them and bring them to the Promised Land – just as He said He would. Moses asked for a sign of God’s continued presence. The Lord placed Moses in the cleft of a rock and passed in front of him saying, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” (Exodus 34:6-7 English Standard Version) Moses was strengthened by this and led the people of God for 40 years until his own entrance into the Promised Land of heaven.

The Lord, merciful and gracious, abounding in love and forgiveness is who St. Micah places before us today. As a prophet Micah was active during a peak of Israel’s earthly greatness. The greatness of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah during his time was second only to Solomon’s, who reigned three centuries before. Yet, at the peak of their greatness, one kingdom was brought to destruction and the other very nearly so, for they had forgotten their first love – the Lord. Though Micah lived and prophesied during a time of discipline from the Lord, he waited in patience and hope. He knew that the Lord does not retain His anger forever, but will again have compassion on His people. From Micah we learn that the Lord will, indeed, have compassion on His people on the Final Day, even as He pardons and forgives us now in Christ.

I.

“Who is a God like you,” Micah sang, “pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of His inheritance? He does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in steadfast love.” (Micah 7:18) With these words Micah encouraged the faithful children of God – the remnant – to await His coming mercy with patience. Micah, along with Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah, prophesied during a turbulent time in Israel’s history. It was also a wealthy and prosperous time. In Scripture, these often go together: material prosperity and turmoil. This is because in times of worldly greatness, when riches and land excel – God’s people often turn away. They become secure and no longer have any need for God. Such were the people during Micah’s ministry.

When he says that the Lord pardons inquity and passes over transgression, Micah uses two different words. In English, these words seem the same, but here Micah precisely describes what is going on in his time. The first word he uses describes sins against the Second Table of the Commandments – sins committed against other people. In Micah’s time, it was common for everyone – from king to peasant – to cheat, lie, or otherwise take advantage of others in any way possible. The second word Micah uses implies ungodliness – hatred toward God, a detest of His Word, idol worship, and various forms of perversion. Because of these things, the Lord allowed the Northern Kingdom to fall to Assyria in 722 B.C. The Kingdom of Judah very nearly fell itself, if not for the prayer of faithful king Hezekiah and the comforting witness of Isaiah.

Micah recognized his time as one of discipline from the Lord. He knew that, as a father disciplines his son for his good, the Lord disciplines His children. Micah took comfort, however, in the fact that Lord will not always discipline, because His delight is in showing love. “He will again have compassion on us; He will tread our iniquities underfoot,” Micah said. “You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.” (v. 19) We mostly know Micah for His promise that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, but here as well Micah saw in the Spirit the Day of the Lord, the Final Day. Micah offered this comforting promise, that, although the Lord’s people experience His discipline, soon will come a day when all sins are put away, all darkness is turned to light, and Satan is fully tread underfoot.

II.

We, also, live in a time of turbulence, a fact we’re more aware of as of late. We live in the wealthiest and most materially prosperous nation the world has ever seen. We ourselves, in one way or another, have access to resources that would have been unimaginable a few generations ago. And yet, everything seems to be falling apart. Although it is common and very easy to push the blame upward – as our father Adam did in the Garden – and blame those in authority, we might as well point finger at ourselves. After all, it is true that leaders themselves are images of the people they represent. Micah used two words for sin. One implies sin against neighbor and the other disrespectful behavior toward God. Both are present in our lives.

We all have an overactive concern for our own well-being. Our concern in most things is for ourselves first, and only after for others. At times during this pandemic, we have worried primarily about our own earthly lives and not for the safety of others. Last week St. John encouraged us to be willing to lay down our lives for our fellow Christians in need, but we are reluctant when called upon. There are other sins that you and I have committed against others that are known only to our hearts. Above that, we have behaved impiously toward God. We have doubted His provision for us, we have been negligent in our devotion, and we have not truly valued the pure Word and Sacrament as our highest good and treasure. If Luther were here now, he would say – as he did of his time – that the way of the world is the Lord disciplining us and teaching us to repent.

Let us, then, receive it as such – and be patient – because we know what awaits. Micah said, “You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham, as You have sworn to our fathers from the days of old.” (v. 20) Micah praises God because, as bad as the world may be, evil will meet its end. Sin will be done away with, and the devil will eat the dust at our Lord’s return. The Lord will not be angry forever, but will return and have compassion. He will raise our bodies. Those who in this life despised the Lord will be forever put away, but we will live in joy and peace with our Lord and those who have gone before us. What a wonderful sight it will be to behold.

III.

Here is where we get to the now-but-not-yet part. Here, again, the Holy Spirit makes a wonderful choice of words. In verse 19, you can see that the verbs are in the future tense. But in verse 18, the Spirit uses present tense verbs. God’s delight is in showing steadfast love. He now is pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression. With the other prophets, Micah saw ahead to the ministry of Christ. He saw that Jesus would take our sins into Himself. Micah saw what Jesus has done for us. He has fully obeyed the Law of God for us and with His sacrificial death, made payment for our sins against both God and neighbor. He has removed God’s wrath from us by bearing it Himself.

By His obedience of the Law and His death for us, Jesus won for us the forgiveness of our sins. This forgiveness is not something that He’s saving until later – to give to us only on the Last Day. No, this forgiveness He gives to you now. Here in the Absolution, in the Sacrament of the Altar, by our Baptism, and by faith in His Word, Jesus applies to you the forgiveness which He won for you. In these things, He covers your iniquity and passes over your transgressions. He does this so that, on that Final Day, you and I might stand before Him free from blame – not having righteousness of our own, but wearing His white robes. Though we suffer in this life, and are perhaps now undergoing discipline from the Lord, let us be encouraged by St. Micah. There is no God like our God, who freely loves and forgives. Let us wait for Him in patience, knowing that He will show us faithfulness and love just as He promised and as we now receive in Christ.

Blessed in the Kingdom of God

Text: Luke 14:15-24

Dear friends in Christ: This last week, I was working through the Catechism again and I came across a portion that, I think, works well with the Gospel text today. The parable of the Great Banquet, where those who were invited ended up not being in the feast and those who were previously uninvited were brought in is a good illustration of a portion of the Catechism that we speak every Sunday, today included. See if you can figure out what portion I mean. The Catechism starts with the Ten Commandments, which are God’s will for our lives. They teach us how to love God and our neighbor. Next comes the Apostles’ Creed, which is pure Gospel. It teaches us about all that our God has done, and still does, for us. The Creed is what the Lord invites us to believe.

After the Creed comes the Lord’s Prayer. The Prayer comes here because the life of faith is a difficult one. The Lord’s Prayer is a tool, the best arrow in our quiver, that the Lord gives us. When we are faced with the difficulties and miseries of this life, He invites us to pray in the glad confidence that He will, indeed, hear and answer us. In the Second Petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy Kingdom Come,” we ask that the Lord would grant us His Holy Spirit so that we would believe the Word that is proclaimed to us, and so enter into His blessed feast. Today we give thanks that the Lord has brought us in from the alleys and highways of sin, and we ask that He would continue to grant us His Spirit so that we listen when He calls.

I.

The context of our Lord’s parable this week is a sabbath meal in the house of a ruler of the Pharisees. As was His custom, our Lord taught in the synagogue during the day. In the evening, He would eat wherever He was invited. His invitation this evening placed Him among a somewhat hostile crowd. We’ll hear our Lord’s teaching during this meal again before the Trinity season ends, when He encourages us to live in humility before God and toward others. What prompts today’s teaching is what we heard: “When one of those who reclined at table with Him heard these things, he said to [Jesus], ‘Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God.’” (Luke 14:15, English Standard Version) Our Lord then proceeded to teach about those who would eat in the heavenly kingdom of God.

Jesus said, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses.” (vv. 16-18) We won’t go through the excuses the people gave, since we heard them just a little bit ago. Suffice to say, they were all reasonable excuses. If you look in the Old Testament, two of the excuses were valid reasons one could give to be exempted from military service. Not satisfied, however, “The master of the house became angry,” Jesus said. “[He] said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.” (v. 21) The master of the house had his servant go out and gather those who typically would not have been included in a great banquet. In St. Matthew’s account of this parable, the banquet is a wedding feast.

The servant did go out. He brought in the poor, crippled, blind, and lame and yet, he said, “still there is room.” (v. 22) One final time the master spoke to him, “Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled.” (v. 23) The highways and hedges were the paths on the way out of town. The servant was to go out and bring into the feast those who had no expectation of an invitation, who hadn’t even heard of said meal. The parable closes with the master offering his explanation for these instructions – which is also a key to understanding the meaning of this parable. He said, “I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.” (v. 24)

II.

A first thing to consider to understand this parable is that Scriptures often portray heaven with feasts and banquets. When we follow Divine Service, Setting I, we often sing “This is the feast of victory for our God.” That song is based on a passage from Revelation that says in part, “Let us rejoice and exult and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come…blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” (Rev. 19:7, 9) The context is, of course, heaven. In the parable, the master of the house is our Lord God, even Christ Himself. The servant represents the prophets and apostles, whose ministries were to call people to Christ’s feast. Their ministries continue even now through the written Word of God. Those who were first invited in the parable are those whom the prophets, apostles, and Lord came to call – the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Yet, as we witness throughout Scripture, God’s people constantly rejected Him.

In the parable, the servant was sent into the streets and lanes of the city to gather up the outcasts. These represent those of Israel who did receive Jesus. Our Lord often ate with tax collectors and sinners, not because He condoned their lifestyles, but because those who have great sin are those in greatest need of a savior. The last group invited to the banquet were those on the way out of town and who were already outside. That is the category we fall in. We are on the outside, first, because we were not born offspring of Abraham. More seriously, however, is that we were born outside of God’s mercy through the Fall into Sin. By our birth of flesh and blood, we inherited the corruption of sin. We were born without faith or love for God, and with the desire to sin. We were born without any expectation or right to eat bread in the kingdom of God.

The Lord had mercy on us, however, and sent His Son to redeem us. Jesus became our savior by bearing our sin in His body on the cross. With His blood, Jesus atoned for our evil deeds and bought us back from the clutches of death and the devil. Through the Word, He has brought us to faith and into His Kingdom, the Church. Here in the Supper and into eternity He invites us to eat at His blessed feast, which we ourselves have neither merited nor deserved.

III.

The parable today is a good illustration of the Second Petition. In this petition, we ask that God’s kingdom would come to us also. Let’s answer the question, “How does God’s kingdom come,” together. (pg. 324)  “God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity.” Although I said that we are represented by those on the outside of the city in the parable, it is also true that we are among those given to make excuses. Although we have been brought into the family of God through our Baptism into Christ, we remain in the flesh. And, insofar as we are in the flesh, it continues to fight against us and we against our own sinful nature.

We ask in this petition that the Lord, who has given us so generously of His Spirit through the Word, would continue to grant us the same Holy Spirit. We ask that we would be given ears that hear when He calls, and that we would not be waylaid by the world and its temptations. We ask that we would treasure His Word in our lives, whenever it is read, preached, or sung and that this love for Him would spread to all the world. Although we, by nature, have no right to eat bread in the kingdom of God, we thank Him today for bringing us to His feast, both now and in the life to come. Amen.

Faith Counted for Righteousness

Text: Genesis 15:1-6

If you could put bright blinking lights into the text of Scripture or somehow change the letters in our Bibles from black to neon yellow, so as to get our attention, our text today would be a wonderful candidate for such treatment. The passage we have today from Genesis is one of the foundational texts of our holy Christian faith. In fact, a good chunk of Romans – which, for many of us is a book high on our lists – is based on this passage, especially the last verse. If we could put bright, blinking lights that grab our attention into Scripture, the passage that teaches how Abram was declared righteous – and who did the declaring – would be a very good one for it.

Although this teaching has always been a part of the Christian faith, and even comes up in Genesis before today, this passage makes it explicitly clear. Abraham, as the Lord changed Abram’s name to, was declared righteous by God through faith. Abraham’s faith, not his works, was counted by God to him as righteousness. Righteousness, in this sense, means to be right with God and to not have our sins weighed against us. This is a comforting thing because if Abraham, a patriarch of our faith, was declared righteous by faith, then so are we. In a world of sin and uncertainty, the Lord declares us righteous – free from sin – through faith.

I.

Now, let’s talk for a little bit about Abraham. The name Abraham means “father of a multitude.” Abraham, through his son Isaac and grandson Jacob, is the father of the Old Testament Israel. That much we probably already knew from our Sunday School lessons. Abraham is noted in the Scriptures and the history of the Church as a patriarch and paragon of our faith; but when we examine his life in the Scriptures, we find that he is imperfect. Abraham was, at the same time, saint and sinner. His journey of faith began on a high note, that is true. Abraham was a descendent of Noah who had fallen into idol worship while living with his family in an ancient Babylon. The Lord appeared to Abraham and said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3, English Standard Version) Abraham believed God’s promise and went. Abraham left his father’s house and land was led by the Lord in faith for decades.

The journey was not always so joyous, nor was Abraham always on the up and up. When Abraham and his wife were in Egypt, he passed Sarai off as his sister for fear that – contrary to God’s promise – the Egyptians would kill him and take Sarai. After that there was a great battle in which the Lord granted Abraham victory, but there was much violence. Later, Abraham doubted God’s promise again and had a child with Sarah’s maidservant, Hagar. His doubt stemmed from the worry expressed in our text today. We heard, “The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’ But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will You give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abram said, ‘Behold, You have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.’” (vv. 1-3) Abraham, at that moment, doubted God’s promise to make him father of many nations. After all, he first needs to have a son of his own. At present, a member of his household is his heir.

II.

We bring up these things, these doubts and misdeeds of Abraham, to show that Abraham was not perfect. He was imperfect; a sinner. So are we. The same things, the same patterns, we see in Abraham’s life, we can find in our own upon closer inspection. Like Abraham, our Christian lives began on a high note when we were baptized. Many of us were baptized as infants, some as children, some as adults. In that sacred washing of water and Word, the guilt of our sins – both which we inherited from Adam and that guilt which we have merited ourselves – was washed away. We received the gift of faith by the working of the Holy Spirit. We were united to Christ’s death and resurrection. Just as He rose from the dead, by our Baptism, we expect our bodies to be raised from the dead anew on the Last Day. With our Christian lives beginning on such a high note, we should expect that they continue to be fruitful and blessed lives, right? But is that what we experience?

Remember what Jesus said when He encountered the woman caught in adultery? “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone.” (Jn. 8:7) The Holy Spirit is a wonderful storyteller, because He says that, beginning with the older ones, all the people walked away. The older ones walked away first because they’ve had the time to reflect on their lives, and have noticed how they conducted themselves. Would that God grant us the same introspection. When we look at our own lives, honestly, we find that we, neither, have been perfect. We have lied. We have stolen. We have failed to do right by our neighbor; we have taken advantage of them. We have been silent when we should have spoken. We have been fearful when we should have been bold. We, like Abraham, have doubted God’s Word and called His promises into question. If we were to take all things we have ever thought, said, and done and put them into a scale – which would be heavier, the evil deeds or the righteous ones?

III.

“[The Lord] brought [Abraham] outside,” it says, “and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ And he believed the Lord, and He counted it to him as righteousness.’” (vv. 5-6) The Lord just told Abraham that Eliezer of Damascus would not be his heir. God would keep His own promise and give Abraham a son of his own body. The Lord took Abraham outside to see the stars; such would his offspring be. Here come the bright letters. Abraham believed God’s promise and God counted his faith as righteousness. To be righteous means to be right with God, to be in fellowship with Him, to not have one’s evil deeds measured against you. The Lord counted Abraham righteous not because of Abraham’s good deeds – of which there are many – but by faith.

If Abraham was declared righteous by God through faith then so are we, so says St. Paul in Romans. This is a comforting thing because, as we well know, we are sinners. To use St. Isaiah’s words last week, we are unclean people living among an unclean nation. Yet, the Lord in His mercy did not cast us off for our many sins, but instead sent His Son into the flesh to redeem us. He sent His Spirit into our hearts through the Word to create in us faith – faith in Jesus and the forgiveness that is through Him and a joyful expectation of the life to come in the Resurrection. God counts this faith to us as righteousness. Through the faith He created in our hearts, God declares us righteous. Yes, we are sinners. Yes, we wage war against the sin that still clings to our flesh. Yes, every day we do fail and fall into sin. Yet, our Lord is merciful. He sent His Son to die for us and, by faith in Jesus, declares us righteous and brings us into His kingdom.

You Must Be Born Again

Text: John 3:1-15 (16-17)

Today we are celebrating the feast of the Holy Trinity, the Sunday from which the remaining Sundays in the year all draw their names. From here to the end, we are in the Trinity Season. A moment ago we confessed the faith of all Christians: we believe in one true God, who exists eternally in three persons. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God; and yet, there are not three gods but one God. There is no way, this side of Eden, that we will fully understand the doctrine of the Trinity; we humbly confess that this is how the Lord reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures. Even last week we heard our Lord say, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him…” and, “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14, English Standard Version)

The Christian Church has observed Trinity Sunday since at least the 1300s, but our Gospel reading today comes from before that. When the pope declared that this Sunday must be observed, the German church did observe it, but kept the original Gospel reading – the one we heard today. Although it doesn’t speak directly about the Trinity, it does speak about something equally as confounding: the basis of our salvation. In the text, we heard our Lord’s teaching to Nicodemus that those who see the kingdom of God are not those who enter by flesh and blood, but those who are born of the Spirit. Thus, the Lord brings us into His kingdom through His life-giving Spirit.

I.

That this should be, was somehow incomprehensible to Nicodemus; at least in the beginning of the Gospel. The Holy Spirit tells us at the end that Joseph of Arimathea, along with this Nicodemus, buried our Lord. They exercised their faith in Jesus by showing Him great love with a burial in a new tomb. As yet, though, Nicodemus has a ways to go. The Spirit tells us by St. John that Nicodemus came to speak to the Lord under cover of night. Nicodemus was a member of the Pharisees and, moreover, a leader among his people. The party of the Pharisees was a movement of lay people who were very concerned with living righteous and holy lives. This, on its own, is a good goal. However, these people who sought after holiness sometimes became preoccupied with it and even became confident in their own good works for salvation. Nicodemus said to Jesus, “‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’” (Jn. 3:2-3)

At first it seems like our Lord is on a different wavelength, as if He is giving an answer to a question Nicodemus didn’t ask. Remember, though, Nicodemus is a Pharisee. Throughout the Gospel, the Pharisees butt heads with Jesus over how one enters the kingdom of God, how one is saved. The Pharisees held that one entered heaven based upon personal holiness exercised in observance of God’s law and good works. To put it crassly, those who went to heaven were those who put in the work. Moving outward into an idea common among the Jews of Jesus time, it was also held that those who desired to go to heaven, first, had to be a descendant of Abraham. You became a descendent of Abraham by either being born that way, or becoming circumcised if you had been born a Gentile. Jesus saw these mindsets present in Nicodemus and turned everything around, saying, “Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (vv. 5-6) In other words, salvation is not based on something in us. Salvation is something we are brought into by the Holy Spirit.

II.

This idea confounded Nicodemus, which he voiced at least twice, wondering how this could be. How could it be that salvation is not based on something we do, when everything else is, or at least seems to be? We human beings are geared to think this way. We have been since the Fall. Isn’t this a common idea, that human beings are generally good, including in spiritual matters? Some people who may not believe this might at least believe that humans are neutral and capable of being good spiritually; good enough to make it to heaven. What do the Scriptures say on the topic? St. Paul says, “The works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy…” the list goes on. (Gal. 5) Jesus said, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” (Mt. 15:19)

In a different context, Martin Luther said that to see if these things apply to us we should take our hands and stick them in our shirts. If we should find through that experiment that we have flesh and blood, then these words apply to us. They apply to you; they apply to me. St. Paul said to the Corinthians that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 15) He means that we, who have been born since the Fall, are in the flesh. That is, we live according to the desires of our flesh. We fight, lie, lust, hate, steal, covet, are disrespectful and apathetic. We were this way from before our birth and if left unchecked remain so oriented our entire lives. Should we then, like Nicodemus, expect to see the kingdom of God? Should we expect to be forgiven?

III.

This is where it gets incomprehensible, you see, because we are forgiven; we are citizens of the Jerusalem above. We confess that we are sinful and unclean, no doubts about that. We also confess the greatness of God’s love for us. This is how the Father has loved us: He sent His Son into the world, so that it might be saved through Him. The Father sent Jesus into this fallen creation so that by His work alone, the world might be saved. What was the work that He did? Jesus perfectly obeyed the Law of God in every point. He honored it by word and deed, He loved both God and neighbor with all His heart, soul, and mind. Then, He showed the greatest love ever, by bearing the hate-filled and sinful deeds of all creation in His body on the cross. By His perfect life and sacrificial death, Jesus merited for the world the forgiveness of sins.

Those who receive forgiveness are not those who work for it, who presume to earn it by their behavior. They don’t receive forgiveness who are simply born into historically Christian families. Those who receive the forgiveness of sins are those who are reborn from above by the Holy Spirit. Those who receive forgiveness are those who are brought by the Spirit to believe that Jesus was lifted up just as the serpent was lifted to up, to save those who look to Him. When someone is brought to believe this, they are reborn to live no longer according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. They receive, according to the Scriptures, a heart of flesh in place of a stone one,  and a desire to do God’s will rather than just their own.

This is just as incomprehensible to our human flesh as is the Trinity, that we are saved not by works but by faith. We who are gathered here today, whether in person or online, have exactly what the Scriptures say. According to our own nature, we have nothing but sin and death. And, yet we confess that we have been reborn through the Holy Spirit. We have heard the Good News preached, and the Spirit has brought us to new life by faith in Christ. We were made new even as children through the washing of Holy Baptism, the water and the Word. This confounded Nicodemus at first, but in the end he knew it to be true. Those who enter the kingdom of God are not those who work for it. We are brought into the kingdom by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word.

The Holy Spirit, The Comforter

Text: John 14:23-31

“Alleluia. Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Alleluia.” These were the words we sang just before the reading of our Lord’s Gospel. They come from the mouth of St. Peter when he gave answer to our Lord’s question of whether the twelve might like to turn away from Him, as well. Jesus had just given the crowd the hard teaching: salvation is by faith in Him alone and not by the works of human flesh and blood. Upon hearing this teaching, many – including some who were previously followers of Jesus – turned away. Peter gladly confessed, with the other apostles, that by the work of the Holy Spirit they had found in Christ something which the world cannot give: the forgiveness of sins, the hope of eternal life, and the peace that flows from a good conscience before God.

The work of the Holy Spirit is brought up by our Lord in the Gospel text and we see the Spirit’s work in the reading from Acts. There, the Spirit worked the reversal of Babel when He proclaimed through the apostles, in many different languages, the Good News of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is the Holy Spirit’s work to bring the peace which the world cannot give, the peace of sins forgiven. This is what our Lord promises as He sends the Spirit to us, as well.

I.

For a number of weeks now, the Gospel readings have all been from St. John. In particular, they’ve all been from a certain chunk of St. John’s Gospel: our Lord’s final teaching to His disciples. Our text today, as with others in the Easter season, comes from the last hours of our Lord’s earthly ministry. His goal in this teaching was to prepare them for the world they were soon to encounter after His departure and to comfort them. Therefore, He taught about the work of the Holy Spirit, saying, “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” (John 14:25-27 English Standard Version)

Our Lord anticipates the fear His disciples would have after He is parted from them. Therefore, He promises to them whom He calls the Helper, although a better translation would be, “the Comforter.” This helping comforter would be none other than the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Spirit would help them by always directing them to Jesus’ Word. He would bring to their remembrance all that Jesus said and did, with the result that they should be at peace before God and among themselves. The Holy Spirit would sustain them in the faith and work through their preaching and teaching to create and sustain faith in others, as we witness in the Book of Acts. On the Eve of His passion – the time where our Lord suffered for the forgiveness of our sins – He promised His disciples a helper to be with them always: the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.

II.

They would need this comforting, too. In the last few weeks, we’ve heard our Lord’s teaching about how the world would react at His death – it would rejoice. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.” (Jn. 16:20) The devil and all his host were overjoyed to see our Lord die on the cross. Thinking that they had won, their joy at our Lord’s death led to threats of violence toward our Lord’s Christians. It’s not without reason that the disciples were locked away when the Lord first appeared to them. After our Lord’s ascension, we read in the Book of Acts how His enemies carried out their wrath on the Apostles and early Church. St. Paul is an example of this. Prior to his conversion, he attended the stoning of Stephen and watched the coats of those throwing stones. When he was converted, he had been on his way to Damascus to round up the Christians and bring them back to Jerusalem where they, likely, would have been killed for their faith.

After our Lord’s ascension, the world – thinking it had won – poured out its wrath on the Church. But you know what happened? The Church grew. We heard when we celebrated Ascension that the Apostles were continually in the temple preaching and teaching about Jesus. In time, they were arrested for this; but the Lord freed them and they went back to preaching. They were gathered again and beaten but it says in Acts that they, “[rejoiced] that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that the Christ is Jesus.” (Acts 5:41-42) The Apostles spent the rest of their lives preaching and teaching the forgiveness that is in Jesus Christ alone. And, although many of them met violent ends, they persisted because they had among and in themselves the peace which the world cannot give: the forgiveness of sins through the faith worked in them by the Holy Spirit. But what does this all have to do with you and me?

III.

Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” The world that you and I live in is really not that different from how it was in the time of the Apostles. The number of faithful Christians compared to those living in sin’s delusion is small and the Lord’s little flock is increasingly set-upon by the world. In addition to these we have the pressing concerns and miseries of our own lives – whether they be with our finances, our health, our relationships, or some combination of the three. We also wage daily war against the sin that still clings to our flesh and we bear those scars. Even still, Jesus says to you: “My peace I give to you.”

When Jesus spoke these words to the disciples, He was promising them the gift of the Holy Spirit who would sustain them in the faith and point them to all that Jesus said and did for them. The Spirit is also our comforter, our helper. The same Spirit Jesus breathed out on the Apostles, He has poured into our hearts through Baptism. By the washing of the water with His Word, we received the same Holy Spirit and He does the same thing for us – He points us to Christ. When we are suffering, He reminds us of all that Christ suffered for us. When we are troubled, He points us to the hope we have in Christ. When we sorrow over sin, the Spirit comforts us with the promise that through Christ’s death and resurrection, we are truly forgiven. The result is that we have the peace which the world cannot give. We have an eternal peace with God the Father through the resurrection of His Son.

Martin Luther once said something along the lines of: God doesn’t always remove the Christian from danger, but He removes danger from the Christian. That is, even amidst a sinful, fallen world, our Lord’s Christians – we – have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we have the forgiveness of our sins and a joyful hope that no one can take away from us.

The Lord Himself Will Act

Text: Ezekiel 36:22-28

“Our churches teach that people cannot be justified before God by their own strength, merit, or works. People are freely justified for Christ’s sake through faith.” (Augsburg Confession IV from Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions) These words from the Augsburg Confession, short of the Holy Scriptures, are our bread and butter in the Lutheran Church. We teach, according to the holy and true Word of God, that people cannot be saved – we cannot receive forgiveness from God – based upon our own good works, or anything that is within us. Instead, we are saved freely and purely by God’s grace through faith in Christ, which itself is a work of the Holy Spirit. In other words, our salvation is based entirely upon God’s actions alone. It has only come about because He decided to act Himself on our behalf. This is something we gladly confess this Easter season.

This truth, that the actions of God alone bring about our salvation, is found throughout the Scriptures. Our text today from the prophet Ezekiel is a good example. Here the Lord promised to bring His people into their own land. He promised to cleanse them from all their uncleanness and dwell among them as their God. He wouldn’t do these things because of their worthiness, but because of His own love. All His people ever do is profane the name of the Lord, therefore He Himself acts to vindicate His name and provide forgiveness to His people; ourselves, included.

I. 

The text opens with the Lord speaking to His people. He said, “Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.” (Ezekiel 36:22 English Standard Version) The context of our Lord’s words is that He is speaking of the exile of the children of Israel, both what brought it about and what will bring it to an end. By now, the destruction of Jerusalem should be a topic we’re aware of – both the one by the Romans in the New Testament and the one by the Babylonians in the Old Testament. The reason for both was the same: the unfaithfulness of God’s people. For generations, they lived in violence among themselves, idolatry, adultery, and so on. Every evil thing they saw in the world, they adopted and embraced. And the result was that God’s name was profaned. The Catechism teaches us what it means to profane the name of God. It says, “God’s name is kept holy when the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity and we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it…But anyone who teaches or lives contrary to God’s Word profanes the name of God.”

Such was the behavior of the children of Israel. They continually profaned the name of God by unfaithful living, and so they received the discipline of their Lord in their exile. But, even in exile, their sinful behavior continued. They continued to profane God’s name among the nations to which they came. One would think that such a discipline as being forced from their own land into another while others take and occupy their home would bring a people to repentance, but it didn’t. Instead, the people in exile continued to live idolatrous, adulterous lives. They worshipped the sun, moon, and stars. They embraced the pagan way of life, all the while being known as the worshippers of the God of Israel. They were supposed to live holy and decent lives in what they said and did, but when anyone looked to the children of Israel, they seemed no different from the world. And that profanes God’s name.

We should not claim to be unaware of such behavior among ourselves. We also bear the holy name of God in our Baptism. We, too, have been called out of the sinful world: to be in it, but not of it. Yet, we, too, have behaved as if that is of little consequence. Jesus said once that a little yeast leavens the whole lump. So, also, does a little sin infect the whole self. We, too, have behaved in ways that reflect poorly on our Christian name and our Father in heaven. We have profaned His name by living in ways that are contrary to His Word. At times, we have tolerated false teaching to dwell in our hearts and on our lips. From time to time when our Lord has disciplined us for this, we’ve acted as if we had done no wrong and been critical of the Lord’s will for our lives. There is a reason why we cannot merit salvation by our works, and it’s because we are sinners. All we ever do, by nature, is profane our Lord’s name.

II.

“It is not for your sake…that I am about to act, but for the sake of My holy name…I will take you from the nations…and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you…and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.” (vv. 22, 24-26) I said at the start that God working for the benefit of His people is found throughout Scripture. Notice who is doing what in our text. The people profane, but God saves. Here God speaks about the full cleansing that will come at our Lord’s return on the Last Day. At His return, the Lord will raise His people from their graves and gather them together from all creation. They will be fully cleansed from all sin and evil, and all profaning of His name will cease.

As is often the case when God speaks through His prophets, He is able to speak about more than one thing at a time. At other times we call this idea, “now but not yet.” Here, we gladly confess that the full cleansing which the Lord will work upon His people on the Last Day is already at work among us. The Lord promised that He would act, and He has acted in the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus. Because we, by nature, are incapable of doing a single good thing, Jesus took our human flesh upon Himself. At every point where we have profaned the name of God among us, He hallowed it. At every point where we have transgressed, Jesus kept the Law of God. As payment for all our evil deeds, the Lord took our sins into Himself and bore them in His body on the tree. With His stripes we are healed, the prophet said.

The Lord promises in the text to sprinkle clean water on His people and to place a new heart of flesh in them. Such has He done to us in our Baptism. When you were baptized, you were sprinkled clean from your sin when the forgiveness Christ won was applied to you. The Holy Spirit took out your old stony heart of sin and gave you a new heart of flesh when He created in you the gift of faith. When you fall into sin and find yourself profaning the name of God by word or deed, let it be confessed and so return to the waters of your Baptism anew. In this way, our Baptism stands every day until the Last, when it shall be completed as we are made completely pure in the Resurrection.

The Latin title for this Sunday is Exaudi, which means “hear.” The Lord hears our cries for forgiveness and salvation. He has acted Himself to bring it about through His work on our behalf. By Jesus’ blood our sins are for. His cleansing blood sprinkles us clean in Baptism. Through the same we receive a new heart which lives to love and serve both God and neighbor. Let us praise the Lord who promised to act for our salvation, and did; and pray that He might bless our new hearts of flesh to live faithfully in this life until we shall see Him face-to-face in the Resurrection.

The Work Continues

Text: Luke 24:44-53

Today is the day that we celebrate our Lord’s victorious ascension. Forty days after our Lord rose triumphantly from the grave for us, He was parted from the Apostles by the clouds so that He could resume His position at the right hand of the Father – the seat He once set aside when He became man for us. From the right hand of the Father, Jesus now rules over all things for our good, He prays for us and His whole Church on earth, and He ever sustains us with His gracious presence in the Word and the Sacraments. Jesus’ ascension is not a sad parting, but a joyous occasion to celebrate, as we witness from the action of Apostles in our Gospel text. Even still, the show must go on – as they say. The work must continue.

This is the goal of our Lord’s final message to His disciples. His work of our redemption is done. He came as the fulfillment of all His promises through the prophets to atone for all the world’s sin with His precious blood. Risen from the dead, our salvation is complete in Christ. That work is done. What isn’t done, however, is the spread of the Gospel to all the world. In our text, the Lord opened the disciples’ mind to understand the Scriptures and commissioned them to preach repentance and forgiveness in His name to all the world. Today, He continues to equip and call us, His Church, to do the same.

I.

“These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you,” Jesus said, “that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” (Luke 24:44 English Standard Version) In our evening devotions, we’ve been working our way through St. Luke’s Gospel. His Gospel is very organized, and that includes mentioning at various points the passage of time. But after our Lord’s resurrection, that stops. It’s almost as if Jesus’ rising from the dead brings with it a new order, a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at the world and ourselves. Up the point just before our text, the disciples were locked away for fear, but Jesus appeared among them to speak peace to them. His work is complete.

Specifically, His work of winning salvation for the world is finished. All that was promised through Moses and the prophets – that He would suffer, die, and rise for the forgiveness of sins is done. Having preached this Good News to the disciples, Jesus opened their minds to fully understand that all of Scripture is about Jesus and His work for us. But, as we said, that work is now done. Now, a different work is to continue. Jesus said, “It is written…that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in [Christ’s] name to all nations…you are witnesses of these things.” (vv. 47-48) Here Jesus again commissions His Apostles to go preach. This time they weren’t to stick just to Israel, but to go into all the world. Apostles, by the way, means those who are sent. Although Christ’s necessary work of our redemption is done, this necessary work continues: the preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins in His name to all the world.

II.

The Holy Spirit says, “Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them…[then] He parted from them and was carried up into heaven.” (vv. 50-51) After completing His work and commissioning His Apostles to continue the preaching of His Gospel, our Lord was parted by the clouds to resume His position at the right hand of the Father. We spoke more in-depth about the doctrine of our Lord’s ascension last year, but we should remember some key things about it. When we say that Jesus ascended into heaven, we confess that He truly is in heaven but that He also remains with us. He is able to do this because He is now in what we call His state of exaltation. His humiliation was the time, beginning with the Incarnation, when our Lord set aside the full use of His power. Beginning with the descent into hell, our Lord no longer limits Himself. In His exaltation, He makes full use of His power at all times. As such, He can be and is with us at all times.

From the Right Hand of the Father, which is truly everywhere, our Lord watches over all things and rules over all things for our benefit. At times we may not see it that way; but how could it be that Jesus would suffer and die for us and then not direct all things for our good? He orders all things for our benefit and He intercedes for us; Jesus prays for us, it says in Hebrews. He does these things all while sustaining us with His gracious presence among His Church in the Word and the Sacraments. Because He again makes full use of His power, Christ is able to be with us in the Sacrament of His body and blood. His presence will continue among us until His ascension becomes our own in the Resurrection.

III.

The show must go on, the work must continue. The world we live in now is not so different from the way it was during the time of the Apostles. In fact, with every passing day the similarity grows. Paganism and atheism – which are both idolatry of self – are becoming as popular today as they were then. So also are fear and anxiety. Many people throughout our country and the world have always lived in a quiet fear and concern about the future, about death and what’s to come. The present coronavirus pandemic doesn’t necessarily bring new fear, it brings hidden fear to the surface. Is there a better time than now to proclaim the hope we have in Christ?

You see, we, too, have had our minds opened to the Scriptures. It happened in our Baptism and by the faith we received through the Holy Spirit that our minds were opened to understand that the Scriptures are about Jesus. We recognize from His preaching and Word that we are sinners, worthy of condemnation and eternal punishment in hell. Our Lord promises, however, grace and every blessing to those who repent of their sins and look to Him faith. To those who trust in His name, He gives forgiveness and the gift of an eternal life where there is no sin and there is no suffering. In Baptism and by faith, we have received the mind of Christ and, as with the disciples of old, He sends us out, too. It’s time for the work of preaching repentance and faith in Christ to the world to continue. God grant us the love and the boldness to preach His Word in our lives until we behold His face in glory together with those of all nations who have loved His appearing.

Look to Him and Live

Text: Numbers 21:4-9

“Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:24, English Standard Version) With these words, our Lord encourages us to pray to our God and Father, promising that He will hear and answer. This is fitting encouragement because this Sunday, today, is the day that we start to pull away from the celebration of our Lord’s Easter toward His Ascension, which is Thursday. When our Lord ascended to the right of the Father, the disciples were left behind to continue His ministry, but with this promise – they can pray in whatever need and know that their prayers will be answered. So will ours. The Latin title for today is Rogate. It means, “ask.”

In the Old Testament reading, we see an example where God’s people have their prayer answered. In the wilderness wandering, the people sinned by grumbling against the Lord and Moses. As discipline, the Lord sent serpents to bring His people to repentance. When they realized their sin, the Lord answered their prayer with the bronze serpent. The serpent was placed on the pole so that the people might look to it and live. Christ, who is the true “serpent on the pole,” was lifted up for us on the cross. He bids us look to Him and live.

I.

The events in our text take place during the wilderness wandering. It seems that some time has passed since the people left Egypt. They’ve already sent spies into the Promised Land and refused to enter. Moses’ siblings, Aaron and Miriam, have both died. By now, the Lord has continued to provide for His people with the manna from heaven, with quail, and with water from the rock. Just before our text, the Lord granted victory to His people over some Canaanites who had been running raids and taking Israelites captive. However, the Holy Spirit speaks by Moses, “From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient along the way.” (Numbers 21:4) You’re right, if you think by now that God’s people continually grow impatient and doubt His provision in the Old Testament. 

The text says, “The people spoke against God and against Moses, ‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” (v. 5) Remember, this is after the manna, after the quail, after the water from the rock. God had been with His people all the way up to this point. He fed them; defended them. How do His own people repay Him? By questioning Him and loathing Him. When you loathe something, you hate it with the very core of your being. That’s how the people felt about God and about His servant Moses. In short, they fell into unbelief. The lack of faith in their hearts led to their words, actions, and general attitude. The Lord disciplined His people for their sin by sending “fiery serpents,” it says. The snakes bit the people and many died. (v. 6)

II.

This is a pattern we do see among God’s people of old: periods of unbelief resulting in contempt for the Lord’s Word, doubts about His provision, loathing what He gives, and other forms of sinful living. This was a pattern in days of old, but surely it’s not the case now is it? Let’s not move on so quickly. Many of us, by God’s grace, have – contrary to the world – been strengthened in the faith through this pandemic. This current strength in our faith isn’t always the case. You see, we, too, have doubted God’s Word. How often have we read something challenging in Scripture and, rather than say “amen,” we put it in the lowest filing cabinet of our minds. How often have we read Scripture and disliked what it said? How often have we done the opposite of what the Lord commands, and liked it?

We have doubted the Lord’s provision. In Bible study this week we talked about the Lord’s Supper, how it is our true daily bread and nourishment in this life. Have we always thought thus? Have we always treated the Sacrament as a treasure, or do we see it as a burden – what, with all the setup and take down and having to be faithful in our practice? We all go through periods where we think like this; maybe you are in one now. The Lord doesn’t always send serpents, but we receive the same discipline for our sin: death. The patterns we see in God’s people of old continue in us, His people now. And we receive, rightly, the punishment for our sins in death.

III.

Just as we see patterns in God’s people of old that continue now, so we see that our Lord acts now as He did then. The people learned from the serpents that they had sinned and they were brought to repentance. They asked Moses to pray to the Lord on their behalf, that they might be forgiven. The Lord heard and answered their prayer. He said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it shall live.” (v. 8) So, Moses did. He made a serpent and put it up on a pole. Whenever someone was bitten by a serpent, they could look at the bronze serpent and be healed. When they were bitten and brought to repentance, they would look to the serpent trusting in God’s promise of healing and, by faith, receive the same.

The bronze serpent comes up later in our Lord’s conversation with Nicodemus. He said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” (Jn. 3:14-15) The bronze serpent of old, which took away death caused by serpent, pointed ahead to the true “bronze serpent,” our Lord Jesus. He was lifted up on the cross to take away the eternal death of sin. He was lifted up so that our doubts, mistrust, and contempt for the Lord might be forgiven. Apart from His lifting up we would be, in the words of King David, like those who go down to the pit. But, in fact, Christ was lifted up for us.

In days of old, those who looked to the serpent were healed. They were healed not by magic, but by faith – faith is what led them to look at it in the first place. It is the same with Jesus. When we are brought to repentance through the knowledge of our sins, when we are aware of what punishment deservedly awaits us, He bids us look to Him and live. The bronze serpent cured the people of illness, but those who look to Christ receive eternal healing in the forgiveness of their sins. There’s a hymn we sometimes sing that ties this all together well. It goes: 

The Law reveals the guilt of sin

    And makes us conscience-stricken;

But then the Gospel enters in

    The sinful soul to quicken.

Come to the cross, trust Christ, and live;

The Law no peace can ever give,

    No comfort and no blessing.

“Salvation Unto Us Has Come,” Lutheran Service Book #555

May the Lord grant that we, being brought by the Spirit to know and lament our sins, might by the same Spirit to look to Christ, who bore our sins for us. May we learn ever to look to Him and live. Amen.

He Has Become My Salvation

Text: Isaiah 12

“Oh, sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things! His right hand and His holy arm have worked salvation for Him.” (Psalm 98:1-2, English Standard Version) We sang these words in the Introit today. They come from Psalm 98 and give us our Latin title Cantate, “sing.” Although they come from the Psalm, these words sound a lot like the song Moses sang after the crossing of the Red Sea, a song of deliverance. The Lord God with His right hand and mighty arm provided salvation for His people by bringing them across the Red Sea on dry ground; He delivered them from the Egyptians by turning the waters back on Pharaoh and his chariots. How can the Lord’s people not sing for joy after having received rescue from all their enemies?

Our text from Isaiah is also a song of deliverance, though it is wider in scope and scale than the Psalm or even the song of Moses. The song in our text is what will be sung by the children of God in the new heavens and new earth. We will sing for joy both as individuals who have been redeemed and as the collective, living body of Christ, the Church. Although this song has yet to be sung, we get a preview of it here in the text, and we celebrate today that two of our own will soon get to participate in the foretaste of this feast in the Lord’s Supper. With St. Isaiah, with saints of old and those yet to come, we sing to the Lord today for He has had mercy on us, become our salvation, and brought us into the fellowship of His Son.

I.

The song in Isaiah begins by looking back at that from which the Lord has saved us – His righteous anger and the fury of His wrath. It does this by way of confession, “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though You were angry with me, Your anger turned away.” (v. 1) With these words, let us explore what condition so many people live in, what were ourselves were conceived and born into: sin. Although all creation was created perfect, including our parents Adam and Eve, that perfection was shattered. Our parents used the free will they were given by God – including the ability to not sin – and, instead, grasped after being God. They created idols of themselves in their hearts and reached out to eat the fruit in worship of those idols. By their disobedience, they brought into the world the corruption of sin. In time, that corruption spread to all, all who were and have been born of natural human seed.

The Scriptures tell us how God feels about this – and about all sin – it angers Him. He hates sin, as the Scriptures say. (Mal. 2:16) Sin and its activity is no minor infraction; it is not something that prompts just a slap on the hand. Instead, it stokes God’s righteous fury and He demands its punishment saying, “The soul who sins shall die.” (Ezek. 18:4) At the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai, God said, “The Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.” (Ex. 20:7) This wrath of God is not just against a world of sinners, but us as individuals. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves. As we have been born of human seed, we also were born into sin and have lived in it. We also have built idols in our own image and reached out to the tree of sin. Therefore, we must also confess, as Isaiah, that the Lord was angry with us, “You were angry with me,” the song goes.

II.

“I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though You were angry with me, Your anger turned away, that You might comfort me.” In the ancient translation it says, “You had mercy on me.” It is true that we are sinners, that we have sinned in thought, word, and deed. It is also true that, for our sins, we had brought upon ourselves God’s righteous anger and the punishment due. But, it says, the Lord turned His anger away from us. The song continues that the Lord “is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” (v. 2) Whence this change? The Lord was angry with us because of our many sins, but now His anger is turned away. How? A little while back, we read through the Book of Hebrews in our evening devotions. It was a little hard to follow, but the point of the book is that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices and the payment for our sins. 

St. John phrases it differently, but he might be easier to understand. He says, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins;” the payment for our sins. (1 Jn. 4:10) Although God would have been just in punishing us for our sins, He took a different path; a harder one. Rather than pour out His wrath on us, He put forth His own Son in our place. In obedience to the Father, out of His own love, our Lord Jesus took our sins into Himself. On the cross, He bore all of God’s anger against our sin and died. As the Baptist proclaimed, Jesus is the Lamb of God that takes away sin of the world. That is what that word propiate means. Jesus paid for our sins, He atoned for them. Because He is not just fully man, but fully God at the same time, His death is able to pay for your sins, my sins, and the sins of the whole world. In His death, God became our salvation.

III.

By His death, Jesus removed the wrath that stood between the Father and us. His cross bridges the great chasm between us and brings us back into fellowship with the Father. By Jesus’ death, through the faith created in you by the Holy Spirit, you were brought back into fellowship with the Father. You singular were brought back into fellowship when you were joined to Christ; together we are His body, the Church. Not only were you saved by His death, but we all have been saved and brought into fellowship. That’s the way the song goes in our text. In verse one, the “you” there is singular. In verse 3, the “you” there is plural. The Lord has turned away His anger toward us as individuals. He had mercy and sent His Son to die for you and me. He became our salvation and brought us together in fellowship. The life of a Christian is not lived in isolation, but in fellowship with God and each other. This is something we get to celebrate today.

Today, two of our own get the opportunity to confess their faith in Christ. They get to acknowledge publicly that God’s wrath was turned away from them when Christ died, and that they received the forgiveness of sins and the gift of faith in their Baptisms. Upon this confession, as well-catechized members of the Body of Christ, they soon will join our fellowship in receiving the Lord’s Supper together. In the Supper, we see not only a picture of the Lord’s love for us but a demonstration of the unity that He creates through His Word. And that gives us, as a parish, a very good reason to sing.

It says in Isaiah, “I will give thanks to You, O Lord, for though You were angry with me, Your anger turned away, that You might comfort Me. Behold, God is My salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and He has become my salvation.” (vv. 1-2) Today we give thanks and sing praise for the salvation of God. Though He was angry with us, He has turned His anger aside and brought us together into the fellowship of His Son. Alleluia, Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Alleluia.

With Wings Like Eagles

Text: Isaiah 40:25-31

“Shout for joy to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of His name; give to Him glorious praise…let the sound of His praise be heard, who has kept our soul among the living and has not let our feet slip.” (Psalm 66, English Standard Version) These words come from Psalm 66; they both give us the title for this Sunday and set the tone of our gathering. Today’s Latin title is Jubilate, which means, “Shout for joy.” We shout for joy because the Lord has not let our feet slip into death, but has kept us among the living through the resurrection of Jesus. Because He lives we shall live, also. From this we draw comfort, strength, and joy. This, indeed, is what our Lord promises to us in His Word today.

Through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord declares Himself, “The Lord is the everlasting God…He does not faint or grow weary…He gives power to the faint and to him who has no might He increases strength…They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” (Is. 40) The Lord shows Himself in His Word to be the everlasting God of salvation, who gives strength to those who have none of their own. This, we confess in this time, matches us. Of our own, we have no strength. We have this promise, however: the Lord strengthens those who wait for Him in faith.

I.

Our text today is delivered through the prophet Isaiah. For the last couple weeks we’ve been hearing from Ezekiel; we will hear from him again before too long. Ezekiel prophesied during a very low point in Israel’s history: the Babylonian Captivity. For seventy years, as discipline for their unfaithfulness, the children of Israel were exiled by God to Babylon. Isaiah, from whom we hear today, prophesied over a generation earlier and in the kingdom of Judah. Although Babylon was rising at the time, from Isaiah’s ministry, it would be a hundred years or so before destruction comes. Through the Holy Spirit, Isaiah was given to see ahead to that time and give word to people who were yet to be born – us, included. St. Peter wrote in his first epistle that the prophets saw ahead to the time of Christ and they prophesied not for their own sake, but for ours; even we who come millenia later. A little back in Lent we heard Jesus when He said, “Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day. He saw it and was glad.” (Jn. 8:56)

As a prophet of God, Isaiah was given here to see the experience of God’s people a generation ahead, to hear their words. These were their words, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.” (v. 27) In exile, the people experienced a new spiritual low. Rather than wait for the salvation of God, however, they lashed out against Him. They mocked God, thinking that He either couldn’t see what was going on with them, or He did know and didn’t care. Certainly this was the case with Babylon’s idols, who could neither see nor care. But to ascribe that to God is sinful. And yet, we have thought these thoughts, haven’t we? We continue to live in a pandemic and we are tempted to the same thoughts: maybe God can’t see us and our lives. Or else, maybe He sees our misery and doesn’t care. At the very least, this is what the world tells us, even some Christians, and we feel their burn.

II.

“To whom then will you compare Me, that I should be like him? Says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and see: who created these?” (vv. 25-26) These were the Lord’s questions to His people in exile. Though they were suffering and spiritually downcast, they had made a great miscalculation. When Israel got to Babylon, they saw how the Babylonians worshipped the moon and the stars. They gloated that their gods bested the God of Israel and, to an extent, the people were inclined to believe them. But that’s when the Lord came in. Who do you think created the sun, the moon, and the stars? God did. He knows them by name, He put them in place; they are His creations. We’ve all heard Psalm 121 where we are assured that the sun and moon won’t strike us – that’s a reference to how the pagan gods are just false and powerless.

Our God, on the other hand, is the creator of the heavens and the earth. He knows each star by name and put them all in their places. Unlike the false gods of the heathens, He does not hunger or thirst. He has no need of sacrifices to provide for Him. He does not grow faint or weary and He knows all things. He knows the troubles His people He endure, He sees their suffering. He observes all things that happen, even the gray hairs that fall from our heads. But where is the Lord going with this, why does He remind His people of His everlasting power, might, and knowledge? It is this: the Lord uses His might and knowledge for the benefit of His people, to give strength to those who have none, who wait for Him in faith.

III.

That is the promise that He makes here. St. Isaiah relates, “He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might He increases strength. Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” (vv. 29-31) This is the Lord’s Word to His people in exile. They need not despair, they need not fear that God is somehow unawares of their plight. It is the opposite that is true. Unlike the empty idols of the nations, the Lord alone is the everlasting God who has compassion and gives strength. They need only wait for Him in faith, and He will make them mount up as on eagles’ wings.

This Word of God is for us to hear, as well. We are far removed from the suffering of Israel in exile and from some of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world, yet we feel a longing. We feel a spiritual longing for the goodness of the Lord, to inquire – in person – in His holy temple. The words of King David remain true, “Wait for the Lord; Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Wait for the Lord!” (Ps. 27:14) The Lord our God is not some idol that cannot see or care. He is an everlasting God that cares for us so much that He sacrificed His Son to save us poor sinners. How will He not also rescue us from every present evil? So, today, we sing joyfully to the Lord, who gives us strength. Even now we are mounted on eagle wings in the forgiveness of our sins and we wait for the Lord to deliver us both now and in the time to come. Alleluia, Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed, alleluia!