The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 34

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 33

Three Epiphanies at the River

[Below you'll find, first, the video of yesterday's 11:00 AM worship service from Living Water Lutheran Church, Centerville, Ohio, and the text of the sermon. Have a good week!]



Luke 3:15-22

From the moment a child is born, speculation begins. Who does she look like? What will he become? In a way, we’re all born as mysteries and our whole lives unscramble and reveal who we are.

The Epiphany season of the Church Year, which began three days ago, is a time in which our Gospel lessons show us the unfolding of an even greater mystery than our personal identities and destinies. They focus on events in which Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem, is revealed as our Savior, God’s anointed King, God the Son.

Today’s Gospel lesson recounts one of those events, Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan River. At the beginning of our lesson, we’re told that some people thought that John might be the Messiah. But John says it’s not him, that they need to look for someone else. “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:16-17)

Shortly after that, people got their first glimpse of the Messiah. Luke says, “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’”

As we consider Jesus at the Jordan with John the Baptist, how is our picture of Jesus clarified? I can see Jesus being revealed to us in at least three ways.

First, we see Jesus revealed as the Messiah, the Christ. God was good for His ancient promises. God did send an Anointed One, as God had promised He would through the Old Testament prophets. And this Messiah, just as God had promised, would overcome our sin by suffering and dying for us and then rising to allow us to live forever with God.

That means, quite simply, that there is, as you’ve heard me say before, nothing we can do and nothing we must do to make ourselves right to be part of God’s kingdom. Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ has already done it all! 

So, when we hear Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:48, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” we need not shudder in fear. It’s true that we are sinners who fall short of God’s intentions for us and it’s true that perfect righteousness is required for anyone to enter into God’s eternal kingdom. But it is equally true that Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, covers all who believe in Him with His perfection and righteousness. 

God’s Law, Scripture teaches us, only makes us aware that we are sinners worthy of eternal condemnation. (Romans 3:20) That's all the Law can do. So, if you set out to make yourself righteous by being a good person or doing good things, in the end, you’ll still be what you were at the moment of your conception, a sinner dead in your sinful nature. “But now apart from the law,” the Bible tells us, “ the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” (Romans 3:21-22)

The first epiphany we see at Jesus’ baptism then is that, despite our sin, God has made good on His promise to rescue us. He has given His very own Son to make us right, reconciled with Him. Through the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus, Who took His sin into His own body and bore our condemnation for it, gives us His righteousness.

In Jesus’ baptism, we also see that He is the Messiah Who will baptize believers with the Holy Spirit and fire. John had said that while he was offering the people of his day a preparatory baptism of repentance, the Messiah would give a greater baptism. 

John’s baptism was something that people did, deciding to be baptized as a sign of their own repentance while waiting for the Messiah to be revealed. 

But Jesus’ baptism is an action of God by which, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God claims us as His own, crucifies our old selves, and raises our new selves with Jesus. 

Heaven opens to the baptized and the Holy Spirit is unleashed in them to daily call them to faith in Jesus. 

Baptism is one more expression of God’s Word in which He reminds us that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and that no one is reconciled to the Father without faith in Jesus. (John 14:6; Acts 4:12) 

When God the Father said of Jesus, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” He was affirming that Jesus was the Messiah who would bring this greater baptism, Holy Baptism, one of the Sacraments of Christ’s Church. The Spirit is the tenacious Fire of God Who calls us to repentance and faith in Jesus and enlightens and purifies us as we trust in Him!

A third thing revealed in Jesus at His baptism is that in Him, heaven is opened to us. Heaven opened, Luke tells us, as Jesus was praying. 

This is why Jesus tells us to pray in His name. This means acknowledging that we only dare approach God the Father because of what Jesus has done for us through His crucifixion and resurrection. “This is the confidence we have in approaching God,” we’re told in 1 John 5:14, “that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” And if any of our praying reflects, as it inevitably will, our selfishness and sinful natures, praying in Jesus’ name will mean that God will forge our characters and reframe our prayers in light of His good will. This is why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Thy will be done.” 

By the sacrifice of His body and blood at Calvary, Jesus tears open heaven for us: we receive forgiveness and eternal life, the certainty of His eternal promises, and the privilege of being in communion with the God Who made and loves us.

The opening of heaven to believers in Jesus goes by way of the cross, of course, and it’s a two-way street. Not only do those baptized in Christ have access to heaven, heaven also has access to us. 

God will use that opening to reshape us in the image of Christ, crucifying our old sinful selves so that 

our new selves can rise with Jesus. But, no matter how hard any of this is–it’s tough to yield control of our lives over to God when we think we know what’s best, we know that God will be with us always. 

Listen, folks: Jesus tenaciously loved the unbelieving Thomas, the knuckleheaded Peter, the murderous Paul; Jesus won’t give up on anyone to whom He has opened up heaven! Not you. Not me. 

Our call is to simply turn to Him, day in and day out. With the apostle Paul, we know that “nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” In Jesus, the promise of God to ancient Israel is true for all people: “Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:22)

“Prayer is not about getting what we want,” says Brian Blount, a professor of New Testament at Princeton University, “or even what we oftentimes are sure is right for us and those around us; prayer is about unleashing the frightening, unstable, uncontrollable power of God.” That actually describes the entire life of the Christian to whom Jesus opens heaven! Heaven is opened to us so that the uncontrollable power of God that not even sin or death can stay is unleashed in our lives!

In the Epiphany season, we’re reminded again of how Jesus is, in the words of the Christmas hymn, “our Emmanuel,” the Child, the Savior, the King Who is “God with us.” And at this very moment, He is God with you. Amen

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 32

The Old Testament Book of Genesis, Part 31

Check out the coolness...captions!

How Will the Next Generation Believe?

Here is the video of yesterday's live-streamed blended worship service with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Beneath it, you'll find the text of the message. Living Water resumes its regular worship schedule next Sunday, January 9, with the traditional service at 8:45 AM and the modern service at 11:00 AM. Sunday School for people of all ages happens between the services at 10:00 AM.



Luke 2:40-52

When I was growing up, my family and I attended a huge annual summer picnic put on by a lodge to which my grandfather belonged. There were games and give-aways, tons of food, golf for the interested, a large playground for kids, and, at the end of the evening, a dance with music and styles for all ages. 

One year when I was ten, I stayed in the playground area long after my cousins and sister had joined the crowd at the dance. About an hour after the dance started, my parents, having assumed I’d been with my cousins, became aware that I wasn’t in the pavilion. My father and grandfather searched the place and couldn’t find me. They had the bandmaster page me. But I didn’t hear the page and kept playing outside with a number of other kids.

I’d just run with three or four other kids to shove and land on one of those push-merry-go-rounds, laughing, when an arm pulled me off. It was my dad and he was angry. “Your grandfather and I have been looking everywhere for you! Your mother is beside herself!” These words were accompanied by a few swats on the backside.

The anger my dad felt at that moment was the kind of anger that Luke in today’s Gospel lesson, Luke 2:40-52, says Joseph and Mary felt when they finally found the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem after searching for Him for three days. 

Our translation of Luke 2:47 says of their reaction: “When his parents saw him, they were astonished…” But the root word of the verb Luke uses here is ἐκπλήσσω (ekpléssó). It’s a word used of someone reacting with anger to a situation that brings them shock, panic, or fear. Mary and Joseph had endured a fearful experience. For three days, they had no idea where the twelve-year-old Jesus was. That would fill any parent with panic and anxiety! 

But on top of that, they must have felt dread over losing the One they knew to be not just a Judean child, but the Messiah, God the King. No wonder then that Luke tells us that Mary struck out at Jesus with anger when she and Joseph finally found Jesus in the temple, respectfully asking questions of the Bible scholars and respectfully answering their questions of Him. “Son,” Mary asks, “why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” (Luke 2:48)

Now, I don’t want to turn this into a Greek lesson (I’m not a Greek scholar anyway), but our translation (and it's not the only one that does this) sort of botches Jesus’ response. Our translation renders Jesus’ response in Luke 2:49 as: “‘​Why were you searching for me?...Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” In fact, Luke doesn’t tell us that Jesus used the word “house,” which could refer to the temple. Instead, Jesus more literally says, “Why is it that you were seeking Me? Didn’t you know that it’s necessary for me to be in the things of My Father?”

Jesus’ entire time on this earth was about Him being "in the things" of God the Father, Who sent Jesus to us. It was the necessity of His Incarnation among us. 

In Luke 12:50, for example, the adult Jesus compares His crucifixion to baptism and says, “I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!” 

And, once more, considering His cross, the adult Jesus says, “I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me.” (John 8:28) 

Mary and Joseph, in their panic and anger, forgot what Simeon told them when Jesus was dedicated at this same temple: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (Luke 2:34-35) 

Jesus, God the Son, had come into the world to take our punishment for sin on a cross and to rise to give eternity to all who repent and believe in Him. This was the business of the Father for Jesus! And it’s clear that Jesus loved being about the business of His Father.

The Lutheran pastor and theologian of the last century, Bo Giertz, author of the novel, The Hammer of God, said in one sermon that this text raises a question. It's basically this: How will parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and adults with influence help the children in their lives love the things of God?

Giertz says there are two answers to that question.

First, Giertz says, children must see that we adults love the things of God. 

None of us completely understands the mystery of Jesus being both fully human, subject to the same need for physical and intellectual development that exists in any child, and fully God, as Jesus claims when He says, “I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30) But it is clear that God the Father placed God the Son Jesus in the home of parents who loved God and the Word of God. In Jesus’ reply to Mary’s panicked words, we can see that it’s beginning to dawn on the boy Jesus that He is God’s Son: He speaks, as few ever had, of His Father’s business rather than of the business of God. 

But Jesus also acknowledges the firm faith footing given Him by Joseph and Mary. How, He asks, could they be surprised by how much He loves God when they had exemplified faith in and love for God every day in their home?

People wonder how the next generations will come to love the God revealed in Jesus Christ or have the freedom from sin and death that belongs to those who repent and believe in Him? Number one, they must see that we who claim to follow Jesus as Lord love and worship Him in response to His great love for us.

But, Giertz says, there’s a second way adults can help the children in their lives to love God and the things of God. It’s to love those children. 

Loving our children doesn’t mean being indulgent. It does mean providing for their physical and emotional needs, to be understanding, to discipline out of love and not punish out of anger, to not expect them to be mirror images of ourselves, and to major in the majors. 

But it also means to speak of God and the things of God, in Moses’ words, “when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy 6:7) 

It means as parents promise when their children are baptized, to “faithfully bring them to the services of God’s house…teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments…place the Holy Scriptures in their hands…and provide for their instruction in the Christian faith…” (Lutheran Book of Worship)

When we have faith in the Gospel of new and everlasting life for all who repent and believe in Jesus that comes to us through Word and Sacrament, we need never be, as Joseph and Mary were in our Gospel lesson, dissolved by anger and fear that we have lost Jesus or His saving Gospel. 

Jesus will always find us in Word and Sacrament, always be with us as He goes about His Father’s business. 

Nor, as we return to Jesus in the gracious gifts of Scripture, Holy Communion, and the fellowship of His Church, do we need fear that God has lost us. 

And, through all the challenges and tragedies, triumphs, and celebrations of this life, the children in our lives can know these things are true, too. 

When they see that we love the God we know in Jesus no matter what and when they know that we love them no matter what, God’s love can help those children hear the Word about Jesus, believe in Jesus, and know they are eternally saved by the grace–the forgiving love of God that always seeks us–in which all believers in Jesus stand. 

Amen

2 Things from My Quiet Time with God

Today, for my quiet time with God, I read chapters 1-5 of the Old Testament book of Genesis. Two things struck me today.

First, Genesis 3:16, in which God tells the serpent, an incarnation of Satan, who tempted Adam and Eve into sin, "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” Here, already, God is promising an "offspring" to the human race, will become humanity's Savior, crushing the power of sin, death, and the devil underfoot. God is gracious and as soon as humanity fell into sin, had a plan to save us from the consequences of our sin.

Second, Genesis 4:15, where God marks Cain in some way to prevent Cain from being murdered. This is another example of God's grace. Cain had murdered his brother. God confronted him and said there would be consequences for his sin: he would be a restless wanderer his whole life. But God said He would not leave Cain vulnerable to being himself killed by others. "...[God said] anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.' Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him." (Genesis 4:15) Cain didn't deserve such grace. None of us deserves God's grace, His charitable love and forgiveness. But He today offers to all as a free gift through Jesus Christ. We can trust in Christ!

The Promise is for You!

[Here you'll find, first, the video of the 7:00 PM traditional candlelight worship service for Christmas Eve from the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below it is posted the message shared that night. Have a blessed Christmas!]

Luke 2:1-20

Three decades after the first Christmas, the day when Jesus was born, and weeks after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, on the first Christian Pentecost, Peter, one of Jesus’ followers, told a crowd: “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” (Acts 2:39) 

Peter was urging that the men and women, boys and girls, and babies who had just heard the Word about Jesus should repent–that is, turn from sin–and be baptized, trusting in Jesus to be righteous enough and sinless enough to cover their sins and make them fit to stand before God and live under His favor, in this world and eternally.

Every year, in many countries across the world, families and friends gather to celebrate Christmas, the feast of Jesus’ birth. They do so in churches and nursing homes, office parties and private homes, in Christmas movies and Christmas specials. 

But only a fraction of these events, even the ones occurring in churches, have anything to do with Christmas, the day when Almighty God the Son, the second person of the Trinity–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, laid aside the glory that has been His for all eternity to also be a human being, one of us, in the Person we know as Jesus.

When people gather for Christmas dinners tomorrow, the subject they will most avoid–more than they'll avoid talking about politics or COVID-19, the causes of inflation or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez–is Jesus, the Christ, or the meaning of Christmas for both today and eternity.

But once again tonight, God’s Christmas Word comes to us in the first Christmas sermon ever preached, this one by an angel. And He tells us that the promise of Christmas is not just about some sweet-by-and-by-time-in-the-sky or about the soppy sentimentality of Hallmark movies. This “promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off.” 

Right now. 

Tonight. 

In fact, this is a message it’s urgent for us to hear and absorb at this very moment.

So, let’s listen to the sermon of the angel again tonight. 

The word angel, you know, comes to us from the Greek in which the authors of the New Testament composed their writings. The Greek word is aggelos and it means messenger. 

Angels, servants of God and humanity, are spiritual beings that God occasionally sends into the world in different guises, in order to bring messages to us. On the night of Jesus’ birth, God sent an angel to shepherds caring for their sheep in fields near Bethlehem.

The first thing the angel said in his sermon to the shepherds was this: “Do not be afraid.” (Luke 2:10) There’s a lot of swagger in our world today. People like to talk about the things they’re not afraid of. Christians do this too, confusing fatalism for faith. 

But do you know what we most fear? It isn’t illness or death or poverty. We are most afraid of God and God’s perfection! 

That’s why we don’t like to talk about God at Christmas or any other time.

When we actually come into the presence of God, we see the distance between God in His righteousness and us in our sin and selfish willfulness. We see that, no matter how good we may try to be or seem to be, we’re not worthy to be with God. We remember all the commands of God we break each day: holding other things, like our families, higher than we hold God; murdering others with our anger, intolerance, indifference, and grudges; committing adultery with our minds and words, if not our bodies; and on and on the sorry list goes.

This is why the angel’s words are important for you and me tonight. “Do not be afraid!” 

“I know your sins,” God is telling us through this angel. “But I love you anyway. I want you anyway.” 

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, God’s Word tells us. (Proverbs 9:10) But when God comes to us, as He does at Christmas, we needn’t and shouldn't run and hide!

The angel says next: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10) The Good News of Christmas is that the baby Jesus, born this night in a cave and laid in a phantne, a stone feeding trough, will also one day be laid in a stone tomb, having paid the price for our sin on a cross. 

The Bible tells us that you and I are sinners from the moments of our conceptions (Psalm 51:5), deserving damnation and death. 

But when the sinless Savior Jesus dies on a cross for us, the price for our sin is eternally paid. 

As we trust in Him, He allows us to live free of the fear of God’s condemnation! 

This is what the angel means when he says that Jesus coming at Christmas “will cause great joy.” 

Joy is life lived in the awareness of God’s grace, God’s undeserved favor and forgiveness. When you know that because of Jesus, you are one with God, you have joy no matter the hard experiences of life! 

A pastor asked for prayers for his family and himself this past week. His wife of 51 years had just died. “We grieve,” he said, “but not as those without hope!” 

We have joy through faith in Jesus, knowing that we still live in His grace, whatever our situation!

Then the angel tells the shepherds and us: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11) Messiah, the word in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, or Christos, Christ, in the Greek of the New Testament, are words that mean God’s Anointed King. 

Jesus isn’t a king all about winning elections, wars, approval, or news cycles. The “Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” Jesus will later say of Himself. (Matthew 20:28) This King rules through the love of God. It’s the same love that caused God to create humanity in His own image; that caused God to not give up on you or anybody else. 

This King has been born to you and for you. 

This King is your Savior, saving you from sin, death, and the devil. He saves all who trust in Him to live with Him today and tomorrow when you have your Christmas feast, as you visit loved ones and friends in nursing homes and hospitals, and every day of your life as you make decisions, fail, succeed, laugh, and cry. Jesus comes to be your Savior tonight and always, friends!

Finally, the angel says, “This will be a sign to you…” (Luke 2:12) God recognizes that the shepherds, accustomed to the false promises and harsh judgments of the world around them, may need more than the angel’s sermon to believe the Christmas message. 

So, through the angel, God gives a sign to confirm it. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths [like the cloth in which the body of this baby, grown to be a man, will be wrapped after becoming the sacrificial Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world] and lying in a manger [like the stone tomb in which He will one day lie and from which He will rise for us].” (Luke 2:12)

What sign will God give you so that you can believe in this Christ child? 

Today, He gives you three major signs by which you can know and believe in Christ: Holy Baptism, by which we go through death and resurrection with Jesus, become God’s own, and the Holy Spirit calls us to faith in Jesus; Holy Communion, in which Jesus comes to us, body and blood, and assures us of the forgiveness of our sin; and God’s Word, in which God speaks to us as surely as the angel spoke to the shepherds on the first Christmas!

“The promise [of Christmas and of God in human flesh appearing] is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” 

This Christmas, don’t avoid Jesus Christ amid the celebrating. 

Receive Him. 

Give your sins to Him. 

Believe in Him. 

Tell others about Him.

Rejoice in Him, knowing that in Christ, you are loved deeply and eternally by God. 

Merry Christmas, friends!

Amen