Mark 1:14-20
Loads of good stuff today. This is one of the most important parts of the Bible. After all, it gives Jesus’ first public sermon. A very short one. You wish I would preach that way! Yeah, right! Oh well, it is what it is. Let’s get started.
John the Baptist must decrease. Jesus must increase. John gets out of the way. For Jesus! Jesus is the Savior. Not John. So, after John is arrested, incarcerated and made shorter by a head all attention now is on Jesus. John, who prepared the way for Jesus now stands down for Jesus who is the Way! John will soon be made shorter by a head. John must decrease. Jesus must increase. After all, John’s martyrdom doesn’t save anyone but Jesus’ death saves everyone!
According to the text Jesus begins His Salvation-Of-The-World- Ministry in a location that throws us for a loop. Shouldn’t Jesus be in the capital city of Jerusalem? In Judea? Deep in the midst of His own people? No. Instead, He kicks off His Going-To-Do-A-Good-Friday-Salvation-Job way up north. He makes a run for the border that divides Hebrews from Gentiles: Galilee! The point? Well, it’s so Captain Obvious for anyone who knows the Bible or has the biblical worldview. Jesus is the Savior of not just Jews but the Gentiles as well. He’s come to die for all. Because if He dies for all, He dies FOR YOU too!
That’s some serious salvific good news! The best news any miserable sinner could hear. He’s is Savior FOR ALL SINNERS! AND FOR YOU TOO! So, Jesus let’s folks know this loudly, clearly and categorically. Check out what He preaches: “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Who would have ever imagined? His sermon means that all the OT promises are fulfilled. God has rolled up His sleeves and He reigns. He rules. He has a kingdom.
When? Right now!
Where? On the earth.
Why? TO BE AND ACT AS GOD FOR SINNERS AND FOR THEIR SALVATION.
In whom? In the body and person of Jesus His Beloved Son! Jesus is THE King! Servant Salvation King. Come to give His life as a ransom for many. Such a salvation for sinners must be preached. Otherwise you’d never be able to believe it. “Faith comes by hearing,” (Rom 10:17).
When the King and His Kingdom of God reign arrives He wants a response. For what did King Savior Jesus preach? Repentance and faith. “Repent and believe in the gospel.”
Repent. Confess the truth that you’re a sinner. That it’s time to turn from your sin. Die to it. Turn from unbelief and idolatry to the highest worship of Jesus: faith. Faith that trusts the good news, the gospel, that Jesus is the Savior King of sinners. That He is King Savior FOR YOU and for your salvation. Now that Savior King Jesus has arrived, your sin, all of it, no longer belongs to you. Your sin belongs to Him – atoned totally by His Good Friday Blood. So, turn from sin to Jesus’ righteousness. Turn from hellacious death to the gift of heavenly, eternal life!
However, and this is huge – you don’t repent and faith yourself. Seriously! Sinners do not do the repenting and faithing of themselves. King Savior Jesus does! He does the repenting and faithing of sinners like you and me. When He calls for repentance and faith, His calling, His preaching, and His speaking does and gives what it says and calls for.
Let’s not forget how powerful His words are. They are the words of God Himself. In the beginning He said, “Let there be light.” At the tomb of His good friend He said, “Lazarus, come out!” At this altar He says: “This bread is my body and this wine is my blood.” When He wants disciples He simply declares, “Follow me.”
In the beginning His speaking brought forth the light. His speaking raised Lazarus’ rotting corpse from the grave. His speaking gives us His body and blood with the bread and wine. His speaking makes disciples out of weathered and rough fishermen named Simon, Andrew, James and John. So too, when He wants stubborn turned-in-on-themselves-sinners to be repented and faithed, He does it through His preaching, “Repent and believe in the gospel.” Jesus says “repent” and “believe” and He does the repenting and faithing when and where it pleases Him through His Word proclaimed and preached. It pleased Him to use Jonah’s preaching of repentance to repent and faith the entire city of Nineveh!
The “good news” of the “Gospel” is that Jesus alone does the saving of sinners and that His Good Friday forgiveness is all yours. That’s why He preached then in Galilee and it’s why He wants the gospel preached until the end of time. This is precisely why Jesus has a church in the world, why this congregation here at Trinity, Murdock exists, and why Jesus puts men into the office of the Holy Ministry or why Jesus sent a prophet like Jonah to Nineveh in the OT. Jesus wants His salvational Kingdom of God reign proclaimed and applied so that sinners would be repented from their sin and idolatry and then faithed in Him alone as Lord and Savior.
This gets clinched all the more in what follows. Check it out. “Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee,” (as if He’s just mindlessly rambling – not hardly) Jesus purposely observes and intentionally bellies right up to two sets of brother fishermen. Simon, Andrew, James and John. Jesus dares to interrupt their occupation, source of lucrative income and their identity. “Follow me,” He commands, “and I will make you fishers of men.”
His Word, His preaching, does and gives what it says. “And immediately,” the text says, “they left their nets and followed Him.” Incredible! The four fishermen have been fished. Netted. Caught. Reeled in by the Great Fish Jesus Himself! Yes, it pleased the Great-Fisherman-King-Savior-Jesus to net these fishermen for His service. The King is doing His kingdom of God stuff. He chooses them. They DO NOT CHOOSE Him. He seeks them. They DO NOT SEARCH for Him. He finds them. They DO NOT DISCOVER Him!
“Follow me.” It’s just like when He says: “Let there be light,” “Lazarus come forth,” “This is my body,” “This is my blood,” as well as when He says, “repent” and “believe.”
“Follow me,” “repent,” and “believe” are His divine enlivening, powerful words. His words do and give what they say. Mark emphasizes this point with one his favorite words in his gospel: the adverb “immediately.” Everything is “immediately” in Mark’s gospel!
And so, the men who throw nets for a living “immediately” abandon the nets, vocation and families! The “follow me” words of Jesus have their way with these hardened fishermen. They drop everything and “immediately” they are followers/disciples of Kingdom of God King Savior Jesus! Nothing and no one matters more than Jesus! Their lives are never the same. And that’s not an exaggeration. They had been netted by Big Fisherman Jesus. But why? Well, He would have good use of them.
“I will make you fishers of men.” The Bible is so delicious! Former fisherman now followers of Jesus will be spend the rest of their lives fishing … FOR MEN! They were experts when it came to catching Sea of Galilee fish. They knew which were the best nets, the best boats, the best time of the day, the season and the prime water temperatures. But men? How do you catch men? Literally with nets? Booby traps? Will these “fishers of men” need to hire NY City 5th Avenue advertising firms, Silicon Valley product marketing wonks, or angling greats like Roland Martin, Bill Dance or Jeremy Wade to fish for men?
Well …. No. Just leave the “fishers of men” thing to Jesus. Let’s not forget that in Luke 24 and Matthew 28 give them the blueprint to follow. In Luke 24 they are to preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” I.E. call sinners to repentance and when they are repented and ask for forgiveness forgive them. Categorically! Apply His Good Friday forgiveness to the repentant. Tell them: “Jesus died for you. All your sin is forgiven for His sake. Believe it. Take it to the bank!”
In Matthew 28, the fishers of men pattern is this: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And lo I am with you always to the very end of the age.” Baptizing and teaching how they will fish, net and catch men for the salvational kingdom of God! As the netting of holy baptism is cast all throughout the world, Jesus Himself, who’s the FISHERMAN behind the scenes, will be hauling in the net and having a huge catch of disciples after disciples that stains the net to the breaking point!
You’re baptized! You’ve been taught all your life. You’ve been discipled! To use the language of Mark 1, Jesus has fished you and has netted you. Brought you into His boat, the holy Christian Church!
Let me joyously put it to you this way to emphasize the point all the more. You, who are baptized, have been caught in the net of Jesus’ Good Friday death. You, the baptized, have been captured by Jesus’ death that alone atones for the sin of the world and for your sin. You, the baptized, have been netted and yet kept alive in Christ’s church in which you swim in the oxygenated Word of forgiveness that you breathe, the Body of Jesus you eat and the Blood of Jesus that you drink.
Happy living in and from your baptism by daily being repented and faithed by the Lord Jesus Himself through His Word. What joy!
In the name of Jesus.
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
In Psalm 119 King David, like all Christians, constantly begs the Lord to teach him, an adulterous sinner redeemed by Jesus the Messiah, to guide him, and lead him so that he would learn to live a God-pleasing life to honor God and to be a servant to edify and help his family, church and his kingdom.
Today in 1 Corinthians 6 there is something very important to learn. From the text, as the Lord speaks to us, He will repent, faith, and lead us in holy living according to His Word. So that like King David, we too, sinners redeemed by Jesus the Messiah, are used as His servants to edify and help our families, church and country.
The particular teaching today has to do with your body, physical sexual intimacy, how you are to fear, love and trust in God above all things in, with and under your body and how God wants you to use the members of your body properly or God-pleasingly in sexual activity!
God cares very deeply about your body. Not how it looks in the mirror but what you do with your body and its members. God wants you to use your body properly. He created, redeemed and holied it so that you use your body in a God-pleasing ways as a man or as a woman!
I’ll say it again because it bears repeating. God is profoundly concerned about your body. After all, He made it by using your parents’ bodies. Psalm 139:13-14 praises God for the creation of the body in this way: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Job did the same: “You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews,” (Job 10:11).
God gave you the body you have. YOUR BODY IS A DIVINE GIFT! So, we Lutherans confess: “I believe that God has made me . . . that He has given me my body….” How did God do that? By snapping His fingers? Or waving His hand? No, He uses creatures to create creatures. He employed your parents’ bodies to give you bodily life.
God loves your body in the very physical, creaturely, parental way that He made it and gave it to you. He loves your body in the way that His Son redeemed your body that is malignantly full of sin because of Adam the first sinner. Jesus redeemed your body by taking on your flesh and bones – “the Word became flesh” — in order to carry in His-Good-Friday-on-the-cross-Body all your sin, including all sexual sin and atone for its hellacious consequences by His Blood that stained and soaked the cross and the ground below it a deep, dark red.
So, despite what you’ve been told all your life, your body is “not your own.” It doesn’t belong to you. It’s a divine gift. And it has been redeemed, or “bought with a price!” in, with and under the Good Friday crucified, dead, and risen body Jesus.
Oh but there is more! God, in holy baptism, physically washed and gave your body new birth by the Holy Spirit. In your baptism He sanctified/consecrated your body in the Name of Jesus. Consequently, your body is literally a temple and an abode of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives in you! Consequently, the Lord would use your created, redeemed and sanctified body to glorify Him in this life. In addition, your body is marked for the bodily resurrection on the Last Day as well as everlasting life IN THE BODY with resurrected-in-the-Body-on-the-Third-Day-Jesus and all the baptized believing redeemed.
So, now I go back to how the sermon started. God would have good use of your body. Especially when it comes to sexual intimacy. It’s why He created, redeemed and holy-ied it!
A sexual relationship between a man and a woman is to be enjoyed within the estate of holy marriage. This is God’s design from the beginning. It was not good for Adam to be alone. So God gifted him a wife: Eve. In, with and under the estate of holy marriage the two of them are one flesh. The sexual intimacy that Adam (the husband) and Eve (the wife) enjoyed in holy marriage is the expression of the one flesh-ness and love for each other that they shared together. And this one flesh union is a closed communion. No one else can enter it or crash it. Nothing or no one is supposed to adulterate holy marriage.
So God is not pleased if you use your body in ways that violate His order and design established by Him in the beginning. “Flee from sexual immorality.” In Corinth Christians would visit temple prostitutes and have sexual intercourse with them. Corinthian Christians believed they had the freedom to do such a thing. “No big deal!” a Corinthian Christian would argue. “All things are lawful for me. I have a right to do whatever I want or desire. Sigmund Freud, Masters and Johnson, Lil Nas X, and Sexyy Red have modeled and taught us well. Sex is like hunger. When I’m hungry I pull up to the drive thru at Chick-fil-A, Wendy’s or Burger King. I have it my way! So too, when I have the urge to satisfy my sexual appetite, I just saunter on down to pay a visit with the temple prostitutes. No harm no foul! What happens between two people is no one else’s business! I’m free to satisfy my sexual desires just like I satisfy my hunger. Right?”
Well. No! Not hardly! “Flee from sexual immorality.” It doesn’t get any more categorical than that. This is St. Paul’s high pastoral care to the Corinthians and to all of us today at Trinity, Murdock.
However, our 21st century communities, families and congregations are just like ancient Corinth. We expect and demand a Christianity and a Christ that satisfies our wants and desires. We want a Christianity and a Christ on our terms especially when it comes the body and sexuality.
Do you indulge in sexual immorality, with your body, your eyes or your thoughts? Do you believe that you’re free to do whatever with your body and the members of your body? With anyone you want? Any time you want? With as many people as you want? Free to watch anything you desire with your eyes? Free to fantasize about anything you feel like with your mind? Do you believe that Jesus doesn’t see this or know it? It’s time for all of us to repent and to use Jesus for the forgiveness of all sin, including our sexual sin. PDQ!
After all, sexual immorality in any way, shape or form never sets you free! Instead, sexual immorality enslaves you. It puts you in a penitentiary or prison cell. Jesus says that whoever sins is a slave to sin (Jn 8:34). Any sin, including sexual sin masters and enslaves you unless Jesus sets you free with His Good Friday forgiveness!
Consequently, when you commit sexual immorality in thoughts, words or deeds, you desecrate and profane the divine gift of both your body and your sexuality. “Every other sin that a person commits is outside the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body.” Did you catch that? “Sins against his own body.”
And, of course, God is not pleased. And neither should you be pleased. Sexual immorality is not an indifferent or neutral act like it’s portrayed in the Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, The Bachelorette, The Bachelor, The Golden Bachelor and other TV sitcoms. It is a particularly heinous act. Sexual immorality adulterates. It ruins. It destroys. It never edifies and builds up.
And so there is the apostolic admonition to all of us today: “Flee, sprint, run away as fast as you can from immorality! Do not indulge in it!”
Why? Because your body has been bought with a price. Jesus shed His Blood on the cross for the salvation of your body and the cleansing of your body and soul from all sexual sin. Hanging Good Friday-ly from the cross with all sin being carried in His Body, Jesus was counted as the unfaithful adulterer, so that you the unfaithful adulterer are counted as a chaste virgin.
Christ’s Good Friday forgiveness has marked your body in Holy Baptism to be in communion with Him. The text says that, “Your bodies are members of Christ.” Jesus is one with you and you are one with Him. Bone of His bones and flesh of His flesh. In addition, Christ’s Spirit dwells in your body. It is His temple. His residence. His abode. The place of unbreakable sanctity – no longer to do with as you please or floats your boat.
Now you are given to use your body as the text says, “to glorify God.” Wow! Every time you are tempted to commit sexual immorality, remember that Jesus has redeemed your body so that you give God glory in your body! And how do you do that? I’m glad you asked.
It’s when you use your body and your sexuality according to His Word and His design. There’s a Commandment that speaks to this entire issue. It’s the Sixth Commandment which flows from the First. “You shall not commit adultery.” What does that mean? It means this: “We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honor each other.”
It means this: before marriage do not be sexually active. Young ladies, when the young man that you’re dating wants to take you to bed or do other illicit sexual activities, you must exercise your power as a woman and declare: “Not until you put the wedding ring on my finger at our wedding!” And if he doesn’t like that, dump him! Give him the heave ho! Seriously. Dating, is, after all, like fishing: catch and release – until God gives you the Christian man who wants to be faithful to God and to you! I remind you that Adam and Eve were naked with each other and they were not ashamed (Gen 2:25). Why weren’t they ashamed? Because they were married!
So, here’s the order everyone: if you’re a man, marry a woman; if you’re a woman marry a man; then have a honeymoon, share a home, bedroom and marriage bed together; then have a family. That’s the order that God blesses. And while you’re married be faithful to one another. For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health to love and cherish till death us do part.
This is God pleasing. He will bless that! I guarantee it. That’s a life that gives glory to God because it flows from faith in Christ who redeemed you and then it serves the spouse, the family, the community, and the country with love.
I told you that the Lord would repent you, faith you and lead you. What joy! And what joy that the Lord would have such good use of your bodies in order to glorify Him and self-sacrificially and lovingly serve your spouse, family, congregation, community and country. You’ll learn even more about that by coming to the Lord’s Supper. Eating His Body with your mouth. Drinking His Blood with your mouth. “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins,” ALL SIN. Jesus died for it all. Answered for it all.
In the Name of Jesus.
Mark 1:4-11
I find it quite fascinating and fantastically delicious how the Evangelist begins his gospel. Don’t you? Check it out. Mark begins with the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River. Mark writes nine verses in chapter one, and then heck, Jesus is up to his neck in Jordan River water!
If you’ve ever read Matthew and Luke, you know that prior to His Baptism, Jesus is recognized and worshipped only by a few people. Remember? Mary, Joseph and the Bethlehem shepherds at His birth. Magi from the east worshipped Him and offered Him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Simeon and Anna in the temple when He was 40 days old.
When Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt to escape Herod’s murderous rampage, do you think the Egyptians had a clue of who the Baby Jesus was? I doubt it! When they returned to Israel, the Nazareth neighbors as well as the theology experts in the temple who debated with Him were most likely just as clueless. To them He was the carpenter’s son who swept saw dust, sawzalled, hammered, nailed, glued, sanded and varnished in Joseph’s cabinetry shop. Jesus grew up like every Jewish boy of his day. Attended synagogue and the customary religious festivals with his family in Jerusalem.
And then one day, one momentous day, a day of epiphany, 30 year-old Jesus is publicly revealed as the Savior of all sinners as He receives a baptism intended for sinners. Yes, John the Baptist’s baptism was for sinners who confessed their sins and received a baptism of repentance. At first blush, Jesus doesn’t belong there. Totally out of place. So inappropriate. Looks so wrong. After all, Jesus is the Holy One. He is not a sinner. Never has been. Never will be. Absolutely no sins to confess. Nothing to repent of.
And, yet, there He is, Most-Holy-Son-of-God-in-the-Flesh-Jesus, baptized in, with and under a sinner’s baptism, a baptism for repentance into the forgiveness of sin. Why? Why does Jesus do this?
He does it FOR YOU AND FOR YOUR SALVATION! At His Baptism, Jesus, the spotless Lamb of God stands shoulder to shoulder with sinners – adulterous prostitutes, crooked tax collectors and the entire kit and caboodle of sinful humanity from its beginning in Genesis 3 until its end on the Last Day. Here in His Baptism, Jesus goes full blown public. He is epiphanied. He is revealed as the Isaiah-53-Suffering-Salvational-Servant. At the age of 30 He kicks into full gear His Ministerial Office to take and answer for the sin of the world from its beginning to its end. At His Baptism, a baptism meant for sinners, Jesus begins to take the sin of the world in His Body in order to carry it to the cross and atone for it through His Son-of-God-Good Friday sacrificial bloody death.
What an epiphany! The Christmas package known as the Babe of Bethlehem is unwrapped for all to see. Here, in the water of Baptism, Jesus is revealed to be who He always was from eternity: God the Father’s beloved Son. And that He, as God’s Son, is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world as “the Lord lays on Him the iniquity of us all,” (Is 53:6), as He is “numbered with the transgressors” (Is 53:12) and as He is even counted as Maximum Sinner (Luther). Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it this way: “God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin.” At His Jordan River Baptism, Jesus preaches for all to hear: “Father, put the sin of the world on me! Give me all its rot, filth and gunk. Punish me! Give me all the hellacious consequences of sin. I will offer my holy and blameless Body and shed my Blood as the only sacrifice to purify and cleanse all sin and answer for its hellish consequences once and for all!”
Yes, what a day the Baptism of Our Lord is! Today Christmas joy becomes epiphany baptismal joy. In addition to celebrating the birth of Baby Jesus, now we rejoice in His baptism. And rejoice we do, because Christ is baptized in the Jordan TO SAVE US by trading places with us.
Dr. Martin Luther (the Reformer of the church), based on 2 Corinthians 5:21, called it a froehlicher Wechsel, i.e. “blessed / joyful exchange,” or a “sweet swap.” In other words, Jesus swaps our sin and death in exchange for His righteousness and life. His Baptism makes this known and visible. He willingly submits to a sinner’s baptism, taking the sinner’s place, in order to save the sinner. He voluntarily takes a bath infested and polluted with the noxious, toxic and fatally poisonous sin of the world. He immerses Himself in the bitter water of our death and makes it sweet with His presence.
Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, the son of Mary is also God’s Son from eternity, the eternal Word. And He shows that He stands with us as God’s Son to be God’s Son FOR US. We don’t have to become like Jesus (perfect, holy and sinless) to be saved. Just the opposite! Jesus becomes like us (bearing our sin in His Body and counted as the SINNER ON THE CROSS) to save us. This is precisely why the Father declares: “Are you paying attention? Listen up everyone! Baptized Jesus is my beloved Son! I am absolutely delighted with Him because He will die on the cross and the salvation job that I’ve always planned will be achieved, accomplished and done.”
Well, typical Lutheran preacher that I am, I can’t help myself. I have to say a little bit more because with the gospel there is always more and I want you to believe in Jesus and trust Him and Him only for your salvation.
Brothers and sisters, when Jesus receives John’s baptism, He is washed with water for the world’s cleansing. Again, Jesus had no need of repentance. He had no sins to confess. And yet He was baptized for the world’s cleansing, that in Him we might be washed from our sins! That by His Good Friday sacrificial Blood shed on the cross, our sin would be washed away as far as the east is from the west. The Spotless One was washed in Jordan water so that in Him we might be spotless. What a froehlicher Wechsel! Whata joyous and sweet salvational swap!
Now, let’s not forget that after Jesus rose from the grave He instituted baptism in the Triune Name (Matthew 28:19). Why do I bring this to your attention? Well, I’m here to tell you that your water Baptism in the Triune Name was your personal epiphany. When you were baptized, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit went full-blown public and the Holy Trinity manifested and revealed to you personally the Good Friday salvation won for you by Jesus in His death and resurrection! That’s precisely why Peter in Acts 2:38 exhorts everyone to be baptized “in Jesus’ Name.”
You hear many Christians speak of Jesus being their “personal Savior.” And that’s so true. But here is the biblical and Lutheran spin on this: Jesus is the world’s Savior revealed FOR YOU and to you personally – in Baptism where He gave you His divine and saving Name, in the word of the gospel preached, the word of absolution pronounced, and in the word of the Lord’s Supper by which you personally are given to eat and drink with your mouth His most holy and precious all atoning for sin Body and Blood that was offered on the cross for your salvation. Jesus puts it this way in John 6:56, “whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” Wow! It doesn’t get any more Jesus being “personal Savior” than that.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus doesn’t leave you generically saved as “the world.” Jesus is not only the Savior of the world, He IS your Savior. He is not simply the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, He is God’s Lamb who takes away YOUR sin.
Now, just to be clear, your Matthew 28:19 water Baptism that you have all received adds nothing to Jesus’ death on the cross that saved you. When Jesus proclaimed from the cross: “It is finished,” it means exactly that. The salvation job for sinners was finished. Baptism adds nothing to Christ’s “It is finished.”
Matthew 28:19 Baptism reveals, makes known, applies, and personalizes Jesus to you and for you with all that He won FOR YOU on the cross. In your Baptism, the divine spotlight fell on you and God said, “When it comes to salvation in Jesus, I mean you.” On you in your Baptism the Holy Spirit descended so that you might serve your neighbor in Holy Spirit-filled bodies in self-sacrificial love just like Jesus. On you at your Baptism the Father’s voice spoke an incredible blessing, “You are my beloved child. I’m pleased with you, FOR JESUS MY SON’S SAKE!”
Jesus lived in and from His Baptism in the Jordan as He carried out His sacrificial ministry to save the world. And that was finished with His Good Friday death on the cross. Now, how do you live in and from your Matthew 28:19 Baptism? Well, it’s very Christ-like. You live in and from your baptism by living a sacrificial life of love for the sake of others. Not living to be served but to serve. Offering your body as a living sacrifice! Living your life daily so that the people God has put into your life are helped — edified.
Commandments 4-10 lead and guide you in this kind of living. For this to take place, you, the baptized, daily die to self-centered sin, drowning the old Adam through contrition and repentance so that the new man, a new creation, spelled F-A-I-T-H, daily and always trusts that Jesus’ It- Is-Finished-Good-Friday-Death counts for all your sin.
Putting a Kuhlman-ian spin on a beloved children’s Sunday School song let me sing it this way: “Jesus loves me this I know, for my Baptism tells me so.”
Happy living in and from your Baptism!
In the Name of Jesus.
Galatians 4:4-7
The Christmas gift for us miserable sinners today according to the text is an inheritance. A salvational inheritance! We are heirs of the inheritance of salvation won by Son of God Jesus who was born of woman. Born of Mary. Born under the law so that we might become HEIRS together with Christ in His Good Friday reign and kingdom. For an inheritance to be given the Person giving the inheritance has to die. And that’s precisely what Jesus did. Died. On the Cross. So good, Good Friday-ly. FOR YOU. For your salvation. That’s the inheritance. And you, who believe in Him are the heirs! Absolutely magnificent!
This all took place in “the fullness of time.” It happened at just the right moment in world history. It was a perfect storm of variables that all came together at one time. Let’s review.
Roman rule under Emperor Augustus established peace for the first time in centuries. Roman technological know-how and well-run government brought roads, aqueducts, concrete buildings, the Julian calendar, and medical tools for the battlefield.
Greek culture effected a common language and a love for learning.
Israel, God’s nation of the Old Testament, was in a kind of protective custody, held as a territory under Roman rule. At least she was protected from her ancient enemies. So, Israel was free to pretty much carry out its business as usual, providing it rendered to Caesar the appropriate taxes. The synagogues thrived under the rabbinic teaching of the Pharisees. The temple was in good working order under the Sadducees while King Herod was spent millions renovating the temple to secure the favor of the Jews.
The remnant of faith-ers in Israel were anxiously watching, waiting, and hoping for God to act for them. God had been strangely silent for 450 years or so. Granted, there were some positive signs, such as the Maccabean revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes that is celebrated as Hannukah. However, the glory had long departed from the temple because there was no ark of the covenant in the holy of holies.
But the remnant faith-ers of Israel continued to cling to God’s promise to send the Savior, the Messiah. Surely, God would act and deliver them soon. Time was literally pregnant with the divine Messianic Promise. Simeon, a prophet who lived in the temple, had even been told directly by God Himself that he wouldn’t die until he had seen the Lord’s messiah with his own eyes (Lk 2:26).
This was the “fullness of time” of which the apostle Paul speaks in Galatians 4. All the pieces of the salvational jig saw puzzle were in the right place. That’s when the eternal Father said to the co-eternal Son: “Go! Now! Shed your divine Blood to atone for the sin of the world!” And in that moment the Word entered our world. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit. The Creator became the creature. The eternal Word became Flesh and the Son of God was born of a woman, the virgin Mary.
Speaking of a woman. We remember the very first woman, Eve. She, too as a virgin, was deceived by the devil’s lie that she and her husband could transcend their creatureliness and become little divinities and dethrone God Himself. As if a creature could become and be like God! Deceived by that lie sin and death catastrophically prybar-ed and crowbar-ed themselves into the world. God, ever the Redeemer and Savior, then proclaimed to the devil that a, “seed of the woman” would crush his serpent-y head, (Genesis 3:15). And it was that Promised Seed carried along by the generations from Adam and Eve, through Noah, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that would finally be implanted in the virgin womb of Mary and be conceived as the Word made Flesh.
Everyone has a mother, and our Lord Jesus Christ is no exception. To be “like us in every way,” (Heb 4:15), He had to be conceived and born like us. His Father, of course, is another story. In that way He is not like us because He is the eternally begotten Son of the Father. Jesus, born of Mary the Virgin, however, is the counterpart to Adam.
As the first Adam is the head of a fallen humanity, Jesus is the head of a new, redeemed, humanity. Jesus is humanity’s second Adam, its new Head. He is born without the inherited sin of Adam, and yet He is born of woman and so is like us in every way except for sin. That’s why you can’t say by the way: “To sin or to err is human.” That is not what it means to be human. To sin and to err is anti-human. It is un-human. Christ is fully human, as fully human as that Baby lying in a manger needing to be changed and nursed and burped and all the other things you do with newborn babies. He is bone of our bones and flesh of our flesh. He was born “from below” of our human flesh so that we might be born “from above” by water and the Spirit (Jn 3:3-5; Tit 3:5-6).
His birth from the Virgin Mary in “the fulness of time” is the fulfillment of the Genesis-3:15-Promised-Seed, and all the centuries of prophecies vowed to Israel. Jesus is the end of the line. He is God’s last Word in the Flesh (Heb 1:1). When Simeon and Anna received 40 day old Jesus in the temple, that was the Old Testament receiving the Genesis-3:15-Promised-Seed-in-the-Flesh. Jesus is the One the faith-ers of remnant Israel were expecting. This is God’s Messiah. His Anointed One!
“Born under the law,” Paul says. We call that His state of humiliation. He humbled Himself and become obedient to the law. Actively obedient in every way. Actively compliant, in that Jesus did the Ten Commandments perfectly in every thought, word and deed.
And not just actively, but also passively. Passively, that is to say, in His crucified Body, as He carried the sin of the world on His shoulders, He suffered all the earthly and divine hellacious punishments under the law that we deserved. This is why He didn’t just appear as a man out of nowhere. He had be born under the law – be obedient to father and mother and other authorities. He had to experience the trials of childhood and adolescence. There was no cheating. No divine hand tied behind His back. He had to do it our way. He had to live our life the way we live it, and die our death the way we die for us and for our salvation. What He did perfectly actively and what He suffered perfectly passively, was for our salvation.
Paul says that Jesus came to redeem. That means to buy back. Not to pay a ransom to or but back from Satan. The devil doesn’t own anything. Jesus doesn’t redeem us from sin and death either. These powers hold us captive. But God doesn’t bribe these things. He conquers them in His Manger-ed and Good Friday Son Jesus.
Jesus came to redeem us from the law. The sting of death is sin (the condition not the symptoms), and what gives sin its power over us is the law. The law shows us our sin. It condemns us. It amplifies our sin. In fact, the law stirs up sin in the sinner. The law can’t make a sinner into a saint, it can only kill the sinner, and that’s what it did to Jesus as He hung on the cross bearing all our sin in His Body.
Incredible! In being born of woman under the law, Jesus subjected Himself voluntarily to the law. Even though Jesus never sinned (1 Pt 2:22), as He carried the sin of the world in His crucified Body, the law did everything to Him that should have been done to us because we are sinners. It accused Him of blasphemy and sedition. It found Him guilty in God’s sight of all sins of the entire world from its beginning to its end. It sentenced Jesus to death, death on the cross. We deserved this damnational death because of our sin. And yet Jesus takes in His crucified Body what we earned. He did this FOR YOU. FOR YOUR SALVATION. TAKING YOUR PLACE. TAKING WHAT YOU DESERVED. TO REDEEM YOU WHO WERE UNDER THE LAW.
To be redeemed is to be set free. Christ bore all our sin and entered death to enact a prisoner swap: His life for the life of the world. His life for your life. That means in Him the law is silent. It has nothing to say. Your sins are forgiven in Christ. The wrath of God is stilled in Christ. Death has lost its sting. The grave has lost its victory. Christ has conquered and in Him you conquer in His victory.
Though Jesus looked like any other baby born in Israel, He is no ordinary Baby. The Child that Mary lullabyed, the baby that Anna and Simeon received in the temple, is the Redeemer! He is the One who would pay the price for Adam’s sin. He is the Liberator, who would set humanity free of its captivity. He is the Shepherd who would gather His sheep. He is the Lamb who would die for the sin of the world. He is the Priest who would offer Himself as an unblemished sacrifice. He is the Davidic King who would establish David’s throne. He is the Messiah, God’s anointed servant. All of this packaged in this little Child, indistinguishable from any of the other baby boys in Bethlehem (something that would lead to their untimely death under King Herod).
The Son of God was born a Man so that the sons of men might be reborn as sons of God. You are sons of God, baptized in the Son of God. The girls too. You’re all “sons” in the sense of heirs. Remember that in Christ there is “neither male nor female,” (Gal 3:28). You are all SONS in the Son, born of our virgin mother, the church, with God Himself as our Father, conceived by the Word and the Spirit, the same Holy Spirit that cries out “Abba, Father” as we pray “Our Father.”
This Child named Jesus of Bethlehem is your freedom and life. You are no longer slaves but sons. You have a place in your Father’s house. You have permission to call upon Him any time and any place with your Abba, Fathers. You have a new identity, the way an adopted child receives the identity of his new adopted family.
You have a new and better answer to the question “Who are you?” You are a child of God. A son of God. An heir with Christ of His kingdom. You are not what you do, or your sin, or your vocation, or anything that has to do with your birth as a son of Adam. You are a son of God. Your baptism is, in one sense, your adoption papers, or, if you will, your birth certificate. It tells you who your mother is: the church, God’s city, the Bride of Christ. It tells you who your Father is: the eternal Father who sent His Son in the flesh to save you. It tells you who your family is and what your identity is.
What a great way to rejoice in the meaning of this Christmas season. Today we have great joy to believe that because of Jesus, born in the fullness of time, born of a woman, born under the law, God has adopted you as sons and that we have the privilege to call God “Father” with delight.
John 1:12 puts it this way: “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Luke 1:26-38
The archangel Gabriel is dispatched. By God. To the small village of Nazareth. To visit a teenage virgin girl. Something very important must be up. After all, we don’t hear about archangels very much in Scripture. But here we do.
What’s going on? God is going on. He’s rolling up His sleeves. To do a job. The salvation-of-the-world job. FOR YOU. For me. For the world. While we were still sinners. While we were still helpless.
Angels are usually sent to preach. Archangel Gabriel is God’s instrument to make an announcement. A conception announcement. A strange and mysterious birth announcement. Something big is happening. Enormous. Huge. Salvationally huge.
“Greetings Mary. I know you’re not married yet. I know you’re a virgin. Nonetheless, you’re going to get pregnant. A Baby will grow in your belly. You will have a Baby. A boy.”
And that Holy Spirit-filled Word of God spoken and poked into Mary’s ears by Gabriel’s sermon does what it says. A Baby Boy is conceived in Mary’s womb through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Most High God overshadows her and an embryo forms. The Holy Spirit’s power and the Most High’s overshadowing come to Mary through the preached words put in her ears. That’s how the Baby is conceived by the Holy Spirit.
The Baby’s name? Jesus.
The name “Jesus” literally means: “The LORD is salvation.”
So who is this Baby Jesus now growing in Mary’s womb? Is He a true man? Yes. For Mary is His mother. Conceived and born of the Virgin Mary.
Is He also true God? Yes. We know that because of His name: Jesus. Jesus means: “The LORD is salvation.”
Jesus’ Name reveals who He is and what He’s going to do.
He is God. And because He is God He can and will do the salvation job. And God-man Jesus will do that on the Cross. More on that in a moment.
Listen to the other things Gabriel says about the Baby Mary bears. “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Jesus is the Son of the Father. Begotten of the Father from eternity. True God. And as true man He is conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb. As true man He is born of Virgin Mary. As true man a descendant of King David. The heir of David’s throne. As true God because the reign lasts forever.
Jesus. “The LORD is salvation.” His name says it all.
He is the Lord. He is God, the Son of the Father. And He is salvation. In other words, He’s the Savior. Yours. Savior for you for the forgiveness of your sins. He’s Savior only as He’s saying and doing forgiveness for you.
How is He for you for the forgiveness of your sins? Conceived by the Holy Spirit. Born of the Virgin Mary. Suffered under Pontius Pilate. Was crucified, died, and was buried. Descended into hell. Then on the Third Day rose again.
This is all in the way of His being Savior for you. You can believe that because He says so. He says so in your Baptism. He says so in the Absolution. He says so in the sermon. He says so in the Sacrament of the Altar. And His words do and give what they say: forgiveness and salvation.
You too have been given a preacher. Not the archangel Gabriel. He was Mary’s preacher. Your preacher’s name sent by the Lord is Kuhlman. He has been divinely sent to tell you that Jesus died FOR YOU and that because of Him you are totally forgiven. Totally saved. Even while you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
What is your response to such incredible preaching? The same as Mary’s, of course. “May it be to me as you have said.” That’s how faith always talks. In the Name of Jesus — the Lord who is our salvation!
John 1:6-8, 19-28
You know you’re in trouble when the Jerusalem big wig religious authorities show up. And now they come with a question. Who are you John? The question implies another question. Who do you think you are John? You dare to dress like Elijah. Your diet is very weird. No one eats locusts dipped in wild honey. And of all the nerve! You disobediently spew forth the one verb in your preaching that we absolutely forbid – “REPENT.”
John. Who do you think you are? When you call religious and highly spiritual people like us to repentance like one of the OT prophets, this is not only outrageous! It’s pastorally irresponsible! It’s professionally careless! Your preaching exhibits a large-scale systematic oppression that must be stopped! PDQ! Isaiah and Jeremiah preached like you. We sawzall-ed Isaiah in two halves and we threw Jeremiah into a pit. Better be careful John. Something similar may happen to you. Just saying!
John, who do you think you are? If one is guilty by association, then we fear you are in deep trouble. You hang with the scum of the earth — garbage, low life losers, the dregs, and absolute good-for-nothings. Unlike us fasters, tithers and rule keepers, these people are big-time, ugly, repulsive, and never-to-keep-company-with-lewd-and-indecent-rule-breaking-sinners! And then you boldly offer them a baptismal bath of cleansing for the forgiveness of their sins! Who do you think you are John?
Check out John’s answer. “I’m a voice crying out in the wilderness. I’m nothing more than a voice.” In other words, John is a witness. A witness sent by the Lord to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. John testifies or points everyone to Jesus. Why? Because Jesus is the Savior of sinners, not John. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, not John. Some thought John was Messiah material. John would have none of that. He knows he’s only a voice. And with his full throated voice he declares: “I am not the Christ. The Christ is coming. I’m only here to prepare sinners for His coming. For that they need to be repent-ed and faith-ed.” That includes you and me.
“He [John] came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.” John’s greatness is when he categorically declares for all to hear: “I’m not Elijah. I’m not the Prophet. I’m not the Messiah. I’m only a voice crying in the wilderness. I preach so that sinners are repented, baptized and look in F-A-I-T-H to Jesus the Messiah, the Greater One. Jesus must increase. I must decrease. This is my task. This is my calling. I preach to prepare people for Jesus their Savior. I preach so that sinners will believe in Jesus for salvation.” That includes you and me. “He [John] was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.”
While John preached, repent-ed, faith-ed and baptized on the banks of the Jordan River, the religious big wigs from Jerusalem twiddled their theological thumbs. They had trouble making up their minds about him. Vacillated. Wavered. Is his baptism from heaven? Is he Elijah? Is he the Prophet? Is he the Messiah? They weren’t sure.
John was a very creative theologian in their minds. Stimulating. Provocative. Entertaining. But when push came to shove, they finally passed judgment on John. “He’s demon possessed,” (Mt 11:18). Or to use the language of 21st century science: “He’s a psychopath! He needs medical treatment and a re-education camp. After all, he’s too narrow-minded, one-sided, and fanatical. He should be shock therapy-ed, rubber room-ed and straight jacket-ed. He’s a threat to our values and way of life!”
And all the while, John didn’t … care. Couldn’t care less. Didn’t give a rip about what the hot shot Jerusalem big guns thought about him. John’s entire preaching and baptizing career screamed: “I’m a voice! That’s all! Who cares what others think of me? Even if they come from Jerusalem. Who cares?”
Yes, that’s right. John didn’t care what anyone thought of him. What his reputation was or whether people believed his preaching or respected him. He didn’t let the world or the hot shot Jerusalem teachers tell him who he was. His identity came from the Lord and the Lord’s Word put into his mouth and on his lips. Jesus, John’s cousin, who was to come, defined who John is. John’s entire assessment of himself was wrapped up in Jesus, so much so that John rejoiced to decrease so that Christ might increase. Even if it meant getting arrested, jailed and made him shorter by a head!
Our old Adamic sinful nature, gives us a false identity. It’s an identity based on self. On power to control others. On making a name for oneself. On building a network or a kingdom for oneself. Sin is an inward curving malignant disease that causes every thought, word, and deed of ours to be self-oriented. It talks like this: “What will people think of us? Will they like us? Will they reject us?” And when we worry about, we will let others define us and shape our identities for us, not Jesus.
John would have none of that. He knew he didn’t fit in. He wouldn’t let himself be boxed in, catalogued and neatly gift wrapped by anyone. John wasn’t true to himself. He was true to God’s Word and to Jesus the Savior whose way he was preparing.
John the Baptist serves as a pattern and an example for the church in these gray, and latter days. The church likewise, is given to call out in the wilderness of this world as a voice, with no identity other than a baptismal tattoo with water, to call the world to repentance and faith in Jesus, to call the world to holy baptism, and to call the world to receive the Good Friday forgiveness of Jesus that reconciles the world to God.
When the church is faithfully the church, she offers no solutions to the world’s problems, no cures for Covid, MS, MD, HIV, cancer or heart disease. No answers to the perplexing questions of our times. She preaches repentance for the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake. She proclaims Jesus risen from the dead and the promise of the bodily resurrection of the dead and eternal life with Jesus.
The church may feed the hungry and she should, but she cannot solve world hunger. The church prays for peace, but she cannot bring an end to the wars in Ukraine or Gaza. The church may care for the widowed and orphaned but she cannot fix the abdication of male headship, the colossal dissolution and destruction of the nuclear family and society’s rot and decay. She preaches repentance for the forgiveness of sins for Jesus’ sake.
The church may find herself involved in social and moral issues, and she should be as she preaches repentance for the forgiveness of sins, but her true home is in the wilderness and her true song is to be a lone Advent voice calling out to anyone who would hear: “Repent, be baptized, get ready. The kingdom of God is at hand.”
That’s precisely the good use the Lord has of His church here at Trinity and throughout the world in these gray and latter days. He would use Trinity, Murdock like John the Baptist’s mouth, finger and voice.
As the world hears and sees us acting and sounding like John the Baptist, calling sinners to repentance, faith in Jesus and baptism, some will be converted. However, many will not. Why? Well, because we look so out of place. So curious, odd and even threatening. And the world is quite decisive and judgmental. If any of you know who James Carville is and what he said recently to Bill Mahr, you know what he thinks of us.[1] And he’s not the only one.
“Who do you think you are Christians? You actually take the Bible seriously? You actually go to church? You worship Jesus? You take your faith seriously? Well, then you are (to use the words of James Carville) worse than ISIS or Al-Qaeda! You are nothing but domestic terrorists hell-bent on insurrection and treason! You Christians are a real and present threat to our democracy and American way of life and values!”
And what’s our response? It’s like John’s. Mr. Carville and the world, we couldn’t care less! We really don’t give a rip what you think.
However, there is Someone who did and does care. About John. And about us. That’s Jesus.
John the Baptist, in his unique calling, was great in Jesus’ sight. Jesus cared. Remember? Jesus called John a prophet and more than a prophet. Jesus called John the end times preacher foretold by Malachi who would prepare the way of the Lord. Jesus even called John, Elijah, categorically asserting that John’s Baptism was from God, not from men, and that his way was the way of righteousness. Jesus cared.
We do care what Jesus thinks of us. He salvationally cares for us as the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. Yes, He cares. He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Even your sin. All of it!
Jesus loves you. He died FOR YOU! He rose FOR YOU! He is there FOR YOU in the water of baptism, in the Word preached, taught and read, and in the bread and wine of the Supper.
I beseech you. Use Jesus properly every day for the forgiveness of all your sin. In this way you will point the way for those around you. Be that voice in the wilderness that God has made you in your Baptism. And even at Holy Communion. For every time you eat this bread and drink this wine you proclaim the Lord’s death FOR YOU until He comes on the Last Day (1 Cor 11).
Dare to be different, to stand alone, to be called weird, out of step, offbeat, strange, crazy, fanatical. Let the world mock the camel’s hair and leather belt of Christ’s robe of righteousness that you wear from your Baptism. Who cares? Let the world snicker at your wilderness diet of the Body and Blood of Christ hidden under the most insignificant of bread and wine. Who cares?
What matters, all that matters, is that Jesus cares. He cared enough to descend from His royal throne to step into our world, our life, our sin and death to free us. Hallmark’s ad slogan is “When you care enough to send the very best.” God cared enough to send His very best, His only-begotten Son. And found in Him, you have all the identity that you need. Who are you? Who do you think you are? “To those who believed on His Name He gave them the authority to be called ‘sons of God.’” In the Name of Jesus.
[1]https://news.yahoo.com/james-carville-attacks-speaker-mike-065009575.html
Brent Kuhlman's Blog 