Weekly Message & Bulletin

Today, we celebrate the “Second Sunday after Christmas.”  Yes, the official Christmas season and its related celebrations have passed for another year.  Nonetheless, our LORD’s word never “perishes, spoils and fades” (1 Peter 1:3-4).  Rather, the word of the Lord endures forever! 

In today’s Old Testament lesson, we hear our LORD pledge such an enduring promise.  Although He, as our power “God Almighty” makes this promise to Abraham, we correctly understand how this divine promises blesses all people through Abraham’s descendent, our Savior Jesus, who came from the family live of Abraham. 

What’s more, St. Paul in today’s epistle reading affirms how God fulfilled this promise according to His divine time schedule.  God sent His Son, true God from eternity, to be born in time through Mary so He could redeem sinners and make believers His legal heirs. 

Finally, in the appointed gospel section from Luke, the evangelist records Zechariah’s praise to God for keeping His promise to send Jesus, the world’s Savior.  Truly, all these lessons stress how God acts according to His own unbreakable commitments, in line with His time timetable and undeserved grace, to send His Son, the world’s Savior. 

Despite the official celebration of Christmas freshly in the rearview mirror, we still relish in its ongoing blessings.  Our Christchild came to redeem all people by giving Himself as a ransom for sin.  Like a red ribbon surrounding a beautifully decorated Christmas gift, so the red line of prophecy runs throughout Scripture until the gospels unfold the gift of the Christchild.  He became true man to submit to God’s holy law and live it perfectly for us who couldn’t.  Jesus came as the God-man to sacrifice His innocent life to pay for sin.  Our Savior rose victoriously as God and man to assure that He conquered sin and defeated death.  His resurrection assures our physical resurrection.  

Our focus today reflects the ongoing, central theme of Scripture: “For God so loved the word that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). 

Every Sunday, we speak about Jesus’ passive obedience, that is, that He came here to suffer and die on the cross to pay for sin.  But we must also present Scripture’s two-fold nature of Jesus’ saving work.  Jesus also had to obey the demands of God’s holy law perfectly as our substitute (Matthew 5:17-18).   We call this most vital work of Jesus submitting Himself to and living perfectly God’s holy law the Savior’s active obedience.   

Indeed, Advent reveals how God fulfilled His eternal plan to send His Son born of the virgin Mary through a miracle worked by the Holy Spirit.  That’s the focus of Jesus’ first advent with His Bethlehem birth.   

But Jesus will come again in great power and glory at the end of this world as we currently know it for the final redemption for all of God’s true believers.  With great joy we not only celebrate the Savior’s birth, but eagerly anticipate His second coming.

The church year officially comes to a close on Sunday, November 21.  So, these last Sundays have a theme focusing on the end times before Christ returns on Judgment Day.  These Sundays of the End Times have specific themes to do so.   

For instance, last Sunday was known as “Last Judgment.”  This particular Sunday is known as “Saints Triumphant.”  Our readings for this Sunday will focus on God’s goal and promise for us: to deliver us from this sinful world to our home in heaven.  In heaven, we will enjoy perfection of body, soul and environment.  No longer will the effects of living in a sinful world in any way corrupt us or our heavenly home. God’s ultimate goal for us, then, will commence on Judgment Day, when He will raise up the bodies of those who have died and rejoin their glorified souls to be in heaven forevermore (Philippians 3:12-21). 

The Broadway musical writer, George Gershwin, once commented, “The things that you’re liable to read in the Bible: it ain’t necessarily so.”  What can we learn from such an opinion?  To this day people think in their sinfulness that the solution to sin and God is to deny them or at least minimize their significance.  Regardless of what man concludes, reasons and thinks, however, all remain “liable” to God for their debt of sin.   

As the church year draws to a close, the thought of Christ’s return on the Last Day to judge the world comes to the forefront of our Scripture lessons.  Jesus will return someday to “judge the living and the dead” as we confess in the Apostles’ Creed.  Some deny this reality; others wait in terror. 

As God’s people, however, we lift up our heads in anticipation as our final redemption draws near.  We don’t have to deny God or be afraid of Jesus.  Jesus came to win salvation for us by fulfilling the demands of God’s holy law for perfection, suffering and dying on the cross to pay for all sin and rising victoriously from death to assure He conquered our sin and defeated death.   

History records how the great reformer, Martin Luther, nailed his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, on October 31, 1517.  To this day, confessional Lutherans, faithful to the truth of God’s word and remembering this historical event, observe this day as Reformation Sunday.  By posting these Theses, Luther challenged theologians from the Roman Catholic Church to debate whether it was God-pleasing to sell indulgences.  The Roman Church sold indulgences granting forgiveness of sins, reinforcing its false teaching that forgiveness came from what a person does through human works (in this case “buying” forgiveness through indulgences). 

For a time, Luther had also incorrectly believed that a person earned forgiveness by what he did for God and not freely because of what Jesus did to forgive us.  Then, by God’s grace through the Holy Spirit, Luther came to the correct belief that the righteousness God demands from sinners, to be “right” with God, comes freely through faith in Jesus.  Luther discovered that truth from Psalm 31:1, where David prays: “In your righteousness deliver me.”  Therefore, God’s Reformation wasn’t a man-made revolution.  Rather, it served as a “reforming” of false teaching to the true teachings of Scripture as driven by the Holy Spirit. 

Sadly, in our day, a great number of those who call themselves, “Lutheran,” because of its false teaching have lost the blessing of the Reformation.  Yet, our gracious God continues to preserve faithful Lutheran Church bodies, which uphold the truth of God’s inspired, inerrant Word in the spirit and in line with the teachings as taught and upheld by Martin Luther.  We call these believers “confessional” Lutherans because they still hold to the three foundational pillars of the Reformation: a person is saved “by Scripture alone, by faith alone and by grace alone” (sola Scriptura, sola fide and sola gratia). 

While the passion of our Savior seems unfair to believers and hurts our hearts, it underscores the result of sin’s curse and the need to satisfy God’s holy justice.  There is no way any human could atone for sin, because we truly “like sheep have gone astray” (Isaiah 53:6).   

But our loving, heavenly Father sent His Son to be “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  Isaiah emphasizes that the Messiah’s humiliation secured our salvation and once Jesus completed His saving work, He reigns as our exalted Savior. The writer to the Hebrews points out that Jesus is the Fulfiller of our Sabbath rest, the free, “rested” conscience that surely comes from the forgiveness of sins Jesus won for us.  Mark stresses Jesus’ humility in light of James and John’s request of their human view of service. 

In all three readings for this Sunday, we witness how Jesus’ mission consisted of voluntary and completely selfless, humble service to His Father’s will.  His mission has freed us from slavery to Satan and sin, and made us God’s children to live freely for Him.