Advent, December 13, 2017
Pastor Gregory L. Jackson
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bethany-lutheran-worship
Mid-Week Advent, Wednesday, 7 PM Central Standard
The Hymn #95 Savior of the Nations Come
The Order of Vespers p. 41
The Psalmody Psalm 100 p. 144
The Lection - Isaiah 40 KJV
The Sermon Hymn #76 A Great and Mighty Wonder
God's Wonder - The Incarnation
The Prayers and Lord’s Prayer p. 44
The Collect for Peace p. 45
The Benediction p. 45
Hymn #562 Round Me Falls the Night
Isaiah 7:10 Moreover the Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, 11 Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God; ask it either in the depth, or in the height above.
12 But Ahaz said, I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord. 13 And he said, Hear ye now, O house of David; Is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
God's Wonder - The Incarnation
We know what a wonder this is, because this Isaiah passage and the Virgin Birth have been attacked with great energy, most heatedly from within the institutional church. Someone asked about a particular church - a magnificent building with a splendid organ. The pastor closely identifies with the Jenson of Braaten-Jenson, the pair who wrote the dogmatics book for the LCA/ELCA that denies every article of faith - including the Virgin Birth.
There is no better way to attack than to gently displace what God has revealed. There are many like Ahaz who boldly reject the miracle promised, but even more who undermine it with their soft, subtle betrayals.
That is what alarms and alerts people, the frontal attack. So that is seldom attempted. The very nature of the Virgin Birth is like the Promise to Abraham, so far beyond human reason that it requires faith in God's Word.
God's Word - One United Truth
The Scriptures are one Book of the Holy Spirit, one united Truth. We can see the effect of unbelief when people play with phrases and verses and say, "Aha! Look at what I have found, something no one ever saw or imagined before." Or they claim to have discovered some ancient and almost hidden truth. But what they want is for everyone to admire their smooth words instead of the
"fisherman's voice of the Holy Spirit."
God's Word is too demanding for them, to subordinate their pride and wisdom to these basic truths. We can see the great unity of the Word when we consider the Incarnation itself.
God promised the Savior already in Genesis 3:15. How many centuries later did Moses receive His Name from the Burning Bush?
What is Your Name? Who should I say sent me?
"My Name is I AM. Tell them - I AM sent me."
More centuries pass, but not without many more Promises, but this one stands out with Isaiah 9. If one denies the great miracle, it is not a miracle but as they say on TV - the miracle of birth. Man has cloaked this miracle by denying its truth.
"A Virgin will conceive." I always marvel at the learned when they deny the plain words of the Bible. Here they have three battles at once.
1. A miracle declared by God must be stupendous.
2. Virgin birth is not natural or explained by man.
3. God with Us, repeated another way in Isaiah 9, is the Incarnation - God and man, one Person, Two Natures, divine and human.
One must attack all three truths at once, deny them, or subvert. The coward who keeps one or two and denies the rest is a playing a shell game - now you see it, now you don't.
All these passages are knit together, taught by the Holy Spirit in the Word, and clarified by the Spirit in teaching and preaching.
But this does not stop with Isaiah, since there are many other related passages. Jesus' entire ministry was based on showing the people of Israel and the Gentiles that He was and is the Messiah, that righteousness only comes from faith in Him.
The opposition came from the clergy, naturally, because they are trained by their own kind to continue the traditions. They worship the traditions and bristle when their traditions are impugned or insulted by anyone.
Therefore they placed themselves above Jesus, saying, "We have Abraham for our father." And they truly were Abraham's children according to the flesh. But Jesus united all the Messianic passages with this divine claim -
"Before Abraham was, I AM."
Not everyone thinks about the Exodus all the time or concentrates on the meaning of the Exodus, as the Gospel of John does so clearly. Here Jesus said - "I AM" - God's Name. And of course, that is part of His famous sermons in John.
So Jesus was not crucified for pretending to be the Messiah, but for being the Messiah and God's own Son.
Therefore, as we see in so many of Luther's sermons and the hymns of the Reformation, the great wonder is God's own Son, with all the power of God, comes to us in such a humble way, not in great flashes of lightning and thunder, but in the quiet of the manger. And so He dwells in the Word today.
The Word conveys Him to us.
