First Sunday in Advent 11-27-2011
First Sunday in Advent
11/27/11
Title: The Presence Of God
Today is the first Sunday of Advent; the first major season of the Christian Church year. It is in all honesty a strange season considering that the readings are not about the events leading up to Jesus’ birth which we will celebrate just four Sundays from now, but are about the Second Coming of Jesus when he comes back in all his glory to judge the world.
The reasoning behind the readings is that we, like the people of the Old Testament, should be looking for the coming of our Lord just as eagerly as the people of Old Testament time looked for the birth of the Messiah. The problem is that Christians, for the most part, are not living under duress and oppression like the Old Testament people were, thus we, at least we who live in the United States, do not look forward to Jesus second coming, like they did, because in all honesty life is pretty good and we really are in no hurry for Jesus to come back.
Being a faithful Lutheran pastor I have always preached on the end times during Advent because they are the assigned readings, but this year I am going to speak on the Incarnation during the Advent season. The reason I am, is that we, I am afraid, don’t have a really good understanding of the incarnation and because of that we probably don’t have a real good understanding of the critical articles of faith that rest on the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Incarnation is a fine church word which means God becoming man. In other words it is about the birth of Jesus when God became a human being that we know as Jesus. Each Sunday this Advent season we are going to look at different aspects of the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus and it is truly a mystery, for how is it that God who exists from all eternity could also become a man like us? It is a deep mystery, but it has enormous practical value for the Christian life and we need to have a better understanding of the incarnation.
For you see Christianity is not just another belief system out of many other belief systems, as so many believe. Nor is it, as others believe, just about what happens when we die. Christianity is a way of life here on earth and beyond which was first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man who without his incarnation, that is his becoming human the world was reconciled to God. This reconciliation brings back together what was lost when Adam and Eve sinned. We are no longer separated from God by our sin and thus we are in a relationship with God, as he desires us to be.
It is said by the people who research society that more people feel alone today than at any other time in history. There are many reasons given for loneliness, but no matter what the cause loneliness is terrible thing. It can lead to all kinds of emotional, spiritual, and physical problems. In the worst case loneliness can lead to suicide.
There was no loneliness in the Garden of Eden. Loneliness came into being when, as I said earlier, Adam and Eve fell into sin corrupting their intimate relationship with God. But God would not let their sin separate them from him, even though Adam and Eve hid from him because they were afraid of what he would do to them. God could have just punished them right then and started all over, but because he loved them so much God promised, even before they were forced out of the Garden of Eden, that there would be a Savior who would restore the relationship that God intended. They would never be alone.
God kept his promise. God wants fellowship with his human creation. He wanted to reveal his presence among them. God appeared in many ways to his people, but usually it was in the form of fire, smoke, or a cloud. His presence reassured the people giving them comfort in the tough and sometimes terrible times of their lives.
But he wanted to do even more, so that the relationship with God that was broken would be restored. God through Moses set up a system of worship that would not only remind them of his love, but would also remind them of their sinfulness, so that they would seek him out.
The sacrificial system while not forgiving the sins of the people did through the blood offered to God keep their focus on God and the promised Messiah. There was one particular rite that I want to look at this morning. It only happened once a year. It was called the Day of Atonement. It was, as you will see a foreshadowing of Jesus death. Listen to Leviticus 16 starting at verse 20, “20 And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.”
The laying on of the sins of the people on the goat and the sending the goat into the desert gave the people a picture of what Jesus did in his being taken out of the holy city Jerusalem and crucified, so that all people could be at peace with God.
God made his presence known to the people by the Tabernacle and later the temple. But, as we are told in Galatians 4:4, “When the time had fully come” he became man in the person of Jesus. God lived among us.
In John 1:1 we are told by God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. And a little further down in verse 14 we are told, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” What John is saying is that Jesus always existed, so he has to be God and that when the time was right he became human. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear saw God in Jesus, for he and the Father are one, as Jesus said many times. Jesus thus is God incarnate.
One of the most remarkable things that Jesus said just a short time before his death was his comparing his body to the temple in Jerusalem where God existed for the people of Israel. By comparing his upcoming death to the destruction of the temple he was saying that the old sacrificial system was over. In his person God is present. Jesus was to be the final sacrifice. There was no further use for the temple and its system of sacrifices.
God is present with his people. In the Old Testament his presence was shown in the tabernacle and the temple in the holy city Jerusalem. Now God is revealed to us in Jesus. In Jesus we are one with God. In him we have forgiveness, because his own sin-offering of blood reconciled us to God the Father.
Next week we will see what the blessings are that we receive because of the incarnation.
So now we who are reconciled to God can look forward to his second coming in the flesh as our sermon hymn 333, The Advent of our King tells us. Amen.
11/27/11
Title: The Presence Of God
Today is the first Sunday of Advent; the first major season of the Christian Church year. It is in all honesty a strange season considering that the readings are not about the events leading up to Jesus’ birth which we will celebrate just four Sundays from now, but are about the Second Coming of Jesus when he comes back in all his glory to judge the world.
The reasoning behind the readings is that we, like the people of the Old Testament, should be looking for the coming of our Lord just as eagerly as the people of Old Testament time looked for the birth of the Messiah. The problem is that Christians, for the most part, are not living under duress and oppression like the Old Testament people were, thus we, at least we who live in the United States, do not look forward to Jesus second coming, like they did, because in all honesty life is pretty good and we really are in no hurry for Jesus to come back.
Being a faithful Lutheran pastor I have always preached on the end times during Advent because they are the assigned readings, but this year I am going to speak on the Incarnation during the Advent season. The reason I am, is that we, I am afraid, don’t have a really good understanding of the incarnation and because of that we probably don’t have a real good understanding of the critical articles of faith that rest on the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Incarnation is a fine church word which means God becoming man. In other words it is about the birth of Jesus when God became a human being that we know as Jesus. Each Sunday this Advent season we are going to look at different aspects of the mystery of the incarnation of Jesus and it is truly a mystery, for how is it that God who exists from all eternity could also become a man like us? It is a deep mystery, but it has enormous practical value for the Christian life and we need to have a better understanding of the incarnation.
For you see Christianity is not just another belief system out of many other belief systems, as so many believe. Nor is it, as others believe, just about what happens when we die. Christianity is a way of life here on earth and beyond which was first personally embodied in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, the God-man who without his incarnation, that is his becoming human the world was reconciled to God. This reconciliation brings back together what was lost when Adam and Eve sinned. We are no longer separated from God by our sin and thus we are in a relationship with God, as he desires us to be.
It is said by the people who research society that more people feel alone today than at any other time in history. There are many reasons given for loneliness, but no matter what the cause loneliness is terrible thing. It can lead to all kinds of emotional, spiritual, and physical problems. In the worst case loneliness can lead to suicide.
There was no loneliness in the Garden of Eden. Loneliness came into being when, as I said earlier, Adam and Eve fell into sin corrupting their intimate relationship with God. But God would not let their sin separate them from him, even though Adam and Eve hid from him because they were afraid of what he would do to them. God could have just punished them right then and started all over, but because he loved them so much God promised, even before they were forced out of the Garden of Eden, that there would be a Savior who would restore the relationship that God intended. They would never be alone.
God kept his promise. God wants fellowship with his human creation. He wanted to reveal his presence among them. God appeared in many ways to his people, but usually it was in the form of fire, smoke, or a cloud. His presence reassured the people giving them comfort in the tough and sometimes terrible times of their lives.
But he wanted to do even more, so that the relationship with God that was broken would be restored. God through Moses set up a system of worship that would not only remind them of his love, but would also remind them of their sinfulness, so that they would seek him out.
The sacrificial system while not forgiving the sins of the people did through the blood offered to God keep their focus on God and the promised Messiah. There was one particular rite that I want to look at this morning. It only happened once a year. It was called the Day of Atonement. It was, as you will see a foreshadowing of Jesus death. Listen to Leviticus 16 starting at verse 20, “20 And when he has made an end of atoning for the Holy Place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. 21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins. And he shall put them on the head of the goat and send it away into the wilderness by the hand of a man who is in readiness. 22 The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness.”
The laying on of the sins of the people on the goat and the sending the goat into the desert gave the people a picture of what Jesus did in his being taken out of the holy city Jerusalem and crucified, so that all people could be at peace with God.
God made his presence known to the people by the Tabernacle and later the temple. But, as we are told in Galatians 4:4, “When the time had fully come” he became man in the person of Jesus. God lived among us.
In John 1:1 we are told by God, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”. And a little further down in verse 14 we are told, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” What John is saying is that Jesus always existed, so he has to be God and that when the time was right he became human. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear saw God in Jesus, for he and the Father are one, as Jesus said many times. Jesus thus is God incarnate.
One of the most remarkable things that Jesus said just a short time before his death was his comparing his body to the temple in Jerusalem where God existed for the people of Israel. By comparing his upcoming death to the destruction of the temple he was saying that the old sacrificial system was over. In his person God is present. Jesus was to be the final sacrifice. There was no further use for the temple and its system of sacrifices.
God is present with his people. In the Old Testament his presence was shown in the tabernacle and the temple in the holy city Jerusalem. Now God is revealed to us in Jesus. In Jesus we are one with God. In him we have forgiveness, because his own sin-offering of blood reconciled us to God the Father.
Next week we will see what the blessings are that we receive because of the incarnation.
So now we who are reconciled to God can look forward to his second coming in the flesh as our sermon hymn 333, The Advent of our King tells us. Amen.
posted by Pastor Rhoads | 4:04 PM
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