Third Sunday in Advent 12/11/11

Third Sunday in Advent 12/11/11 Text: Hebrews 1:1-12 Title: Why not an Angel? A long time ago a boy who is now a grown man asked his pastor in Confirmation class why God did not just send an angel to save us instead of coming himself. Needless to say that question stirred up the class and upset the pastor. He could not remember anyone ever asking that question before. He and everyone he knew just accepted that God had become human when Jesus was born. The pastor knew that that answer would not fly with this young boy because he questioned almost everything he said. How he remembered when he had told the class that God in his Holy Word said you cannot serve two masters at the same time. The young fella had shot his hand up in the air almost before the pastor had finished reading the text. “Why.” He said. “Why cannot you serve two masters?” He remembered after he told the young boy, “Because God said so.” what had happened. The whole class fell apart that day because the boy was not satisfied with that answer. Here he goes again, the pastor thought with an inward groan. This is a going to be a long class. The pastor tried to answer the question with his usual answer, “Because God said so.” but it did not work. He finally had to tell the boy that he would meet with him later after he had time to see why it had to be God that had to become incarnate, that is become human and not an angel. I bet you never thought of that question, “Why didn’t God the Father send an angel instead of his Son to die for us?” Why did God have to come in person to be one of us, is a question that we really should ask. We don’t ask it because we doubt God’s Word, but because in finding the answer we can better appreciate God’s plan of salvation. Mary, the mother of Jesus asked that question when she replied to the angel who told her she was going to become pregnant, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” In that question the whole matter of Jesus’ identity is raised. Who is he; God, man, or some kind of combination of God and man? Joseph also was really asking the same question when he found out that Mary was pregnant and he knew the baby was not his. Before the angel told him that the baby in her womb had come from the Holy Spirit he was going to divorce her. How could this be he asked. People were always questioning who Jesus was from his childhood to his death and resurrection. Who was he? They, including his disciples, could not accept that God himself had become Incarnate; that is human. “After all was not Joseph his father?” they asked. Nothing has changed. It still goes on today. People still do not accept Jesus, even many of those who consider themselves Christian, as God Incarnate. They say he, if they even go this far, is the Son of God, but not God or that he is just a good man, a righteous man who lived a long time ago and whose lifestyle we should mimic, but God in the flesh. No way! That, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ is why I am doing this sermon series and Bible study on God’s Incarnation. Now we know, or at least we should know that Jesus is God in the flesh. But back to the question the young boy was really asking that day. Could God have accomplished the same redemptive act by sending an angel to become a human? According to Scripture there are three reasons why having an angel do what Jesus did would not work in God’s plan of salvation. First of all God’s angels were created. They did not always exist, as the Triune God does. Second, after the original fall when the angels sinned against God, angels can no longer sin, so an angel cannot take our place because they cannot be tempted. Last, but not least angels do not die, and as we know, for God’s plan to work a sinless human being had to die. Well, if an angel cannot do what God needed to be done to save his human creation what about another human? We all know people who might qualify; the saints of the world that have lived wonderful lives doing God’s work. Why wouldn’t they work? That one is pretty easy to answer, for there is no human being that has lived, except for Jesus that is perfect, that would qualify, for any sin no matter how seemingly insignificant in any form or fashion condemns a person. A human being just will not qualify. An angel does not qualify. A human descendent of Adam and Eve does not qualify. It simply has to be someone as perfect as God who would keep the Law perfectly, yet someone who could also become human and be able to suffer and die. That is a dilemma that only God can solve. No one else or any other plan would work. He was the only one who had the qualification to do what God needed done to save his human creation from his judgment. He had to come himself; God Incarnate. Jesus did not merely look like a human or pretend to be human, or half human, as some still teach today. Jesus was fully human precisely like us. When God came to be one us he voluntarily took on what we must face, temptation, and death. Listen to what God tells us about himself in Hebrews 2:14-18, “14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” God through the inspired writings of the writer to the Hebrew Christians is telling them and us in this text that since all humans have their origin from God Jesus is like them because the God-man Jesus origins are from God also. He did not become human to help angels but to help his brothers and sisters with whom he shares his humanness. The difference being that while death shows the reality of Satan’s power, Jesus’ death destroyed Satan’s power over us. Death for God’s children is a doorway to the rest of life with God; freedom from Satan and all the ills of this life. Death is not something that we should fear as children of God. Jesus God Incarnate in one act on the cross did what no sacrifice, no matter how many times it was done could not do; appease God. And that my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is Good News. Amen.