Advent II Midweek Matins + Luke 1:26-38 + December 7, 2016
Order of Matins - Pg. 32
Hymn # 74 Once He Came In Blessing
Hymn # 274 Praise We the Lord This Day
Sermon on Luke 1:26-38
Hymn # 74 Once He Came In Blessing
Hymn # 274 Praise We the Lord This Day
Hymn # 62 Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel
Psalmody - Psalm42
Luther's Morning Prayer
I thank You, my heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, Your
dear Son, that You have kept me this night from all harm and danger; and I pray
You that You would keep me this day also from sin and every evil, that all my
doings and life may please You. For into Your hands I commend myself, my body
and soul, and all things. Let Your holy angel be with me, that the evil foe may
have no power over me. Amen.
Reading
Reading
Luke 1:26-38
Sermon on Luke 1:26-38
Grace
and peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1) The
Virgin Mary will conceive and bear a son by the power of the Holy Spirit. That
is the angel Gabriel’s news to Mary. By
this miraculous conception God shows His almighty power. God formed the
first man out of the dirt of the earth. The first woman was formed from the rib
of the first man. Since the creation, men have been brought into the world in
the natural way, through the union of a married man and woman. But in Mary’s
conception of Jesus, the Lord shows us once again His great power as He did at
the creation. For God the Father does not bring the Messiah into the world
through the natural order of things, but circumvents the natural order. He does
this because the child born to Mary is not an ordinary child. The child
conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin is the Only-begotten Son of God,
who was begotten of God the Father from eternity. This is the one of whom St.
John wrote, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God” (John 1:1). This the one whom Paul describes as the “brightness of His glory and the express image of His person” (Hebrews 1:3). The one conceived in Mary’s
womb is God Himself, the second person of the Holy Trinity, God the Son. In
this conception in the virgin’s womb, the Only-begotten Son of God becomes
incarnate, that is, He becomes flesh because “in all things He had to be made like His brethren” (Hebrews 2:17).
2) The
Lord shows His almighty power in yet another way by circumventing the natural order for bringing
people into the world. The reason that Christ does not have an earthly father,
but is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, is because everyone born in
the natural way is born sinful. The natural
order is how sin is passed from one generation to the next, as David says in
Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me.” Job rhetorically asks, “Who
can bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing?”
(Job 14:4). Adam and Eve’s sin and the guilt of their sin is passed to all
their descendants like a hereditary disease, or as St. Paul writes in Romans 5:12, “Sin entered the world, and death
through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Because this child is the Only-begotten Son of God, the second person of
God the Holy Trinity, He is by nature, without sin. The Lord shows this to us
by having Christ be conceived and born of a virgin. The Only-begotten Son
assumes flesh from Mary and wraps Himself in a human body, mind, and soul by
the power of the Holy Spirit. This shows us God’s graciousness. All people are
born sinful because they are born of the line of Adam and Eve. So all people
carry their guilt and because of that, we are all sinners. But the Lord breaks
this pattern and is born without the sin of Adam and Eve and without their
guilt.
3) Jesus had to be fully man so that He was able to die, for
God, by nature, cannot die. This is why God the Son assumed human flesh, so
that He could die upon the cross to atone for all your sins. And while He had
to be fully man, He also had to be sinless. If He had sin, first, He wouldn’t
be God in human flesh, and second, His sacrifice upon the cross would not have
been good for the whole world. The Lord taught the Old Testament Israelites
this by the sacrifices He demanded. When an Israelite bought a lamb for
sacrifice, when a family picked out a lamb to be their Passover Lamb, that lamb
was always to be spotless and without blemish. The Lord legislated that so that
Israel would learn to expect THE Passover lamb of the ages to be pure, without
the blemish of sin. In the incarnation, the Lord provides this miraculous way
to give God the Son human flesh without the taint of sin, so that He could be
our perfect and spotless sacrifice for all our sins. That’s why St. John points
to Jesus in John 1:29 and says, “Behold,
the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!” And St. Paul teaches
us this also when he writes in 1 Corinthians 5:7, “For indeed Christ, our Passover, was
sacrificed for us.” The Christ comes into the world through the power of
the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary to show us that He is in every
way like us, fully man, yet without sin, so that we see Him also as fully God
in His sacrifice upon the cross.
4) But God works this great work not
only to show His almighty power. For He wants to be known to us not chiefly as
almighty, but as merciful. The Incarnation of God the Son in
human flesh shows us God’s mercy. It is because of this incarnation that Christ
is called “Immanuel”, that is, “God with us.” This child is not God with us as
He is with all believers, dwelling in our hearts by faith, along with the
Father and the Holy Ghost. This child is not God with us as God was with the
ancient Israelites, dwelling in the Tabernacle and later Solomon’s Temple. The
child born of Mary is called Immanuel, God with us, because the child is God
Himself who has taken the form of a servant, assumed complete human nature to
save every part of human nature from the power of sin, death, and the devil. He
is called Immanuel, God with us, because in Jesus, God the Son is with us in
the flesh to bear our sins and be our savior. That’s why Gabriel tells Mary, “You will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and
shall call His name JESUS” (Luke 1:31). The same angel
tells Joseph in a dream what that means. Gabriel tells Joseph that Mary “will bring forth a Son, and you shall call
His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). God is with us, incarnate, in
our flesh, to save His people from their sins by dying upon the cross to atone
for the sins of the world as the Lamb of God who is spotless and without
blemish. God is with us for this singular purpose, to redeem us from sin by His
death on the cross, to free us from death by His resurrection from the grave,
and to destroy the power the devil has over us by forgiving our sins by faith.
5) The
Lord shows His almighty power and His mercy to sinners in the incarnation. He
also teaches us the faith which justifies sinners and forgives sins. God shows us what faith looks like. Mary
curiously wonders how all this can be. But her curiosity is not unbelief as
Zacharias’ was last week. Mary wonders how this all could happen, but she does
not let her lack of understanding hold her back from accepting the angel’s
words as true. This is the faith that God desires from each of you. It is also
the very faith that God gives to each of you as well, for faith is a gift of
God, not a decision or conclusion we arrive at by ourselves. Since we are born
sinful, we could never made that decision the right way. But God shows His
mercy to us yet again, but giving us the faith that He requires, working that
faith in our hearts through the hearing of the Word of God. Just as Mary’s
faith, which accepts the Word of God as true and firmly believes it, was a gift
from God, so that not even Mary can boast, so our faith is a gracious gift from
God. Just as Mary’s faith was worked through the Word of God spoken by the
angel Gabriel, so your faith in Christ is worked through your hearing of the
Gospel. Faith believes God’s Word, even when we can’t understand how these things
can be. Mary shows us that faith, as a gift from God, takes God at His Word,
that He is true, and that He will fulfill every word He gives because every
word He gives is for us and our salvation. So
we see God’s almighty power in the incarnation, but we also see His mercy to
us, for He graciously bestows upon us poor sinners everything needed for our
salvation: our spotless lamb, His perfect sacrifice, and even the faith
which believes, accepts, and treasures these things for our salvation. For
this, let us give thanks to God. Amen
May the peace of God which passes
human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus.
Amen.