Sunday, December 9, 2012

Advent 2


Preparation for a Beautiful Construction
One summer, when I was in college, my family took the opportunity to travel through Europe.  One of the places we stopped along the way a castle in Vienne Austria.  The castle is called Schonnbrun, or “beautiful spring”.  The castle gets its name from the natural underground spring that feeds the reflecting pools and ponds on the palace grounds and in the gardens.  The palace is palatial and the décor in rich.  Gold leaf in the paint on the walls; each room filled with sculptures and words of art.  Every piece of furniture was rich and ornate, each one hand crafted and one of a kind.  The entire palace is a livable (although just barely) work of art.  Walking through the palace, you couldn’t help but be impressed with its beauty. 

 If you turn in the pages of the Old Testament to the book of 2 Chronicles, you will get the description of a structure even more richly appointed and more carefully crafted.  The book records for us Solomon’s construction of a temple, a place for the worship of the true God.  Solomon’s father David began collecting the building materials even before Solomon began his reign and there were stores of gold and precious jewels and fine metals and costly wood all stockpiled for use in this house that would serve as the Lord’s throne room among his people.   It was a palace fit for Heaven’s King where he would come to rule amidst his people.  And there, at his atonement seat he would give out mercy to those who came seeking his forgiveness and favor.

Give the plans for either structure to any modern day contractor and you are sure to have him scratching his head.  The work and the effort to construct either building would be staggering.  And not just because of the materials and skill of the craftsmanship.  The place where each was built is its own obstacle.  The Palace Schonnbrun was built in a marsh – the soggy site had to be filled in with load after load of soil so that the palace could have a firm foundation.  And Solomon’s temple?  Well, that was constructed on the top of a mountain.  Can you imagine the work needed to be done to carve off the top of that mountain to create a level place to begin laying stone? 

As challenging a construction project as either one of these examples might have been – there is an even greater project; greater in its beauty and appointment, but also greater in its challenge to build and prepare.  It is a temple built by the Lord himself, a place for him to dwell.   But it is not built with brick and mortar, chisel and stone.  Instead this is a temple of human flesh.  A temple of the heart no less, where the Lord himself sends his Spirit to dwell.  And that temple is the heart of the Christian.  It is you!  You are a temple of the Holy Spirit; or so says St. Paul, by virtue of the price paid for you by Jesus himself and by virtue of your baptism that gives to you God’s Spirit.  And if Solomon spared no expense to construct his temple so that it would be worthy for the Lord and appointed richly enough for a Heaven’s King, then certainly this temple is no exception.

Now, our sermon this morning is really a sermon in two parts.  The first part, where we have come so far, the temple of the Spirit – the walking Spiritual mansions that you are; well, in all truth, that is the second part of our message today.  The first part is to talk about the construction of this temple.

You see, as we said, when Solomon built his temple he had to shave how many yards of dirt from the top of Mount Zion?  The thought of it is staggering.  All of it done before the days of our gigantic trucks and tractors that can carry away several tons of dirt at a time.  Likewise, When Schonnbrun was built, its engineers had to import load after load of dirt to create a suitable site  before they could begin construction.  The same can be said for you.  Within each Christian, the Lord builds for himself a temple.  But right off the bat you’re not quite ready for that construction to begin.  Just like Solomon’s temple and the Venetian Palace  needed to have the landscape rearranged  before they were ready for construction to begin, the Lord does that identical thing with us.
Rearranging the Landscape

When any building project is begun the site is prepared through the work of the engineers who find and fill the low spots and to cut down the high spots.  When the Lord purposes to prepare the hearts of people, like you and me, to receive his construction plan, the Lord does this work through the preacher armed with God’s Word of Law. 

We can see this process occur so clearly in our Gospel text.  The Lord himself was on his way to construct his kingdom; heaven’s king had come to earth and he brought with him the reign of heaven; but before construction could begin the Lord sent his engineer to bulldoze – to push and pull down.  To make ready the hearts of the people to receive God’s gift of grace.

This is what the Gospel writer is telling us in our text this morning.  Luke tell us that John, “Went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” And then Luke proceeds to quote verses from Old Testament prophets to give us further understanding of the work that John was coming to do.  John was, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” (Luke 3:3-6 ESV)

Luke goes on to tell us the content of John’s message, this Word given by God.  It was a word of judgment.  Fiery and pointed.  John’s word condemned each and every sin of each and every sinner.  His message was terrifying. 

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Luke 3:7-9 ESV)

The message is clear.  The king is coming.  He is coming to you.  He is bringing with him his right and righteous judgment and each person, each man woman and child from the least to the greatest, will be condemned.  Repent.  John came to rearrange the landscape in us so that we would be ready to receive the kingdom.

You see, it is the Lord’s intention to build in you a temple, rich and glorious.  A temple that exceeds even the beauty of the one built by Solomon.  But you and I – in our natural state - we are far from ready for construction to begin.  Our hearts must be prepared. 

·         We are sometimes too high and lofty – prideful and overconfident, convinced we deserve to be the dwelling place of the Lord. 

·         And then there are the other times that we are too low, choosing to “slum it” as we test the boundaries to see just how low and down in the dirt we can get.

·         And then there are the times that where the Lord demands we be straight and true, we choose the crooked and deceptive path. 

·         And finally, where the Lord would have us be smooth – kind and generous and loving, our demeanor can get a bit rough; jostling and jarring those we run across. 

And so the Lord levels us off.  He sends his preachers out in to the world to pull us down from our lofty heights, to pull us out of the mud, straighten us up and level us off.   The Lord sends out his prophets.
Building the Lord's Temple... In You
The Lord’s prophets preach repentance.  Our Gospel text tells us that John came to preach repentance.  The goal wasn’t just come to cut everyone down to size, to condemn and criticize, he did just have in mind to make people feel badly about themselves.  The work of the preacher is to help you to see yourself for who you really are, that is to say, to see yourself the way the Lord sees you.  John preached God’s Word and God’s Word says about us that we are sinners.  But there is a purpose for preaching this message.

In the same way that a bulldozer doesn’t bulldoze just for the fun of pushing around the dirt, the Lord doesn’t send his preachers to preach God’s law into our hearts just for the fun of condemning us.  No, this is only the first stage in the Lord’s construction plan.  The Lord is building out of you a beautiful temple.

The message preached by John was repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  Our small catechism says that repentance has two parts, contrition (or sorrow for sin) and faith.  Contrition is that condemnation part, where we see the truth of who we really are in the preaching of God’s law.  But that is only part, only the first half.  The temple still has not been built.  After contrition comes faith.

You see, Johns work was to prepare hearts to meet Jesus.  And as John was out baptizing in the wilderness, low and behold Jesus came.  Jesus, the perfect, sinless Son of God, stepped down into the water.  In that action the King became a commoner, the clean climbed down into the muck and the mire, and he was anointed with our sin.  At that moment Jesus took on the work of living as one of us in our place so that when this work was done he could be nailed to the cross for us in our place.  The construction of the temple built for you by Jesus himself was built for you by the absolutely perfect and clean and without sin life that Jesus lived for you in your place.  Throughout the life of Jesus, as he was teaching and healing and helping and forgiving and loving and serving he was collecting the building materials, the costly provisions that would go into the construction of you, dear Christian.  And then, when all that was finished, when the final work was complete, the one thing left to be done the final gift to be given that Jesus would prepare for you was the gift of his own life.  Jesus gave his life into death as he died on the cross for you.

The other half of repentance is faith.  The other half of repentance is to look onto the cross of Jesus, see him dying there in his suffering and see on that cross the one who died in your place.  The other half of repentance is simply to say of Jesus as he hangs that He did this for me. 

And then its gone.  The sin that ruffles and rumbles your heart and makes you unfit to be the Spirits temple, why, that is gone.  It is carried away in a moment never to be seen again.  The Lord has made you ready and prepared, the Lord has built out of you a beautiful temple, a palace from which he comes to reign and rule, from where he hands out his gifts of love and mercy and service and help and healing, both for you but also through you.  You serve as God’s heart and hands and help in the place where you live because you are his holy temple. 

There are some construction projects that far outshine all others – that are world renown for their beauty and ingenuity and style and costliness.  But you, my friend, my fellow Christian brothers and sisters you far outshine them all, because Christ has built on you a temple that is fit even for him to live. 

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Adent 2 2012


“It was the best of times.  It was the worst of times.”  So begins Charles Dickens’ classic novel A Tale of Two Cities.  A statement that seemingly contradicts itself with both the positive and the negative.  Thoughts of hope and simultaneously thoughts of misery.  Best and worst all at the same time.

We might have similar inclinations with our Old Testament text for today.  “Behold” it says. “The days are coming.” It says. “When I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the House of Judah.” 

This is hopeful, is it not?  The Lord fulfilling his promise.  The Lord making good on the Word that he gave to his people Israel and Judah so long ago.

“In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

Here is where it starts to get a little iffy.  Here is a statement that is at once hopeful and frightening all at the same time.  The Lord will do justice and righteousness in the land.

We can’t stand injustice.  When we see a person getting taken advantage of, when we ourselves are taken advantage of it bothers us.  It hurts your conscience.  That part of you that knows right and wrong, when it sees wrong occur there is a sense that someone has to make it right.  Do you know what I mean? 

Has anyone ever done wrong to you.  I can remember when I was a young boy we went away for the weekend to go camping.  We got back and our garage door was open.  The side window was smashed.  My bicycle, which was my most prized possession at the time, had been taken.  I loved that bike, rode it every day, and to have someone take it, that was hurtful.  But even worse than that was the notion that someone had been in our garage to take our things.  Someone had come in to do evil in our house.  That stung.  It felt strange to walk into our house knowing that an evil person had been there, knowing that the sanctity of our personal space had been violated.  Have you ever felt that way?  It is hurtful, it is unsettling to have someone do evil to you.

To hear this message,  “In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David he shall do righteousness and justice in the land.”  Why this means that those people who do unrighteousness and those people who do injustice – they are going to be caught.  They are going to be rounded up and punished.  They will be made to pay for the wickedness they have done.  Their reign of terror will come to an end because there will be a good and righteous king, a righteous branch sitting on the throne of David his father.

Oh, but it is the best of times, it is the worst of times.  Because while this righteous branch is doing righteousness and justice in the land, while he out rounding up the wicked and giving them their due, he is searching out the wrong doers and not one will get away.  Each one will be punished and each one will receive the justice that is coming to them.

It is a sly trick of our sinful nature that we are keenly aware of the wrongs that have been done to us.  I can tell you of an experience I had almost 30 years ago when my family was robbed, when thieves  broke into my house and stole from me.  Can I give the same detail, relay the same experience when I was the perpetrator?  What about when I was the offending party, can I still relay the same story with the same sort of emotion?  Can you?  Not likely. 

Break up a fight between two people and as each one cools his or her temper he will tell you with great detail what the other person did, why he was right in throwing that punch – the other person in the fight, why they had it coming.  He deserved it.  I couldn’t just stand by and take it.

We are very good at explaining away and justifying our sin.  Giving all the reasons why we did what we did, why it was not so bad, why we had a good reason or even a right.  “Situational ethics”, you know.

When the righteous branch comes to ferret out the unjust and the unrighteous, he will eventually get to you.  He will discover your sin and he will find out your unrighteousness.  He will know the truth and nothing will be hidden from his all-seeing and all-knowing eye and everything will be laid bare before him.  He will see through your thinly disguised excuses.  He will see the holes in your feeble attempt at self-defense and self-justification.  He will administer justice and judgment to you for the sins you have committed.

It will be the best of times.  It will be the worst of times.

It will be the worst of times.

It will be the worst of time, yet it will be the best of times.

It will be the best of times because this text is a text of hope.  The Lord gave this word to his prophet Jeremiah when Judah and Jerusalem was under attack from an enemy, a foe that was too great and too powerful for them.  One of the history’s great empires – the Babylonian empire had set its sights on them.  That little corner of the world that was a crossroads of commerce was valuable for controlling trade routes, merchants on their way to Egypt would stop through Palestine.  And King Nebuchadnezzar wanted a piece of that pie.  He sent a great and powerful army to go take it.

Now the Israelits and Judah – they were the Lord’s people.  And the Lord was and is powerful.  He can singlehandedly change the direction of a battle, a war, an empire, an entire era or epoch of history.  And the Lord had chosen this little Israel and Judah to be his own.  And so he fought for them.  He defended them and he protected them and he kept them safe from outside invaders.

The Israelites were proud of this.  It gave them confidence and strength.  They were bold.  Yet not bold in their valor or their righteousness or their nobility.  They became bold in their sin.  The defiled themselves with false gods and evil.  So much that the Lord had grown tired of them.  The Lord was going to punish them and he was going to use Nebuchadnezzar to do his righteousness and justice.  The people were going to receive their just rewards.  We must hear this justice and understand this righteousness and know this character of our God.

But even while the Lord is planning for the destruction of Jerusalem and the slavery of the people he called his own, he was at the same time planning their restoration.  How he would  bring them back, how he would rebuild them, how he would restore them, how he would once again make them powerful and great as a people, and how he would once again establish his King and his Kingdom. 

A righteous branch would come.  This Righteous Branch would save Judah and Jerusalem.  This Righteous Branch would be king who would cause his people to dwell securely.  This Righteous Branch is Jesus.

You see Jesus is at once the best of times and the worst of times.  He is God’s favor and restoration and hope while simultaneously executing and doing justice and righteousness in the land.  All of God’s right and righteous judgment all of the punishment that each and every sinner deserves for each and every sin, Jesus punishes that sin.  Jesus executes justice and righteousness for that wrong doing.  Jesus makes sure that every sinner has his day in court and his date with the executioner.  But the one punished is not the one who committed the crime.  The guilty party the offending party is set free from his guilt, set free from her guilt.  Instead the innocent is punished as a substitute, as a surrogate, as a stand in.  The guilty is set free, because Jesus himself receive the punishment.

This is unheard of.  The king, the judge, the doer of justice – he gets the punishment.  He calls out the sinner, he calls out the sin, he calls out the punishment and orders the executioner to punish – not you but himself?  Yet this is what the Lord does.  Justice is done, but it is done to the sinless one, the Son of God who permits himself to be hung on a cross, to be a curse so that we can  go free.

The worst of times for Jesus.  The best of times for you.

The Best of times for you because you have been given, you are on the receiving end of the best prize in all of history.  The world was enthralled with the 588 million dollar power ball prize that was awarded this past week to the hard working couple in Missouri and some unknown person in Arizona.  This was reportedly the largest jackpot in the history of the lottery.  Yet this prize is worthless in comparison to the prize of faith and forgiveness given to the believer in Christ. 

Because the Lord, the Righteous One, the King who sits on Heaven’s throne call you with the name that he himself is called.  Yes, that’s right,  the Lord who has defeated his enemies once and for all time and all eternity and who has been given all authority in heaven and one earth call this name of power and honor on you.  This is the Name by which Judah and Jerusalem, by which the people of God will be called – The Lord our Righteousness.  That is powerful.  That is baptismal.  The name of God being called, being assigned, being given to a sinner.  Can there be any greater gift?

Dear friends, the worst of times is reserved for even the smallest of sinners. But the best of times is granted to even the least in the Kingdom of Heaven.  That gift is yours.
Amen.