Sermon for Christmas 1/Name of Jesus, January
1, 2023
Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for our sins
to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and
Father—to whom be the glory forever and ever.
Amen.
Luke 2:21-24 21After eight days passed, when
the child was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given by the angel
before he was conceived in the womb. 22When
the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they
brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. 23(As it is
written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male will be called holy to
the Lord.”) 24And they came to offer a sacrifice according to what
was said in the law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” (EHV)
Everything according to
law accomplished for you.
Dear fellow redeemed,
“You
are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their
sins.” (Matthew 1:21) So came the
command to Joseph from the angel of the Lord.
According to the Mosaic Law, every Israelite boy was to be circumcised on
the eighth day after birth. There were
no exceptions among believers. Thus, we
remember Jesus’ circumcision on New Year’s Day, the eighth day after the day we
celebrate Jesus’ birth according to the way the Jews counted the days.
Circumcision was the sign given to Abraham to
confirm faith in God’s covenant of salvation with Abraham. Thus, when God rescued Abraham’s descendants
out of slavery in Egypt, and then gave His law to Moses on the mountain,
circumcision was again included in the commands to show the world that the
people of this nation were God’s elect.
Not being circumcised indicated that a man wasn’t a part of God’s
people, so any who neglected that rite were in effect cutting themselves off
from the salvation God planned to provide through one precious Seed of Abraham.
Now, the One to whom all God’s promises pointed
had entered our world. This Child of
Mary, conceived in her by the Holy Spirit, had no sin of His own, so
consequently, He had no sin from which He needed to be saved. Jesus inherited no sin from a human father
from which He needed redemption. Jesus
didn’t need the Savior God had promised Abraham, therefore for Himself, He had
no need to be circumcised. However,
Jesus did not enter our world for His own benefit. He came to redeem you and me, so in Jesus, we
find Everything according to law accomplished for
you.
To His disciples, later, Jesus said, “Do not
think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy them but to fulfill
them.” (Matthew 5:17) At that point,
Jesus was not speaking specifically about the law of circumcision, but rather,
about every last detail of God’s instruction for our lives and His plan for our
salvation. Jesus came that we might be
set free from the law that had bound us since the fall into sin. In reality, all law is given to maintain
peace in a sinful world.
We usually think of peace on earth, peace among
people, nations, and different ethnicities.
However, the main point of everything Jesus did was to gain peace
between us and our Creator. That peace had
been ruined by sin, and every sin committed breaks our peace with God.
As was the custom, Jesus was circumcised at
eight days old. Some might assume Mary
and Joseph made the decision. However,
nothing happened to Jesus that day that He didn’t intend. God put Jesus into human flesh so that He
might live in perfect obedience to all of God’s will and all of God’s law for
mankind. Thus, Jesus’ blood was spilled,
even when He was an infant, so that you and I would be counted in complete
harmony with God’s commands.
Now, maybe you think you are doing a good job
of obeying the law. Yet, there is not
one person in this room that can claim to be obeying God’s instruction
perfectly. There is not one of us that
doesn’t at times question why we don’t just go our own way. In fact, there is not one person here who
doesn’t regularly go astray. So, why do
we need Jesus to be circumcised? Because
Jesus was fulfilling all that God had commanded and promised so that we could
be counted holy.
On that day when Jesus was cut for you and me,
they called His name, Jesus. No big
deal, right? Babies get named all the
time. However, Jesus was given this name
because He came to make its meaning real.
The name Jesus means “The Lord saves.”
From the fall into sin, God had promised salvation. Now, trust me, God was not slow to keep His
promise. In fact, God had a very
carefully laid out plan to work salvation for all people. Paul wrote in the letter to the Galatian
congregation, “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son to be born
of a woman, so that he would be born under the law, in order to redeem those
under the law, so that we would be adopted as sons.” (Galatians 4:4-5)
Every moment of Jesus’ life was dedicated to
the work His name claims. Not one moment
was spent with His mind wandering to unnecessary or unholy thoughts. Not one minute of Jesus’ life on earth was
spent in something less than God-pleasing service. Oh how I wish I could be so focused on doing
my work that nothing ever distracted me.
Now, you could assume that those distractions
so common to so many of us are simply rest breaks, or lapses in judgment, or
even ordinary entertainments. And
sometimes they are. The difference is
Jesus was never betrayed by His flesh.
He never betrayed His Father’s will.
Jesus never once lost sight of His goal to save sinners like you and
me. Therefore, Jesus lived in perfect
obedience to every commandment God had laid out for the world, to the law
written in our hearts at creation, to every ceremonial law put on Israel’s
worship life, and to every civil law imposed upon society by Judea’s Roman
overlords. Jesus was the complete
opposite of the rebel or the laggard.
Then, there is me, and likely you, how many
sins are we only hoping no one knows about?
How much guilt hangs heavy over our heads? How many regrets do we have about how we have
treated others? Jesus had none of
that. Yet, for you and me, Jesus was
willing to be born as a Man, raised in near poverty in a dusty backwards town,
never owning any home of His own, never having any apparent earthly honor or authority,
and finally, be falsely accused of sins He couldn’t and wouldn’t commit so that
He would be brutalized and whipped, and nailed to a cross to bleed again for
you and me, as He gave His innocent life to pay the penalty our sins and guilt
deserved.
We see in our short Gospel lesson, here, that
Jesus was presented to the Lord at the time of their purification. Forty days after the birth of a boy, the
Mosaic code required the mother to bring an offering to the Lord for her
purification. In the case of a firstborn
son, the child belonged to the Lord, and it was required that the child be
redeemed by the parents. Jesus was not
redeemed as most Israelite boys would have been. Instead, God’s only-begotten Son became the
Firstborn Son promised and destined to serve God’s plan to win favor between
God and the human race. Therefore, Jesus
remained set apart to do the will of God—which was repairing the damage sin had
done to our relationship with the Almighty.
The point of this text is to show the world
that not one thing was missed in Jesus’ assignment as our Rescuer. Because we are born with a sinful nature and
with the curse of sin hanging over our heads, we could never save
ourselves. We could never right the
corruption that so deeply corrupts our entire being. But, because God is love, it was never His
intention to allow the devil to steal away the whole human race. Therefore, God committed Himself to winning
back a family of believers who put their trust in Him alone. To accomplish that mission, God made His
only-begotten Son the perfect Child who grew up to be the perfect Man who never
once displeased our Creator, God Almighty, so that Jesus could be the perfect
Lamb of God who would be sacrificed to take away the sins of the world.
And because we were lost, spiritually dead,
enemies of God at birth, God gave the world His Word of reconciliation in the Bible
and sent His Spirit in the Word to raise up for Himself a Kingdom of saints who
He called out of this dark and dreary land.
All of this was prophesied in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, we see it being carried
out. With His holy life and sacrificial
death on the cross, God’s Son won our redemption and our freedom from sin,
death, the devil, and the grave, and then He sent out His disciples to carry
the Good News of what Jesus has done for us so that many former lost,
disheartened sinners might be brought to believe in Jesus and receive
forgiveness and life everlasting.
Dear friends, by the Word and the Sacrament of
Baptism, God brought you to believe in Jesus.
By the Gospel and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the Spirit
strengthens and keeps you in that saving faith.
Jesus then promises, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved,
but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16) By His resurrection from the grave, Jesus
shows that He has overcome everything that kept you separated from God. The doors of heaven are now open wide to all
who believe in the Son, because Everything according to law is accomplished
for you. Amen.
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