Sermon for Epiphany 1/Baptism of our Lord,
January 8, 2023
Blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places. Amen.
Isaiah 42:1-7 Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my
chosen one in whom I delight. I am
placing my Spirit on him. He will
announce a just verdict for the nations.
2He will not cry out.
He will not raise his voice. He
will not make his voice heard in the street.
3A bent reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he
will not snuff out. He will faithfully
bring forth a just verdict. 4He
will not burn out, and he will not be broken, until he establishes justice on
the earth. The coastlands will wait for
his law. 5This is what the
true God says, the Lord who creates the heavens and stretches them out, who
spreads out the earth and everything that it produces, who gives breath to the
people on it and life to those who walk on it.
6I am the Lord. I have called you in righteousness. I will hold on to your hand, and I will guard
you. I will appoint you to be a covenant
for the people, to be a light for the nations, 7to open the eyes of
the blind, to bring the prisoners out from the dungeon, and to bring those who
sit in darkness out of prison. (EHV)
The Lord’s
Servant establishes justice in righteousness.
Dear friends in Christ,
There is
outcry in the streets and social media demanding justice in our times. Yet, these loud voices don’t really want
justice because justice demands accountability, and almost no one truly wants
to be held accountable for bad decisions, poor choices, and immoral or
unethical behavior.
Here and there around the world, there are wars
and uprisings as neighbor fights against neighbor claiming some vague right to
settle grievances or to take property controlled by others. Again, many of those instigating the fights
claim an imagined moral higher ground, while they commit horrible atrocities in
the name of this supposed good.
There is, however, one battle that had to be
fought to bring an end to all hostilities, to bring peace among the warring
parties, to right the grievous wrongs that have infested our world, and to
bring an end to death and misery forever.
In this battle, The Lord’s Servant
establishes justice in righteousness.
Ever since sin entered the world, there has
been a battle raging between mankind and what is good. Because “all have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), only God remained truly good. Everyone else is corrupted by evil desires,
selfish motives, and a lack of knowledge of what is truly good. Because all people had become enemies of the
Creator, they had no desire nor any power to settle this war. Therefore, without divine intervention, all
people would be lost to hell.
However, our Creator is both a jealous God and
the God of love. He has asked, “Do I
really find any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” says the Lord God. “Don’t I want him to turn from his ways and
live?” (Ezekiel 18:23) God both
loves those He created to have a special relationship with Him, and He
jealously fights to rescue us from the deceiver who tried to steal God’s
glory. The apostles later wrote, “The
wages of sin is death,” (Romans 6:23) so “just as it is appointed for
people to die only once and after this comes the judgment, so also Christ was
offered only once to take away the sins of many.” (Hebrews 9:27-28) This is essentially the message of Isaiah’s
prophecy in our sermon text. Isaiah was
given the opportunity to tell people about the promised Savior and the justice
He brings to the world.
The prophecy says, “Here is my servant, whom
I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight.
I am placing my Spirit on him. He
will announce a just verdict for the nations.” Because God loves the world, His response to
our rebellion was not to destroy as one might suppose, but rather, to work out
the salvation of all who will believe in Him.
Therefore, God sent His Son, the Christ, to be His suffering,
sacrificial Servant. That One Man, Jesus,
of human and Divine nature, would win the war that brings us peace.
God placed His Spirit upon Jesus so that
everything Mary’s Son did was holy and acceptable in God’s sight. Jesus’ every thought, word, action, or
inclination was to obey His Father’s will.
Jesus knew that He would be rejected and abused and finally put to death
in order to work out salvation for us, yet He went willingly about that work
without objection. Isaiah was shown
this: “He will not cry out. He will
not raise his voice. He will not make
his voice heard in the street.”
Unlike any ordinary human, Jesus didn’t cry out at the unfairness of His
treatment. He didn’t complain to His
Father in heaven about the evil in His neighbors. Nor, did Jesus ever expect to win the battle
with force of might.
In our world, wars are won with the power of
armies and the shrewdness of those leading the fight. Political battles are won by overpowering
others with the craftiness of words, allegations, promises, and lies. Jesus would win His war against sin, death,
and the devil with submission to God’s will, trust in God’s plan, and humble
unselfishness unlike anything the world had ever seen.
Because God requires that we be holy just as He
is holy, perfect holiness had to be lived by His Son in human flesh. Because Jesus rebuffed every temptation and
resisted any evil put before Him, Jesus was able to stand in judgment before
the world without anyone able to accuse Him of any fault. The most they could claim is that “We have a law, and
according to that law he ought to die, because he claimed to be the Son of
God.” (John 19:7)
Thus, Jesus was put to death because He truly
is the Son of God who stepped in to take our place in punishment for sin. Isaiah’s prophecy was thus fulfilled that “He
will faithfully bring forth a just verdict. He will not burn out, and he will not be
broken, until he establishes justice on the earth.” The just verdict at Jesus’ trial was that He
is the Son of God and perfectly without any sin. However, because we sin, a just verdict
condemned Jesus to die, because “God made him, who did not know sin, to
become sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
(2 Corinthians 5:21)
To His chosen, suffering Servant, God called
out, “I am the Lord. I have called
you in righteousness. I will hold on to
your hand, and I will guard you.” To
do what we could not do, God’s Son came into the world to win us peace with
God. Everything about His life was
designed to meet that goal, and God worked all things throughout history to
make it happen exactly as planned.
Though during His ministry, enemies tried to
silence Jesus, no one could. When some hastily
tried to kill Him, Jesus walked away safe and sound. When the devil tried desperately to trap
Jesus with God’s Word, Jesus was able to flick that troublemaker away with
authority, and the Father sent angels to help Jesus. Then, when it finally looked to the devil and
the world that Jesus had been defeated in death, as men laid His bloodied,
abused body in the grave, the Father was ready to raise Him on the third day,
and just at the promised time, Jesus was raised from the dead, with many
eyewitnesses giving us the assurance and confirmation that He is God’s Son and
the promised Savior of the world. The
world and the devil couldn’t stop Jesus on His mission to pay for our sins, and
the grave couldn’t hold Him when the debt had been paid.
God’s promise to Abraham, “In your seed all
the nations of the earth will be blessed,” (Genesis 22:18), was made true
in Jesus when “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)
God’s covenant with Abraham is our sure hope. Isaiah wrote, “I will appoint you to be a covenant
for the people, to be a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring the prisoners out from the dungeon, and to bring those who sit in
darkness out of prison.” We saw a
foretaste of that in the miracles Jesus performed as He walked this earth. However, the miracles weren’t Jesus’
mission. His mission was to rescue
sinners—you and me included—by living righteousness for us and paying for our
faults, sins, guilt, and shame with His holy, innocent blood.
Still, further miracles followed. Jesus will not be stopped in His mission to
save people from their sins. Once the
payment price was paid, and Jesus returned to heaven in triumph, He sent the
Holy Spirit in Word and Sacrament to call more and more people into His kingdom
of grace. For you and me and millions
more, The Lord’s Servant establishes
justice in righteousness. Making Himself God’s Servant, Jesus did
everything needed to lift sinners out of the poverty and slavery the devil had
imposed upon the human race. Giving His
all to rescue us, Jesus now gives us the joy of knowing God and all His
love. The debt of sin is paid, and
through faith, His righteousness is now credited to those who believe in Jesus.
This morning, we celebrate Jesus’ baptism by
John the Baptist in the Jordan River.
Jesus’ baptism is important, because by His washing in water, Jesus
sanctified our baptisms by which we are connected with Him. Jesus didn’t need to be cleansed of sin,
because He had none. Yet, to fulfill all
righteousness for us, Jesus was baptized by an ordinary mortal to make Baptism
the means by which God would claim sinners for forgiveness and salvation. Paul explains that by that connection of
water and Word poured out upon us in the name of the Triune God, our old selves
were put to death, yet we are raised to life again through faith in Christ
Jesus. (Romans 6:4) Thus, connected with
God’s Servant by the faith Baptism gives, we now have Jesus’ righteousness
covering us, and His promise that we too will be raised from the dead to live
forever in heaven.
Dear friends, the
purchase price to redeem the rebellious and lost has been delivered to our
heavenly Father, and so that we may know and believethat the payment was
sufficient, Jesus continues to give us His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper,
as living proof that His sacrifice as the Lamb of God was made and accepted by
the Father.
Trusting in God’s
mercy for Jesus’ sake, you have confessed your sins and received the sure
promise that all your sins are forgiven in Christ. Now, come forward for the holy meal that
assures you again of the God’s saving grace in Christ Jesus. “Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is everyone who takes refuge in him.”
(Psalms 34:8) The Lord’s Servant
establishes justice in righteousness.
Amen.
Now
may the God of hope fill you with complete joy and peace as you continue to
believe, so that you overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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