December 18, 2022                                Text:  Isaiah 7:10-17

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Is God with us?  Is Immanuel here?  This must have been a question of the Boston College football team on November 28, 1942.  They were the top-ranked football team in the nation and that day they were playing Holy Cross before 41,000 at Fenway Park.  Boston College had only allowed 19 points in eight games.  Holy Cross was a three-touchdown underdog.  That day the Holy Cross Crusaders defeated Boston College 55-12.  The largest margin of defeat by a top-ranked team in college football.  A loss.  A defeat.  A bad day for the Boston College team.  Because of this defeat the team cancelled a victory party that night at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub.  That same night, 492 people died when the Cocoanut Grove caught fire.  The 2nd largest loss of life in a fire in the United States.  

    There are two ways to look at that story.  Some will say God was there because a football defeat saved the lives of many young men.  Some will say He wasn’t there because 492 perished.  How do you see it?

“IS GOD WITH US?”

    If you have a hard time with these questions, you are not alone.  You are not the first to question God’s presence.  There are very few humans who have never questioned God.  It has been ongoing since He brought people into the world.

    God had a great relationship with Adam and Eve.  Walking and talking.  His presence was obvious.  Once the serpent led them into sin, they started to doubt His reliability.

    Moses ran into this problem when he went to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God.  The people got fidgety and began to question the presence of God.  By Exodus 32 they came to the amazing conclusion that God didn’t exist so they had to make their own god – the golden calf.  When God didn’t respond, they concluded He was no longer there.

    This is what we see in our text from Isaiah 7.  King Ahaz doubted God was with him.  God had promised to be with his people forever but now they are surrounded by foreign armies.  They looked around and were not sold on God’s presence.

    Enter Isaiah.  His message was short and direct to King Ahaz.  God is with you.  He said so.  Believe, man.  God even goes to this extreme.  He invites Ahaz to ask him for a sign.  But Ahaz wouldn’t do it.  He had already lost his faith.  He had already put his faith in a “golden calf”; this time it was an alliance with a foreign army.

    That is when Isaiah spoke those words that Matthew would quote seven hundred years later.  You don’t trust God enough to ask for a sign?  “The Lord himself will give you a sign.  Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (v. 14)

    How many times do we act like King Ahaz?  Is God with me?  We have been baptized into His name.  We hear His Word of assurance constantly.  We see Him working through His means in the world.  You and I are the most blessed people in the history of the world. 
It should be an easy call, but we let our eyes deceive us.  “The world’s a crappy place.”  “Where is God now that I have cancer?”  “He can’t be here.  Come hang out with my family for a day.”  The serpent has us believing that God isn’t reliable.  “Take a look around man, you must be a fool.”  Are we?

    Sinful fools maybe but can’t we see the Lord at work?  A child born to a maiden?  C’mon God can’t you do better than this?  Immanuel appeared as Jesus.  This child was and is the eternal Son of God.  He is God’s sign.  He is God’s proof.  He is God’s guarantee that He with us.  This is why Christmas is big.  God with us – He came to save us.

    In 1946 at the Los Alamos Atomic Laboratory Dr. Louis Alexander Slotin and seven co-workers were experimenting with plutonium.  Harmless by itself but deadly in certain combinations.  A chain reaction started.  The room filled with radioactivity.  Slotin acted at once.  He separated the pieces of plutonium with his bare hands.  He died nine days later.  His actions saved his colleagues.

    When God became Immanuel He didn’t come into the world as a safe, sterile laboratory experiment to study how things were down here.  He became part of our world – – our sinful, corrupt world, dangerous, dripping with death.  And our sin and death He got all over His hands, knowing it will kill Him – and save us.

    God is with you.  You know that because of your Baptism.  As you scurry from one errand to another, one gathering and then another.  Remember your Baptism – in the way you treat clerks and other shoppers, in the way you treat visiting loved ones that may be hard to love, in the way you select gifts for others.  Your Baptism is a sign that babe is the manger is not only the Savior of the world.  He is your Savior from sin.  

    Think back to the opening illustration.  Was God there?  Yes.  In good times and bad times.  In wins and losses.  In life and death.  Always with us . . . until we are with Him.

                                                Amen.    

December 14, 2022 – Advent                                    Text:  Isaiah 9:6

Dear Friends in Christ,

    Are we at peace tonight?  In one way, yes.  Our church is pretty peaceful in the evening.  The lights of Advent/Christmas, the cross, the banner, the fellowship of our fellow members.  We can come into this sanctuary and have a peaceful time.

    How far to do we have to venture before that peace starts to wane?  Economic uncertainty, government honesty and encroachment, conflict in the home, random killings.  Take a wider path and nations continue to fight nations.  There has never been a time in our lifetimes where countries have not been at war with one another.  We have men and women around the world trying to keep the peace.  It’s a battle.

    We need some help, but not from human beings who have shunned God and therefore find themselves jumping from one failed solution to another.  There is only One who can give us help.  We are preparing to celebrate His birth.

“THIS CHILD IS . . . THE PRINCE OF PEACE”

    Let’s fix these words on our hearts this evening as they continue to build and intensify.  “See that no one leads you astray.  For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars.  See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place (must, not might), but the end is not yet.  For nations will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.  All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.” (Matt. 24:7-8)

    Why do men and women continue to think we can find peace within ourselves?  Is heaven on earth within the grasp of man?  Do these words of Jesus say anything close to that?  Has the Camp David Peace Accord or Détente or any other various peace agreements held on forever?  The first peace treaty was in 3100 BC and the latest in 2021.  In between have been thousands of such pacts.  Do you see the peace that they strive for?

    Have you seen this bumper sticker?  “It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.”  What our technology has done is exacerbate the flaws of humanity.  It intrudes into our personal lives, created a massive arena for gossip and slander, distracts communication and thought, and has dumbed down worship and growth in the Word of God.  In the last month I have had two instances of church business.  What used to take a one-minute phone call now takes 20 minutes on a computer and the frustration of creating another password.  Why, oh why, must be complicate things?  Peace, hah!

    We need these words of Jesus.  “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  Not as the world gives do I give to you.” (John 14:27). We need His peace.  When we stand before God we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  We are enemies of God, separated from God by our sin.  We have no peace within ourselves apart from Christ.

    Christ intervened.  “But God shows his love for us in this, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  God is at peace with us.  For the sake of Christ’s suffering and death, the wrath against us because of sin has been removed.  We are no longer an enemy of God.  

    Commentator Gary P. Baumler writes:  “Jesus’ peace is not the same as the world’s peace.  It doesn’t depend on harmony between countries and tranquility in families.  It isn’t as fragile as the next temper flare-up or grab for power.  It isn’t disturbed by plans gone awry.  Even Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture, and crucifixion couldn’t cancel it.  Jesus’ peace calms troubled hearts and makes fearful hearts confident.  His peace transcends human understanding and sustains us in all conditions.  His peace keeps us at one with God and serene in our salvation.  We need not be afraid or overcome by troubled hearts.”

    How significant are the words of Paul?  “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”  Jesus’ peace is beyond us.  It is above man’s mind.  It is grace.  Though still sinful and at times ignoring God and our walk with Him, because of the work of Jesus, He is always there and He always loves us.

    Of course, we still live in the moment.  Our lives can be chaotic.  The world a wicked place.  Shortly after the Apostle Paul was stoned at Lystra, the disciples declared to the church then – and now – “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”  No commentary needed.  Just our ears.

    As King David wrote, “I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…”.  We venture through it day by day.  Yet, our Prince of Peace, who has gone ahead of us says, “I have overcome the world.”  He has.  The Prince of Peace says, “Let not your hearts be troubled.”  It is the Prince of Peace who says to our still sinful ways, “…whoever believes…is not condemned.”

    Finally, it is this Prince of Peace who enters our daily walk in the valley of the shadow of death and enables us to say, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

                            Amen.       

December 11, 2022                                        Text:  Isaiah 35:1-10

Dear Friends in Christ,

    As I said in the sermon last week and as most of you know I have a certain fear of dogs.  So, picture the Lueck four in Eldorado Canyon State Park in Colorado this past summer.  It was a beautiful day to hike in the Lord’s creation.  We pick our first trail and as we begin up the mountain there’s a sign:  “watch out for mountain lions.”  “Uh, I’ll be in the car.”  No, I am going up this mountain.  One thing to do is make noise.  I talk the whole way – loudly.  We walk two trails that day – no mountain lions.  Thank you, Lord.  It was one of the best days of 2022.

    The wilderness is a dangerous place.  I just watched a recent show on park rangers.  The things they do to rescue people is amazing.  People getting lost, suffering heat exhaustion, encountering wildlife and going off the beaten path.

    Our text today uses “wilderness” as a metaphor, an illustration for the dangerous things we live with that are very real.  The point of the text is that Christ’s coming delivers us from all those things.

“GOD BRINGS LIFE TO THE WILDERNESS”

The wilderness is a great illustration of how difficult life is in a fallen world.  Isaiah pictures burning sand, jackals, lions, ravenous beasts.  God’s people in the Old Testament knew the wilderness as dangerous, populated by deadly animals, water is scarce, and crops don’t grow.  It is easy to get lost.  But the wilderness is also where God’s people learn to trust.  In the wilderness God carried them and gave them water and guarded them and cared for them.

What is your wilderness?  Living a lie?  Personal shame?  A relationship on the outs?  Family members ostracizing you?  Lost on a trail?  Scared of what’s around the next corner?  When you travel this wilderness of life there are serious dangers.  We need deliverance.  We need rescue.  Hello, can someone send a park ranger?

God comes into this wilderness with life-restoring vengeance.  Christ’s coming will make all things right again.  Visualize what Isaiah wants us to see.  The wilderness will flow and flower.  The sufferers of personal “wildernesses” will rejoice in health and vitality.  These were fulfilled in part in Jesus’ ministry as we see in today’s gospel lesson.  They will be fully realized when Jesus returns in glory on the Last Day.  Life, health, joy forever.

The heart of the promise is in verse 4, “Be strong; fear not!  Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.  He will come and save you.”  He will exercise vengeance on his enemies – sin, death, and the devil.  Because of Christ’s coming and going to the cross we are no longer God’s enemies.  We have been baptized into His death.  It is relief and rescue for us as God brings life to our wilderness.  He forgives our lies and shame.  He can restore broken relationships with friends and family.  He can lead you on the trail of life.  He is with you always – even when frightened of turning the next corner of your journey.

I know.  That day in the canyon I trusted His leading.  He kept me alert.  We had to turn some tricky, rocky corners that day but every time we did it was another “wow” moment of what God had made.  After a while you almost forgot the danger.  That is God’s presence.

We celebrate that presence again this Christmas.  It is beyond the superficial feelings that characterize many Christmas playlists.  Christian joy is the natural response of the people of God who are beginning to enjoy the fruits of a creation that will be restored to paradise.

This joy is so different from the world we live in.  In our eternal world there is no more “sorrow” and “sighing.”  No more weak hands or feeble knees.  No more blindness, deafness, lameness, or muteness.  No thirst.  No ravenous beasts to devour which means no more “watch out for mountain lions” – woo hoo!  We will gather together in the city of God in joy and gladness forever.  

Christmas provides us a glimpse.  It is partial and temporary.  Give thanks for these moments during this holy season.  It is a dim preview of the full rejoicing we will have with the return of Jesus.

As a church and as individuals we proclaim this promise to the weak and feeble.  “Be strong.  Fear not.  God will come and save you.”  Tell the anxious you know that God will come with vengeance . . . He will bring life to their wilderness, to save them.

No matter where you are placed, you can tell of these saving promises of God.  Luther calls this the “mutual conversation and consolation of the brethren.”  These promises encourage others.  In our rejoicing the joy becomes contagious.  Wouldn’t it be nice if this was the new pandemic?  All of us feeling the joy of knowing Christ as Lord and Savior.

Where in the wilderness could someone use your aid?  Who is stuck on a mountain of apathy?  Who has left the trail of their faith?  The Lord has given you, in his strength, the joy and privilege of speaking uplifting, joyful words to those struggling in their own personal wilderness.  Christ is coming with vengeance to make right that wilderness.  He will come and save you because God brings life to the wilderness.

                            Amen.