[Sermon Archive]

This Week's Sermon THE NATIVITY OF OUR LORD 24 December 2007 "God Is There Upon His Throne" Matthew 1:18-25 LSB Series A Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

Two years ago this month a woman in France receive the first face transplant in the world. She had been savagely attacked by her dog in May of that year, losing her nose, lips, and chin. She had been described by physicians as "gravely disfigured." Two weeks ago this woman appeared on television, the first time she had been seen since the surgeries. She has struggled with tissue rejection and infection, but her image was absolutely remarkable. She could even manage a slight smile. She looks human again. She has a face of which she does not need to be ashamed. In a way, she has had her humanity restored, what she was originally. This is what Jesus did for us by becoming a human being: He has restored our humanity, he has brought us back to a beginning of what God intended us to be.

Christmas is all about the humanity of Jesus. It tells us that God became man, one of us, and that he did so by being born of the Virgin Mary. The ancient Advent hymn [Savior of the Nations, Come] penned by St. Ambrose of Milan sums up tonight's Gospel reading:

3 Here a maid was found with child,
Yet remained a virgin mild.
In her womb this truth was shown:
God was there upon His throne.

Text (st. 3): © 2006 Concordia Publishing House Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

What wonder! What amazement should be ours, that God became one of us, that God himself should call human flesh and blood his throne! After all, why should God become one of us? The angel explained already to Joseph when he told Joseph that Mary was pregnant with a child from the Holy Spirit:

"She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21, ESV)

The ancient Romans had a saying, Nomen est omen, which means that the name is a sign, an omen. In other words, a person's name sometimes was a sign or omen of what is to come for that person. For example, if a little baby's name is George, which means, "one who works the ground" or "farmer", and that child grows up to become a farmer, that would be a case of nomen est omen, the name being a sign of the future for that person.

Sometimes parents have difficulty picking out names for their children. Again in our family, our daughter and her husband are struggling to pick out names for the twins they are expecting. They can't seem to settle on names on which they both agree! How wonderful that God himself picked the name Jesus! How wonderful that his name does exactly what it says, save! The name Jesus means Savior. God became incarnate in order to be mankind's Savior. God became one of us in order to rescue us from the fatal disease of our sin, not only our sin against God but also our sin against each other. What a perfect name!

Jesus came to us. God the Father sent him. The Son obeyed his Father's will, being born of virgin mother in order to become our brother. God did not require that we ascend to him. He didn't list certain prerequisites that we must fulfill in order for him to have anything to do with us. Quite the contrary, God took all the initiative, made all the arrangements, carried them all out. God himself became Immanuel, God in the flesh for us. So wonderfully Luther has it in his great autobiographical hymn, Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice:

4 But God had seen my wretched state
Before the world's foundation,
And mindful of His mercies great,
He planned for my salvation.
He turned to me a father's heart;
He did not choose the easy part
But gave His dearest treasure.

5 God said to His belovèd Son:
"It's time to have compassion.
Then go, bright jewel of My crown,
And bring to all salvation.
From sin and sorrow set them free;
Slay bitter death for them that they
May live with You forever."

6 The Son obeyed His Father's will,
Was born of virgin mother;
And God's good pleasure to fulfill,
He came to be my brother.
His royal pow'r disguised He bore;
A servant's form, like mine, He wore
To lead the devil captive.

Text and Music: Public domain
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

Christ did not come to punish us, to exact pain and suffering. Other religions may indeed teach such things, but the Christian Gospel teaches no such thing. Christ did not come to push us into hell! Rather he came as one of us, dressing himself in our flesh and blood. He came to be the sinner that you are, even though he is not one himself. He came to absorb all your sin, all your guilt, all your shame in his own flesh and blood and carry it all to the cross where he died to make an end of it for all time. He came in grace.

God is there upon the throne of your flesh so that he will always be your Immanuel in eternity. It is only because he is your Immanuel in the flesh that you have an eternity with him. He is your Savior, the One who came to rescue you, redeem you, restore you to the Father. In him all that needed to be done for your salvation has been done. He has completed your salvation on the cross. When Jesus shouted "It is finished!" [John 19.30], his work of paying for your sins was completed. Nothing more needs to be done. Nothing more can be done. Nothing can be added to Christ's work. The Father sent him to do precisely this, and so the angel announced it already to Joseph before Jesus was born.

Here in the flesh and blood of this Jesus, this baby born of Mary, God shows his kindly heart toward you. Jesus came as a tiny baby, not as a conquering warlord with weapons. He came with his flesh. He came as a baby, a helpless baby at the mercy of his own creatures. Think of it! If he were out to destroy you, would he come so helplessly, so innocently? As Luther says in the hymn, he came to be your brother, your own flesh and blood, one who cares for you with a love deeper than any friend.

He came to save you, to bring you salvation that he earned. Save you from what? "He will save his people from their sins." Sins. All sin. Everything that has erected a barrier between you and God, the sins that you know and that bother you and the secret sins that nobody else knows. Jesus came to remove them, to absorb them in his own flesh and make an end of them. He doesn't save from visible warfare or barbarians or something like that, but something far greater: from sins, a work that had never been possible to anyone before.

So many people spend their time searching for God out there in the kosmos or in mystical experiences which only they have. There are those who say that God "is watching from a distance," as Bette Milder sang a few years back. For those people God may be present but he is also distant, unconcerned about your everyday life and concerns. They have the presence of God without the cross. They have a god who is not their flesh and blood. But in Jesus born at Bethlehem you have God in the flesh, your flesh and blood, your brother. In Jesus, in this baby lying in the manger, "God Is There Upon His Throne."
Luther has some interesting things to say in this matter. In his commentary on the Gospel of John he writes:

We, too, should contemplate these words, "And was made man," with reverent awe and sing them with long notes as is done in church.?? This is proper and right, since all our comfort and joy against sin, death, devil, hell, and despair revolve about them and nothing else.

The following tale is told about a coarse and brutal lout. While the words "And was made man" were being sung in church, he remained standing, neither genuflecting nor removing his hat. He showed no reverence, but just stood there like a clod. All the others dropped to their knees when the Nicene Creed was prayed and chanted devoutly. Then the devil stepped up to him and hit him so hard it made his head spin. He cursed him gruesomely and said: "May hell consume you, you boorish ass! If God had become an angel like me and the congregation sang: 'God was made an angel,' I would bend not only my knees but my whole body to the ground! Yes, I would crawl ten ells down into the ground. And you vile human creature, you stand there like a stick or a stone. You hear that God did not become an angel but a man like you, and you just stand there like a stick of wood!" Whether this story is true or not, it is nevertheless in accordance with the faith (Rom. 12:6). With this illustrative story the holy fathers wished to admonish the youth to revere the indescribably great miracle of the incarnation; they wanted us to open our eyes wide and ponder these words well.¹

You have a Savior who nurses at his mother's breast and hangs on a cross. He has come to hold on to you no matter what, even when you have no strength of your own to hang on to him. "Faith may be weak and wobbly," said Luther, "but Christ is strong and sure!" God among us! God with us! God one of us! Paul Gerhardt in one of his Christmas hymns [LSB 372.4] reflects:

4 Thou Christian heart,
Whoe'er thou art,
Be of good cheer and let no sorrow move thee!
For God's own Child,
In mercy mild,
Joins thee to Him; how greatly God must love thee!

Text: © 1941 Concordia Publishing House Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

Indeed, "How greatly God must love thee" to take on your flesh and blood, become a true human being, suffer all that you deserve, and make an end of it by his own suffering and death! Ah yes, then, tonight is about the love of God come down to earth, a love that will not let you go, a love that is eternal, unending.

Here God sits upon his throne, that is, upon human flesh and blood. When Jesus completed his work of saving you he did not lay aside human flesh and blood and be glad to get rid of it. No, he remains the God/Man for you. He remains a true human being for you! And he is still Immanuel for you. And he still sits upon the throne of his flesh and blood here in the Blessed Sacrament, for through his true body and blood he comes to forgive, he comes to renew, he comes to bring his love yet again to you. And if he remains the God/Man with real human flesh and blood, then he has redeemed you, not just your soul, but your body as well to restore your lost and fallen humanity, and according to body and soul he will bring you to the Father for all eternity.

Look at the manger! "God Is There Upon His Throne!" Look here at paten and chalice! "God Is There Upon His Throne!" In his flesh and blood God continues to sit upon his throne-for you!

¹Martin Luther, vol. 22, Luther's Works, Vol. 22 : Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works, 22:105 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1957).