[Sermon Archive]

This Week's Sermon THE FIRST MIDWEEK IN ADVENT 03 December 2008 "What can be done with each of us as lumps of clay?" Isaiah 64:5-9 LSB Series B Vicar Gerald D. Heinecke Soli Deo Gloria!

I enjoy looking at art. One of my dream trips is to go throughout Europe and see all the beautiful churches. I would love to go to the various museums and see the famous works of art. But my favorite art pieces are sculptures. It is amazing how they can take that lump of clay or rock and form it into magnificent piece of work.

In today's text from Isaiah, he says, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hands. I love to play with play dough. When you read the creation account in Genesis 2 we are given a clear description of how we are created. Mankind is the only thing in all of creation that God took the time to physically mold. The rest of creation was created with just a word, a simple yet profound, "let there be." God took the time to work the dust of the ground (Show play dough man.) and then he took that lifeless form and breathed into its nostrils the breath of life.

God created people to be perfect both sinless and flawless. You were created as God's holy temple, but his flawless creation was ruined in the fall. (Destroy play dough man.) That flaw is sin, original sin, handed down from generation to generation. Our text says it very well. In our sins we have been a long time and shall we be saved? Why would God wanted to save someone like me, like you? We have been in our sins forever.

We are not worthy of salvation because We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. When Isaiah says we are unclean he doesn't mean that we need a bath. He means we stink from the filth of our sins. In Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle we find the main character Jurgis working in the lowliest of jobs in fertilizer factory. Not only did his clothes smell, but his whole body reeked of the noxious smell. The smell of the fertilizer oozed from his skin. It was a smell that he could not be rid of.

What Isaiah is literally saying when he says our deeds are like a polluted garment is that they are like a used feminine product. The only thing you can do with the used feminine product is throw it away. That is how unclean we are. We cannot remove the waste that our sin produces. That is why what would seem to be righteous deeds are viewed as a polluted, disgusting garment. The only thing we can do with our sin polluted works is throw them away. We cannot wash out a used feminine product, just as we cannot wash out our sins. And thus even our deeds are viewed as worthless. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. We are in such a sorry shape in our sins that we are described as a leaf and we will blow away in the wind.

Having destroyed the perfect creation work of the Lord with our sin we are now plunged into the despair of being separated from God. We are undeserving of salvation. We claim to call upon his name but we are incapable of that. Dead in our sins we cannot even rouse our bodies to hold unto God.

Remember though, what do we call God? Our text reminds us that we call Him Father. What does Luther remind us of when we call God our Father? He says, with these words God tenderly invites us to believe that he is our true Father and that we are his true children. How can God be our Father if we are undeserving of salvation? How can He be our God if He is angry with us. If we are unclean, reeking of sin, and if He has hidden His face from us so as not to smell our disgusting sin, how can he claim us?

He remains our God because He has placed his anger on his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus comes to live within creation. The Son is offered up as one of us. He who took on human nature, as one who is also made up of clay. Jesus became a man-not like a man, not the image of a man, but rather He was made man. He was a new creation, a new Adam. Jesus takes up this body and lives life day in and day out with all the trappings of this sinful world. He endures pain, cold, heat, hunger, and mocking. He undergoes all temptations to sin but yet comes forth with not one part of the law broken. He lives a complete life and leads the only life worthy of salvation.

Jesus certainly came among us and lived a perfect life, and while He could have easily left this sin ridden world and escaped to heaven without suffering, He chose not to. We pray as Isaiah did , Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. This is our cry of repentance. Our deeds are like unworthy rags. We are not worthy of salvation. Forgive us of our sin, not because of what we do but because of what Jesus has done for us! Look upon us as your people again!

And fortunately for us our gracious Lord never forgot that we are his people. The Lord has provided one opportunity to remove our iniquity. He has provided one opportunity to view us as clean and perfect. That one opportunity is found in Christ. Each of our sins has been paid for. Jesus willingly took all of the Father's terrible anger upon himself.

Because that anger is paid for, we once again are viewed as God's people. Our righteous deeds are no longer seen as being polluted because they have been cleansed by the Son of Man. Our heavenly Father can't view us with disgust. The stench of our sin is removed. We are white, white as a lamb because the Son has died for us, cleansing us of our sins. Rather our God looks on with pride as His Son is joined with his bride the church. He sees a beautiful church gowned not in a bloody, feminine product but in a priceless, sparkling, glorious white robe.

That is the beauty of the Advent season. The potter has taken us and made us His. He has reshaped this clay through Jesus. Our great and mighty Savior, the groom of the church, comes to us not with the fanfare of a great and victorious king but in the humility of a poor common child. It is how God often works-not with much bravado and amazing deeds but with common ways. He comes to us with forgiveness as we confess our sins. He comes to us in simple water and word. He comes to us in simple bread and wine. He comes to us through our ears in the hearing of the Word. He comes to us and takes our polluted garments upon himself and makes himself sin for us.

Despite the fact that God has done amazing things such as the creation of the world, the flood, the parting of the Red Sea, great miracles, he promises that through these simple means of grace he will not be angry with us. He will not remember our iniquity because he has sent Jesus to be our iniquity for us. He will declare that we are his people.

It is with this blessed assurance that we celebrate the advent season. This is why we await his second coming. As we confess our unworthiness to be his people, he still claims us as His people. We are God's people because Jesus has cleansed this polluted garment and made it clean of all sin. We are the work of His hands and we thank God that we have been made the bride of Christ. We have received the clean, white garment from Christ through our Baptism, and we are presented as the perfect Bride. What has he done with each of us as lumps of clay? He has made us his though Christ.