First Lutheran Church of Little Rock

Sermon Outline

Introduction: By the First Sunday after Christmas, by and large, our culture has completely finished with its observance of the holidays. As Christians, though, we realize that the celebration of our Savior’s birth goes on and on, and we remember that with a full twelve days of Christmas, a celebration that only ends then by transitioning to Epiphany, a further celebration of the incarnation.

In some parts of the world, there’s another custom that can help us celebrate the ongoing feast. December 26 is—or at least was—observed as Boxing Day. I understand that our English friends joke about Boxing Day as the day you box up all the Christmas decorations and put them back up in the attic. But actually, the tradition is that on Boxing Day, December 26, masters would present gifts to their servants. At least in this small way, the roles of master and servant were reversed, with the master rendering a sort of service to the servants.

In our Epistle this morning, we hear about the Master giving a gift to his servants that truly does reverse the traditional roles. The Master gives his Son so that the servants—slaves even—actually become sons, heirs, themselves. We might think of this First Sunday after Christmas as a spiritual Boxing Day. By the Master, God the Father, sending forth his Son, you are no longer a slave. Instead,

Christ Was Born to Deliver Us from Slavery for Sonship.

I. We were all once slaves.

    A. Paul says immediately before our text that we were “enslaved to the elementary principles of the world” (4:3).

        1.  If you want to get elementary about things, here’s the way the world works: if you want something, you have to earn it. (Give examples: a pay­check, groceries, affection from another person.)

        2.  But if you can’t pay whatever it costs, you’ll always be a slave to trying.

        3.  If we had to cut our own deal with God, that’s the way it would be. We’d have to do or pay whatever it took to earn God’s favor and a ticket to paradise.

    B. We were, in fact, under the principle of the Law and therefore slaves.

        1.  God’s Holy Law declares what we are to do and not do, the price of holiness.

        2.  But we can’t pay up, can’t fulfill the Law’s holy demands. (Give examples of sins that are common among your hearers.)

    3.  That left us, by nature, always trying, never achieving—slaves to the Law.

II. But Christ, God’s Son, came to redeem us from our slavery (vv 4–5).

    A. He came in “the fullness of time.” (Elaborate from Textual Notes section.)

        1.  When God had prepared receptive communities throughout the Mediterranean.

        2.  When the temple had been rebuilt.

        3.  When the region shared a common language.

        4.  When Roman rule led to fulfillment of the mes­sianic prophecies.

        5.  When the pax Romana facilitated the spread of the Gospel.

    B. At the incarnation, God, the Master, sent the eternal Christ to reverse roles with us.

        1.  He was God, the Son, from all eternity.

        2.  But he was born of the Virgin Mary, becoming truly one of us.

        3.  And he was born under the Law, taking our place as a slave to keeping the Law.

    C. For us, then, Christ rendered obedience to the Law.

        1.  He kept the Law perfectly, fulfilling what we had failed to do.

        2.  But he endured the curse of the Law anyway, taking our punishment upon himself.

        3.  He took this curse as the price necessary to redeem us (Gal 3:13).

III.    Therefore, we now live as sons and heirs of God (Gal 4:5–7).

    A. Christ’s reversing roles with us—taking our place under the Law, fulfilling it, and paying the price for our breaking it—has put us in his role, adopted as sons.

        1.  This adoption is given by way of Baptism (Gal 3:27–29).

        2.  This adoption is ours through faith in Christ (Gal 3:26).

        3.  This adoption is demonstrated by the gift of the Spirit.

    B. So we have the full rights as sons.

        1.  The right to make requests of God.

             a. We pray as sons, not as slaves.

             b. We have the closest possible relationship to our God. As Jesus taught his disciples to call God “Father,” we have the privilege of calling him “Abba.”

             c. The Holy Spirit even helps us to pray.

        2.  The right to an inheritance through God.

             a. We have our share in the inheritance now—this privileged, forgiven relationship.

             b. We look forward to an eternal inheritance.

Conclusion: For one day a year, Boxing Day makes a fine tradition—the master reversing roles with his servants. But our Christmas celebration isn’t one day a year, or two, or even twelve. Because Christ reversed roles with us, taking our place as slaves under the Law, we can celebrate every day as our spiritual Boxing Day. Amen.

Jesus: The Son of Mary

Matthew 1:16

Sermon Outline

4. God’s way of sending the Messiah wasn’t the world’s way.

3. Rather, God works through and exalts the lowly.

2. Just so, the Son of God humbled himself by becoming the Son of Mary.

1. And God exalts us, the lowly, by humbling his Son.

God Turns the Ways of the World Upside Down by Sending His Son to Be Born of a Virgin and to Exchange His Life for Ours.

Sermon

And Jacob [was] the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. (Mt 1:16)

There is nothing clean about the list of Jesus’ ancestors. People are left out, and the numbers of generations Matthew counts don’t quite add up. Did Matthew leave things out intentionally? Could he not count? Was he simply not as good a historian as Luke? All of those questions are raised when one reads the genealogy that’s recorded in Matthew 1. The names and the numbers simply don’t add up.

4.

This is true! The birth of Jesus to Mary doesn’t make sense. Since he was expected to be born in King David’s royal city of Bethlehem, a pregnant girl in Nazareth couldn’t seem right. One would expect the one called Lord by King David to be born in a palace, not in a stable. He should have been wrapped in the finest of fabrics, such as silk or cotton rather than swaddling cloths. Perhaps the most shocking part of the angels’ birth announcement to the shepherds was the fact that they would find the Savior, Christ the Lord, lying in an animals’ food trough. None of it made sense at all, right down to a young, unmarried girl giving birth to the promised Messiah.

But Mary understood that God does not operate the way the world does. From the time that the angel Gabriel appeared to her, she learned how differently God would be at work. While she wondered how she, a virgin, could bear the Son of the Most High, her response was, “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). Her seemingly barren cousin Elizabeth also conceived in a way that seemed unimaginable. But nothing is impossible for God.

3.

When Mary went to visit her cousin, her song was one of praise to the God who does the impossible. For he is the God who brings down the mighty and exalts the humble, who fills the hungry and sends the rich away empty, and for whose sake all generations will call this humble servant, Mary, blessed. Martin Luther wrote of the Magnificat: “When the holy virgin experienced what great things God was working in her despite her insignificance, lowliness, poverty, and inferiority, the Holy Spirit taught her this deep insight and wisdom, that God is the kind of Lord who does nothing but exalt those of low degree and put down the mighty from their thrones, in short, break what is whole and make whole what is broken” (AE 21:299).

Dear friends, on account of our sin, we, too, are the humble and hungry, the lowly. We are spiritually impoverished without any possible hope to reverse our fortunes. Since we cannot restore things on our own, we need someone to come and save us. That was God’s plan from the very beginning. God spoke words of promise as he banished Adam and Eve from the garden by promising that one of their own descendants would bruise for them the serpent’s head. The Old Testament is full of signs pointing us forward to the fulfillment of that promise. From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Judah and Tamar, Rahab and Ruth, David and Bathsheba, Joseph and Mary, we see how God was at work, weaving his plan of salvation through each subsequent generation, right up until the Holy Spirit came upon Mary so that she would become pregnant with the long-promised Messiah. It may not make sense to the world, but God does not operate the way the world does.

2.

While Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, he still was born of the Virgin Mary, and therefore, according to his human nature, he ate and drank, wept and slept, felt emotions and physical pain—like all other human beings. Jesus had to be conceived by the Holy Spirit to be of the same substance with the Father, to be truly God, without sin, perfect and holy in every way. But he also had to be born of Mary. He had to be flesh and blood, truly human in fulfillment of the promise that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son” (Is 7:14). He was born covered in blood, and he would die covered in blood. For the way that he would save his people from their sins was by shedding his blood on the cross for the forgiveness of their sins. He came to redeem us, to buy us back for God. Not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood. Jesus had to be fully God, but he also had to be fully human so that he could shed that blood on the cross for us.

It doesn’t make sense that the Son of God would get up from the table and, with a towel and basin, wash his disciples’ feet. It doesn’t make sense that the Holy One of Israel would associate with an adulterous Samaritan woman or heal the Roman centurion’s servant. It doesn’t make sense that this descendant of David and Abraham would associate with tax collectors and prostitutes. Most of all, it does not make sense that the Son of God would come to die. But that’s just the kind of Lord he is. For it is in his wounds that we find healing. It is in his taking on our shame that we are made righteous. It is in his being forsaken that we are restored. And it is in his death that we live. How truly backward it seems. But it should really come as no shock at all that God’s way seems so very foreign to sinners.

The resurrection did not make sense either. Everyone expected that Jesus’ body would be found in the tomb. The fact that the stone was rolled away and that his body was missing must have been the work of the gardener, or else some enemy like the Pharisees had taken him. But once again, God’s design doesn’t have to make sense to us. The numbers don’t have to add up. Matthew was not intending to list all the ancestors of Jesus or for the numbers to line up just right. His genealogy shows us that while the family of Jesus was fraught with mistakes and misdeeds, the promised descendant would be perfect in every way. In fact, though Jesus’ family was marred by sin, God’s plan of salvation was perfect; Christ exchanged his holiness for our sin and his death for our life. And death could not hold Jesus, so in the resurrection on the Last Day, we will see with our own eyes our Redeemer, who lives.

1.

What it means for you is that God still doesn’t work the way that the world does. God still turns the world upside down and doesn’t operate the way the world expects. The almighty God became a tiny baby, knit together in Mary’s womb. The King of kings and Lord of lords was born to an unknown peasant girl with a questionable lineage. He still comes to us today through his Word, attached to the ordinary elements of water and bread and wine. His power is still made perfect in our weakness. What we deserve for our actions is death, but he has given us the free gift of eternal life. We, the lowly, are exalted by God humbling his Son.

Nothing about this story makes sense, as Luther wrote: “[God] turns the world with all its wisdom and power into foolishness and gives us another wisdom and power” (AE 21:314). A virgin found to be with child. A Savior wrapped in swaddling cloths. A King lying in a manger. Peace on earth in infant form. Good news for all the world announced to shepherds. But it all comes together as God’s plan and his fulfillment of his promises.

God Turns the Ways of the World Upside Down by Sending His Son to Be Born of a Virgin and to Exchange His Life for Ours.

The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David and the Son of Abraham, demonstrates this with every name and every generation. God’s ways are certainly not our ways, but he has remained faithful to all of his promises that were given to all the saints of old. The list of names serves as a beautiful reminder that Jesus Christ came for all people. The genealogy of Jesus isn’t a fairy tale. It is a reality show full of sinners and scandals. But all are people for whom Jesus died—David and Abraham, Joseph and Mary—all.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.