Title: Christ, through baptism opens the heavens to you!
Text: Luke 3:15-22
Facebook live: Christ, through baptism opens the heavens to you!
21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
As we begin today, I must take a moment to look back, back to January 6th 2013. On that day I was ordained into the office of the Holy Ministry and was installed here at Peace as your 6th pastor. It was a joy filled day thinking of what the Lord was calling me to do and seeing how in the midst of our lives lived in this broken world, God plans and executes his will to accomplish all that he desires.
I’m sure many of you would agree that your lives too seem to go by in an instant … so with that in mind, and as I begin my tenth year of ministry here at Peace, I wish to focus today on a marvelous truth that:
Christ, through baptism opens the heavens to you!
You can almost hear the hope in the people in our Gospel reading for today as they wonder and reason about John the Baptist:
15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ,
John, being the unique character that he is … was causing quite a stir as the people questioned about who this man could be.
Is he the Christ, they wanted to know?
And while the excitement for this man, out of the wilderness, may have made quite an impression on the people, when it came to his attention, as to who the people thought he was … he quickly put all speculation to rest:
16 John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
[A common method of threshing in ancient Israel employed an implement called a threshing sledge which is a heavy wooden slab with teeth made of stone, metal, or potsherds fastened to the underside and Oxen or mules dragged the sledge back and forth over the sheaves to allow the teeth to break down the stalks into husks, straw, and grain kernels.
A wooden pitch fork was used to lift away the straw. The kernels were then separated from the husks by winnowing, tossing the pile of threshed grain into the air with a winnowing fork and wind, whether caused by a natural breeze or artificially generated by winnowing fans, blew away the lighter chaff while the heavier heads of grain fell down to the threshing floor.
The kernels were then sifted and collected for storage. The chaff was burned as fuel and the straw became animal fodder. ]
Copyright © 2009 Mark A. Myers
Jesus came to John to be marked for you and me and all born in the natural way, born in sin through this baptism of repentance.
He was marked with a Baptism of fire, marked to carry the sins of the world, your sins and mine, upon Himself to Jerusalem and finally to the cross.
When Christ returns, He will separate the wheat from the chaff; the believers from the unbelievers. Those who have been baptized and are covered by Christ’s righteousness will be gathered to Heaven and to an eternal life of joy and peace contrasted against those who stand covered in the filthy rags of their own righteousness who will be cast into the fires of hell made for the Devil and his minions, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. Matt. 6:19
Your life and mine is one of continually falling short. We daily miss the mark in what we say and do. But as one who has been Baptized, we are called to daily die to sin and rise and live in the newness of life given us in Baptism.
We remember daily what Jesus did as the once for all sacrifice for sin, and by faith grow in our Christian walk as we are, by the power of the Holy Spirit, made holy, sanctified and set apart for the good works that God has prepared for us to do.
As Lutherans we tend to get a little up in arms when we think about Good Works! This is not to undermine the work of Christ who came to take the sins of the whole world upon himself so that you would be declared righteous on account of His sacrifice.
But by the grace of God and through the gift of faith you are made holy by the working of the Holy Spirit in you.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Eph. 2:8-9
The boasting is God’s, but:
Christ, through baptism opens the heavens to you!
The Old Testament reading today points to the one who is active in the life of the world in God’s work of redemption when we read:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
And while God is speaking to the children of Israel in these verses He too is speaking of His redeeming love for all of his children – domestic and imported:
13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. John 1:13
And our Lord will accomplish all that He has set out to do because He declares:
5 Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
6 I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name,
God has called you by name in your baptisms.
He has washed you and gathered you to the foot of the cross of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
He continues through the working of the Holy Spirit in your daily lives and in the lives of all His children to make you holy and to keep you by the power of His Spirit connected to Him so that we grow in Him through this same Spirit.
God in Christ has given you and me not what we deserved but what we needed.
He continues to give to us the blessings of His Son through the good times and bad.
He blesses us through word and sacrament and daily sustains his you with His loving kindness and does not remember your sin but sees you through the veil of Christ which you are covered with.
In Christ you receive His full attention when you pray so you can ask anything in Jesus’ name according to his will and He will hear, and is not hurried or bothered when you cry out to Him and will listen patently, intently and slowly because He loves you and cares for you, as a father cares for a dear child.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment