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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
Couples expecting children these days may have a traditional Baby Shower, a more‑contemporary Gender-Reveal Party, or some combination of the two (Darling Celebrations). When the Gender‑Reveal Parties are not killing and injuring people or damaging property such as by starting large‑scale forest fires, their activities, like those of a traditional Baby Shower, can be intended, in part, for everyone to have fun and laugh as they celebrate the coming or past birth of a child (Wikipedia). There is laughter in tonight’s Reading from Holy Scripture as God Himself twice announces the birth of a child to Abraham and Sarah, though at least Sarah’s laughter apparently is not connected to celebrating Isaac’s birth. Isaac’s “Old Testament Divine ‘birth announcement’” is the second in our midweek series this Advent, especially as it points forward to the birth of the Savior and helps us focus both on our repenting of our sins and on our receiving God’s forgiveness by grace through faith in that Savior, Jesus Christ.
Holy Scripture first mentions Sarah and her being “barren”, her not having a child (Genesis 11:29-30), before narrating the Lord’s calling Abraham to go to a land that the Lord would show him and promising to make of Abraham a great nation and in Abraham bless all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3). When Abraham went to the land, God promised to give it to Abraham’s offspring (Genesis 12:7). That Sarah had no child contrasted with God’s subsequent promise of as many offspring as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:15-16). Eventually Abraham questioned God about His promise, thinking his servant would be heir of his household, since God had not yet given Abraham any offspring, and so God reiterated His promise to Abraham, saying that Abraham’s very own son would be his heir and that Abraham’s offspring would be as many as the stars of the sky, and the Lord made with Abraham a covenant to that effect (Genesis 15:1-21). Yet, Sarah later told Abraham that the Lord had prevented her from bearing children and suggested that Abraham have a child with her servant, Hagar (Genesis 16:1-2), though still later, when the Lord later renamed Abraham and Sarah and added circumcision to the covenant, as we heard in tonight’s Reading, God announced the birth of a son to Abraham by Sarah and within a year, and then, perhaps a few months later and perhaps for Sarah’s benefit (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Genesis 18:10, p.33), the Pre-Incarnate Lord accompanied by two angels (confer Genesis 19:1; Hebrews 13:2) appeared in person to repeat that announcement, and eventually it was fulfilled as God said (Genesis 21:1-2).
As we heard in tonight’s Reading, when God promised Abraham a child by Sarah, Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and later Sarah laughed to herself. Abraham’s laughter might be regarded as a “joyous outburst of astonishment”, and Sarah’s laughter might be regarded as the “result of doubt and unbelief” (Keil-Deilitzsch, ad loc Genesis 18:9-15, p.229). Her laughter is rebuked, while Abraham’s laughter is not Or, maybe even Abraham’s “incongruent” worship and laughter at the same time reflect simultaneous belief and unbelief in the “great” and “paradoxical” promise of God (Roehrs‑Franzmann, ad loc Genesis 17:17, p.33; Keil-Deilitzsch, ad loc Genesis 17:15-21, p.225; confer TLSB, ad loc Genessis 17:17, p.41, with reference to Mark 9:24 and Matthew 28:17). But, when the All-knowing Lord mentioned Sarah’s laughter to Abraham, asking if anything was too hard for the Lord, she denied laughing, committing what we also sometimes commit, a chain reaction of sins (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Genesis 18:15, p.34).
In our severe struggles of faith (Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Genesis 17:17, p.33), how often do even we who believe also at the same time doubt? Out of fear, maybe we also lie about our doubts. Do we think that our All-powerful God’s fulfilling His promises to us is too hard for Him to do? Maybe we even think that God’s promise freely to forgive our sins is too hard for Him to fulfill. Like Abraham and Sarah, we are sinful by nature, and so we fail to fear, love, and trust in God above all things, and so we fail to love God in other ways and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We deserve temporal death and eternal punishment. As the Lord “kindly but decisively rebuked” Sarah (TLSB, ad loc Genesis 18:15, p.42), so also the Lord calls and thereby enables us to repent: to turn in sorrow from our sins, to trust God to forgive our sins, and to want to stop sinning. Sarah apparently so repented, as the Divinely-inspired author of the book of Hebrews says that Sarah went on to believe God’s promise and conceived Isaac (Hebrews 11:11; confer Roehrs-Franzmann, ad loc Genesis 18:15, p.34). So also, when we repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our actual sin, including our doubting that God can or will fulfill His promises. God forgives us for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Unlike Zechariah who sinfully doubted the Angel Gabriel’s announcement that Zechariah and his barren wife Elizabeth would give birth to John the Baptizer through normal means (Luke 1:5-25), the Virgin Mary believed the Angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would give birth to Jesus through miraculous means, though the Virgin Mary asked the Angel Gabriel how that birth would take place (Luke 1:26-38). As part of his answer to the Virgin Mary, the Angel Gabriel echoed the Lord’s words to Abraham and Sarah, telling Mary that nothing would be impossible with God, and then she submitted to God’s will. We likewise believe what His Word tells us, even if we do not understand how it can be. Our forgiveness, our eternal life, our salvation is possible for God (Matthew 19:26; Mark 10:27). The Son of God took on human flesh as the baby Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Grown-up Jesus took on the sin of the whole world, including your sin and my sin, and He bore it to the cross to die for all people, in our place, the death that we deserved. Jesus showed His victory over sin and death by rising from the dead on the third day. Jesus ultimately is the Offspring of Abraham through whom both Abraham is a blessing and all people are blessed with God’s forgiveness of sins. Like Abraham before us, we believe God, and that belief, that faith, that trust is reckoned to us as righteousness (Genesis 15:6; confer, for example, Romans 4:19).
More than legally declared righteous or in an act of book-keeping accounted righteous, we are made righteous as we repentantly receive God’s forgiveness through His Word in all of its forms. Not the Pre-Incarnate Lord Himself and two heavenly angels, but an earthly messenger both to groups such as this reads and preaches God’s Word and to individuals administers that Word with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Altar, which give the Body of Christ given for us and the Blood of Christ shed for us. Just as Abraham and his family were incorporated into God’s covenant by circumcision, we are incorporated into God’s family by Holy Baptism. Just as Abraham received bread and wine from Melchizedek, priest of God Most High (Genesis 14:17‑24), and just as Abraham served a meal to the Pre‑Incarnate Lord and His two heavenly angels, so we here have table fellowship with the Lord and receive forgiveness, life, and salvation.
With its reference to “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the blest”, the Office Hymn tonight (Lutheran Service Book 510) refers to this Holy Meal, to some extent as we experience it now, but especially as we will experience it in its great fulfillment on the Last Day and for all eternity (confer Matthew 8:11-12 and Luke 13:28-29). Of Abraham is made more than the nation of his physical descendants the Jews but also the nation of His spiritual descendants, Jews and Gentiles who believe as Abraham believed, and we receive not the land promised to the Jews that they abominated and forfeited, spoiled and squandered, but we receive the Promised Land of heaven (Keil‑Delitzsch, ad loc Genesis 17:15-21, pp.225-226; confer TLSB, ad loc Genesis 12:2, p.32). Until then, in all our struggles of faith, we believers pray for the Lord to help our unbelief (Mark 9:24), and we can be certain that, as the Angel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary, every word from God is not without power, that no word from God is impossible of fulfillment, that nothing that God says will happen to or for us ultimately is impossible (Luke 1:37).
Abraham and Sarah’s son’s name “Isaac” means he or she “laughs”, and that name would have been a reminder to both parents of their response of laughing at the Divine announcement of his birth, even without a traditional Baby Shower or a more-contemporary Gender-Reveal Party. In this the second of our midweek series this Advent, consideration of this Old Testament Divine “birth announcement” has pointed us forward to the birth of our Savior and helped us focus both on our repenting of our sins and on our receiving God’s forgiveness by grace through faith in that Savior, Jesus Christ. May God preserve us in repentance and faith in Him until the end.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +