Epiphany 1
Jesse Jacobsen
Time-stamp: <Sat Jan 8 21:11:19 2005>
Printed
Isaiah 61:1--3
``The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me,
Because the LORD has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,
And the day of vengeance of our God;
To comfort all who mourn,
To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;
That they may be called trees of righteousness,
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.''
The Meaning of Christ
Sometimes we might wish that God would speak to us a little more
clearly, tell us exactly what to do. Well, on Mount Sinai, God spoke to
Moses clearly. God engraved His instructions on tablets of stone. They
are so specific that they tend to make people uncomfortable. God's
rules are not as easy to bend as human rules. ``You shall have no other
gods'' doesn't really need interpretation.
All the commandments are important, of course. But there is still a
priority. So what about the second commandment? ``You shall not take
the name of the Lord your God in vain.'' How should we use the
name of God? Our catechism explanation is very good, and like the
commandment, doesn't need much interpretation. ``We should fear and
love God that we do not curse, swear, practice witchcraft, lie, or
deceive by His name, but call upon Him in every trouble, pray, praise,
and give thanks.'' There is judgment for taking God's name in vain as
much as for worshipping a false god. But we also do ourselves
harm by using any of God's names wrongly. We begin to lose the
meaning of His name. It can become just a word to us, or a group of
syllables, or just a noise like you might hear from the throat of any
animal. How many people think about God every time they say the
word ``god?'' Not many. How many remember that Jesus Christ is their
savior every time they say His name? That name should mean
more to us than the world. Without faith in Jesus Christ, every
sinner will perish forever.
So today let's try to relearn one particular name for God the Son. Mary
and Joseph named Him Jesus. The prophet called Him Immanuel. But the
name Isaiah uses today is ``Christ,'' meaning ``Anointed.'' It's not His
surname, like Jacobsen or Smith. It's a title. There can be only one
Christ, like there can be only one President of the United States. The
office of President cycles every four years or so, but the office of
Christ is permanently attached to the person who holds the office.
Jesus is the Christ. Today, the prophet Isaiah tells us what
that means. What does Christ mean? He raises the lowly. He rescues
the captive. He comforts the mournful.
He raises the lowly
First: He raises the lowly. Whether we realize it or not, that's us.
Jesus was anointed by God almighty (His Father) ``To preach good
tidings to the poor.'' He was sent ``to heal the
brokenhearted.'' In other words, He raises the lowly.
Poor does not mean those without money, but those who are lowly and
humble of heart, who have nothing in themselves in which to take comfort
before God. In the Beatitudes of Matthew 5, Jesus called them the
``poor in spirit.'' Some of them may be poor in terms of
earthly wealth, and some may be rich in earthly wealth. What really
qualifies someone to be poor and lowly before God is the condition of
his heart. It's not a condition that we can create within ourselves.
Only the Holy Spirit can do this for us. Without Him, neither prince
nor beggar could be poor in spirit.
So the very first task of Christ relies upon the Holy Spirit. Unless we
are made to be poor and lowly before God, and in need of His mercy, we
would have no interest at all in Christ. We would not listen to Him,
believe Him, or trust His promises. In fact, those who think themselves
spiritually rich and powerful even despise Jesus, because of His
poverty and His cross.
Since Jesus came, the world is divided. He didn't divide the world,
but He is the point of division. The poor and lowly gladly trust His
Word, and He is their Christ. Others despise Him and consider
themselves His opponents.
The sad thing is that this division didn't come from God. Jesus came to
earth to provide the atoning sacrifice for the whole world. The apostle
Paul described God's point of view in Romans 3: ``There is no
difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus.'' You might have missed one of the most important words
in that passage, the word ``all.'' All have sinned. All have been
justified freely by the work of Christ.
I can't see your hearts to know whether you are truly sorry for your own
sins. I can't know your mind, whether the Holy Spirit has shown you
your great need for the Christ. God can, but I can't. Yet in spite of
that, I can tell everyone that atonement has been made for you, to
remove the separation between you and God. Christ Jesus has brought
healing for you, even today. So if your heart has been broken by
the image of your own guilt, then hear the good tidings of the Christ:
you are forgiven.
Christ raises the lowly. But life goes on. We sin again, no matter how
we may resist it. So the cycle continues. We may even forget the grace
of God our Father sometimes, like the prodigal son. But this is exactly
why it's so comforting that Jesus remains the Christ forever. He is
always the same: ready to forgive. He's our eternal High Priest. We
may slip down several times every day, but He will raise us by His Word
of forgiveness. In this way, we will finally be raised from the grave
by the same Christ. This is the first part of the meaning of Christ.
He rescues the captive
Second: He rescues the captive. Whether we realize it or not, that's
us. Everyone who has done wrong is captive to the threat in God's
Law. It has a binding power that nobody can escape. Even God Himself
can't set it aside, because it's His good and perfect Law.
For God to set aside His Law would be a self-contradiction, for it
would mean He is no longer good. God is good, so His Law stands
forever, and that means it holds every sinner captive with our guilt.
Our guilt puts is in the prison of God's justice, but we're not here
alone. All the fallen angels are with us, and within the bounds of this
prison, the devil is prince. He and his minions do all they can to make
life miserable here, and to keep us in this prison with them. The walls
of a sinner's prison are inescapable because of the fallen and wicked
human nature, in league with Satan, and permanently opposed to God and
His Word.
Enter the Christ. He was anointed with the Spirit of God ``to
proclaim liberty to the captives.'' What an odd message to hear in our
prison! Can you imagine being in a high security penal institution, and
then hearing over the loudspeaker a voice telling you that you are free?
It's unexpected, and happy news. But there are two different problems
that arise. First, we keep living here on earth, and things don't look
any different. We may doubt the message of liberty, doubt that we are
really free. Second, we may get comfortable in prison, start liking it.
If someone thinks this is the life, he may mock or even resent the voice
of Christ that proclaims liberty to the captives.
Again, the Holy Spirit has work to do in our hearts. He is the one who
has to show us that we are really living in a prison because of our
sins. Through the bitter pill of God's Law, He wakes us up to the Real
World, so that we want to be rescued.
Christ is the One who won our freedom by His death, but now lives
forever to rescue every captive. He proclaims ``the opening of
the prison to those who are bound.'' While God can't set aside His Law
even for an instant, He is able keep it. So in order to save us,
that's exactly what Christ did: He lived a perfect life and died
innocently. But our guilt was upon Him, and His death erased it. So
now, the walls of our spiritual prison are gone, and we are free to live
holy lives with clear conscience. We are free to follow our risen
Christ to eternal life.
Things may not look different, and we may yet stumble here on earth.
There are certainly plenty of bad things that can drag us back into the
prison of our guilt. But the Word of Christ is powerful. The Holy
Spirit works through it to keep us with Him in the one, true faith. We
are living in the year of God's grace, when He will shortly balance and
close all accounts.
But remember that we have a Christ who freed us from prison, and has
gone ahead to our true home. This is the second part of the meaning of
Christ.
He comforts the mournful
Finally: He comforts the mournful. Whether we realize it or not, that's
us. Jesus was sent ``To comfort all who mourn.'' Some people
may not be interested in hearing the comfort of Jesus Christ. Some may
doubt whether His comfort could be for them. But don't miss that
important word: ``all.'' He was sent to comfort all who mourn. His
comfort is meant for all: you and me, and everyone we know.
But why would we mourn? There are two different possibilities. There
is a secret mourning, an emptiness, a desire that God has placed into
the human heart that we may feel whenever we are not filled with His
Word. We may not even realize what the problem is, or how to fix it.
Maybe you have had times in your life when feeling terrible, you happen
to begin reading the Bible again, or you happen to come to church, and
suddenly you realize that this whole time that's what's been missing:
the Gospel. We always need to hear it, to hear about Jesus Christ.
The whole unbelieving world is missing the Gospel. Yet in a way, many
people are blindly seeking the Gospel without ever realizing what
they're looking for. Something is missing in their lives, but unless
they come to know what Jesus has told us, unless they hear what
the Holy Spirit has put into our hearts, then they will never
know what they seek. Without the Gospel, we perish everlastingly. So
out of thanks to God, we should be happy to tell our neigbors what they
also need to hear.
That leads us to the other kind of mourning. This only applies to
Christians. It's the cross of suffering that we are privileged to bear
as we live as imitators of our Lord Christ. Jesus said, ``If
anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his
cross daily, and follow Me.'' That's not easy.
We'd like to think that once we become Christians, life becomes a bed of
roses. Maybe, but this bed has thorns. We still have the problems of
our sinful flesh, which is attached to this world, and opposed to God's
Word. The devil pays special attention to Christians, spitefully
afflicting us for the faith we have, or trying to entice us away from
it. And the world we live in is not exactly a safe haven for Christians
either. We still break all the commandments. We still have hot
buttons, and we still sin when they get pushed. We still have to
repent, confessing our sins, and receiving God's forgiveness. Even
church life is a heavy burden. And finally, even Christians still face
the sorrow of sickness and death.
But Christ was sent especially for His Church an earth. Isaiah says He
came ``To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty
for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness.'' When we consider ourselves, our work, our
duties, our sorrows, we can easily be filled with mourning until we
don't know what to do. The answer is to look only to Jesus. He also
had a job, a task set before Him. He also bore a cross. He died for
you, to take away all your guilt. He then rose again to lift you up, to
rescue you from captivity, to give you unfailing comfort.
Look to Jesus, not to yourself. See His cross, see His work, His
duties, His sorrows, and how He bore them all so well. See how He
restored us to God, and God to us. See how He is God's Christ, and your
Christ. Let your mourning be replaced with the joy of heaven. This is
the third part of the meaning of Christ.
So knowing our Lord Christ, the Son of Mary and the Son of God, let's
remain in His name: Christians, washed, sanctified, and glorified. You
are called trees of righteousness. Because of Christ, you are the
planting of God, to manifest His glory. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
This document was translated from LATEX by
HEVEA.