Archive for the ‘angel’ tag
December 13, 2009: The Birth of Jesus Foretold
The text for this lesson is Luke 1:26–38.
Key Points
- God favored Mary because of Christ, choosing her to be the mother of the Savior. God favors me because of Christ, choosing me to be His child.
- Law: Like Mary, I deserve nothing from God because of my sinfulness. God grants me unmerited grace and favor because of His Son. God must punish sin.
- Gospel: In His mercy, God sends His Son to take my punishment upon Himself. Because of my sin, I was separated from God. Because of God’s grace and favor, the Lord is with me. On my own, I am sinful and not blessed. Christ blesses me with His presence, just as He did Mary and Elizabeth.
December 6, 2009: The Birth of John Foretold
The text for this lesson is Luke 1:5–25.
Key Points
- God in His mercy promised to send John to prepare sinful people for the coming of the Lord.
- Law: God in His Word calls us to repentance, declaring us righteous because of Jesus. Law/Gospel Points Zechariah and Elizabeth were ordinary people, sinful just as I am. I need to repent and return to the Lord.
- Gospel: I, like them, stand righteous before God in spite of my sin, being justified by Christ, the Righteous One. God forgives me for Jesus’ sake, drawing me to Him through His Word and Sacraments.
November 15, 2009: The Three Men in the Fiery Furnace
The text for this lesson is Daniel 3.
Key Points
- Just as Jesus was with and saved the three men in the fiery furnace, so our Savior is with us and saves us in His Word and Sacraments, sustaining us when we suffer for His name.
- Law: In sin, I choose what makes the world, my flesh, and the devil happy and try to avoid the suffering or trouble that sometimes comes my way because of my faith in God.
- Gospel: He who once walked unharmed with the three faithful men in the fiery furnace was incinerated by fiery wrath for my sins to make me a citizen of heaven.
Context
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, was the most powerful man in the world in his day (late seventh and early sixth centuries BC). It’s no surprise that such power went to his head, as this story illustrates (see also Daniel 4). When Nebuchadnezzar began his takeover of Jerusalem, he took the best and brightest of the citizens as POWs to Babylon. Among such captives were Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. When they risked punishment by sticking with kosher foods only, God rewarded their fidelity (Daniel 1). All four, though Israelites, rose to prominence in this Gentile court.
May 24, 2009: Paul Sails for Rome
The text for this lesson is Acts 27:1–44.
Key Points
- As Christ was with Paul and His companions, so He is with me, holding me up, keeping me with Him in the ship of the Church, and casting all my sins into the depths of the sea.
- Law: In sinful despair, I let the pains of the present overtake me and no longer believe in God or trust His redemption or love.
- Gospel: Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, rides out the storms of life with me, granting me hope in my future redemption.
Context
Arrested in Jerusalem on trumped-up charges (Acts 21:1–40) and jailed for more than two years in Caesarea (Acts 24:27), Paul is finally on his way to Rome, for he had appealed to Caesar (Acts 25:11), the “supreme court” of the empire. As this story makes clear, sea travel in ancient times could be quite treacherous, especially as winter approached (Acts 27:9–12). After the shipwreck at Malta, where Paul and the crew wintered (Acts 28:11), the apostle finally arrived in Rome, where Acts ends with the account of Paul’s incessant preaching of the Gospel to the Jews and all who would lend him an ear.
December 14, 2008: An Angel Visits Joseph
The text for this lesson is Matthew 1:18–25.
Key Points
- Just as the angel proclaimed to Joseph that Mary would bear an infant who is the Son of God, the Savior, so God proclaimed to us in His Word that this same Jesus is our Savior from sin and death.
- Law: “Seeing is believing,” or so we tell, or, rather, deceive ourselves. We live by sight, not faith in the divine Word. Worse yet, most often we see only what we want to see. We school our eyes to perceive reality as we desire it to be, not as it really is. In our own eyes, our own senses, we trust, not Christ.
- Gospel: God tells us what is real, what is true, what is trustworthy. He acts in a way perceptible not necessarily through the eyes, but through the ears—ears attuned to what God says. Believing is not seeing, but hearing, for “faith comes from hearing” (Romans 10:17) and is “the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is in Immanuel, God with us, cradled in a virgin womb.
December 7, 2008: An Angel Visits Mary
The text for this lesson is Luke 1:26–38.
Key Points
- In the womb of Mary, Jesus, the Son of God, became a man so that we sinful people might become adopted children of God and share in the inheritance of heaven.
- Law: I am sinful at birth, sinful from the time of my conception, and thus spiritually dead. We don’t grow into being sinners any more than we grow into being humans. From the second we are alive, we are also dead spiritually. We join David in his lament: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
- Gospel: God’s Son, Jesus, as born sinless in order to take my sin upon Himself and redeem me. The Son of God leaves no part of our lives unredeemed. He crosses every t and dots every i in the human experience. Even as a tiny fetus, a near-microscopic baby, God—Jesus—is our Savior. Holy from the time His mother conceived Him, He makes us holy from the womb to the tomb.
