The Baptism of our Lord
Jan. 10, 2016
The Father is Pleased
Luke
3:22b
Our
text for this morning's sermon is taken from today's Gospel lesson, Luke
3:22: And a voice came from heaven: ``You are my beloved Son, with you I am
well pleased.''
God
loves you, you know. He has told you so, often and in many different ways. When
you were baptized, God adopted you to be His child, whom He loves. When you
learn Bible verses by heart, God uses those verses, your whole life long, to
speak to you and to reassure you of His love. John 3:16, “God loved the world” .
. . That means you, you know. When you receive Holy Communion, God reassures of
you His love for you as His Son says to you this is my body given for you, this
is my blood shed for you. No greater love has anyone than this, that He lay
down His life for His friends. And Jesus told His friends, His apostles, this, “Whoever
hears you, hears me.” That’s a powerful promise for you to keep in mind. When
you hear your pastor tell you, God loves you, you can be sure that my words are
as true as if you were hearing a voice come from heaven.
When
you read the Bible on your own, or hear it read in Church, you’ll get this same
happy message again and again, God loves you. Today we heard from Isaiah, God’s
preacher of the Gospel for the people of the Old Testament times. God gave
Isaiah these words to preach in Isaiah 43:1 &4a
But now thus says the Lord, he who created
you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
"Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are
mine.
Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
We’re
hearing here, how God speaks His love to the Old Testament people. And it needed to be said, because God also had
quite a bit of stern words for the Old Testament people – words of warning and
words of judgment. God was often upset with His people, angry and justifiably
so because they rebelled against Him, chose false gods instead of him; they
acted as if He were not real.
At
one point it got so bad that God regretted having created people. He let it
rain and rain in a worldwide flood. He destroyed the whole civilization and
started over fresh and new.
So
the people of the Old Testament who believed in God, might have been left
wondering, is God upset with us still? They needed to hear from Him the clear
words, “I love you.” So God spoke it, out loud, through Isaiah His prophet.
And
what about us, now? How do we know what mood God is in? Humanity seems to be
becoming more and more depraved, running farther and farther away from God and
from God’s good ways. Is God again going to reach that point where He regrets
having made us? Will He give up on us all? What’s God’s disposition toward me,
you, or anyone?
We
might wonder if God loves us, because we do hear other things from God as well.
We hear His law, written in our hearts and spelled out in the Bible. We realize
-- we admit -- that we don’t measure up against that law. We don’t meet the
requirements.
No
sinner should be so arrogant as to assume God is happy with them, as though
saying to themselves, “God must like me, everyone likes me.” It is foolishness
to think, “Ach, God doesn’t mind my little sins.”
Listen
to how John the Baptist describes God’s attitude toward those who sin, those
who aren’t good, who don’t deserve God’s approval:
Luke 3:17
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."
When the harvest is brought in, the wheat or barley is laid on the threshing
floor. The harvester takes his long fork, sticks it in the pile of grain and
scoops up some, tosses it up in the air. As the grain falls back down, the warm
breeze blows away the loosened husks, the chaff. The wind blows this junk off
to the side and it settles to the ground, in piles of very combustible fibers. Thus
the harvester has made two piles, one for keeps, grain to make bread, and one
pile of refuse to be burned.
That,
John says, is the judgment that is about to come. Which pile will you land in?
If we are honest with each other and with
ourselves and with God, we will admit that our sins of thought, word and deed have
made us, according to God’s judgment, fit for the fire.
But can we find a word from God, beyond
judgment?
We
must find our answer in Jesus. We must believe that in Jesus we have God’s
love.
Luke 3:21-22
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."
From heaven we hear what is on God’s mind and
what is in God’s heart. God loves His Son, Jesus Christ. He is pleased with
Jesus.
At
least God is happy with one man. He hasn’t given up on all creation.
That’s
like the bit of good news at Noah’s time. When God looked around at the world
and saw that the people’s thoughts and actions were only evil, all the time, He
resolved to destroy them all, and then there’s this one line: “Noah found favor
in the eyes of the Lord.”
God
was pleased with Noah. At least there was one man, whom God could still love.
He chose to save Noah. He told Noah to build an ark in which to ride out the
storm. And Noah brought two of every kind of animals into the ark and the
members of His family and they were saved in that ark.
Now
Jesus has the Father’s love. God is pleased with Jesus, and Jesus builds His
church, and draws people into it and they are saved in the safety of the church
from the wrath of God. By baptism you have been brought into the holy ark of
the church. You are with Jesus and so will be saved from the winnowing of judgment
that is to come.
In
the church you hear the Word of God that says a kinder, gentler word than His
judgment of displeasure. You hear Him say, “I love you.”
Outside
the church, the Lord speaks, but it is His word against sin. He says, “The soul
that sins shall die”. Death is how God expresses His attitude toward sin and
the rebellion of humanity. Outside the church is sin, death, and the burning of
the chaff.
In
the church there is the Gospel of Jesus and baptism of Jesus.
Romans 6:
Do you not know that all of us who have
been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory
of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
In
Jesus we have God’s love. We hear what God says to Jesus and we can apply it to
ourselves because we are baptized into Jesus. ``You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.''
What
a great blessing it is to hear God speak His love to us. There is no reason to
doubt His eternal love. He has put away our sin, having given it to Jesus who
paid for it at the cross. Without sin and guilt, we are safe from God’s
displeasure and we can rejoice to hear of His good pleasure.
God
is so good to us as to lavish upon us His doting words of love, like a Father
who is just happy to have His children in His home, around His table. You who
believe and are baptized, it is you He is talking to when He says, you are precious in my eyes, and honored,
and I love you,
In
the same way, don’t give your loved ones reason to doubt your love. Show them
your love with kindness and going out of your way to make their day. Tell them
your love. Take a moment to put down what you’re obsessed with and express your
care and appreciation to those God has given you to love. Listen to what is
important to them, so you can find even new ways of loving them the way your
heavenly Father loves you.
Amen.
