Behold Your God

If you would like to hear the sermon preached at Trinity Lutheran Church in Layton, Utah for Gaudete, the Third Sunday in Advent, click on this MP3 audio link--"Behold Your God."

The audio includes the Hymn of the Day, "Arise, O Christian People," LSB #354. The sermon begins at the 3:00 mark.

Behold your God has come to gather you into His arms and tend you like a the flock of His church where He tends you like a shepherd.

A rough preaching manuscript follows below if you prefer to read along or read instead.

TEXT: Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD’s hand double for all her sins.

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news; lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah, “Behold your God!” Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.

But who wants that?

“Behold your God!” Bah, humbug!

The message of the prophets--“Behold your God!”

The message of John the Baptizer--“Behold your God!”

The message of the apostles--“Behold your God!”

The message of the church, her pastors, and all the baptized--“Behold your God!”

Take a look at your bulletin cover. Imagine John, dressed in camel hair; a diet of locusts and honey; living out in the wilderness preaching and baptizing. And this guy points to another no more impressive himself really—as Isaiah writes elsewhere:
“… he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” [53:2-3] Even his birth as a babe is not worth beholding.

How ironic—and appropriate--that the One who saves us from our sin would have “no beauty that we should desire him, while the one who tempted and lured us into sin had a beauty about him that was appealing to Adam & Eve and continues to be appealing to us today.

That is why sin is so deadly. We don’t know any better than to desire it and even love it. It’s not the sin we do, as bad and as harmful as that is to others. It’s that in our sin we don’t know God—He is actually ugly and undesirable to us.

And so, A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

A voice says, “Cry!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Luther writes: “The law works the wrath of God, kills, curses, accuses, judges, and damns everything that is not in Christ.” This what Isaiah and the voice is crying about.

Why? “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.” [1 Corinthians 15:36]

The voice that cries out these things, even the voice that cries out--“Behold your God!”—is the voice of the Lord.

The same voice that cried out to Adam and Eve, “Where are you?”

The same voice that cried out to Isaiah and the prophets giving them the words they were to speak; the same voice that cried out from Isaiah and the prophets.

The same voice that cried out from John the Baptizer out in the wilderness.

The same voice that cried out from the apostles.

This voice cries out to you “Behold your God!”

Out there, in the world, the wrath of God is at work, killing, cursing, accusing, judging, and damning everything that is not in Christ.

But here, in the Word, the grace of God is at work, raising to blessing, forgiving, and raising to eternal life--in the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.