2023-1-2 Nineth Day of Christmas

2023-01-02 Ninth Day of Christmas - Isaiah 62 & Luke 2:22-40

In the name of the Father, +Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

The Lord prepares His people Israel for the coming Savior through discipline.  When Israel repents, He forgives them and renews his promises to her. As He declares through the prophet Isaiah, “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a burning torch.” 

For their sake the Lord refuses to allow Israel to indulge in idolatry, misuse His name, or forget the Sabbath. For their sake, he provides His holy Word through Moses, the Commandments, the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the worship of the Temple and Synagogue, and the forceful voice of the prophets. Through his Word, the Lord admonishes the people to turn away from their sin, return to Him with repentant lips and hearts, so that He may bestow upon them forgiveness and the blessing of his grace. 

But Israel is a stubborn and stiff-necked people with short memories.  When the people stop listening to His Word, he sends them afflictions to bring them back. The Lord even goes so far as to allow other nations to invade and to exile the people from the promised land.  

For the sake of Zion, for the sake of Israel, for the sake of their witness to the world, the Lord will call them Forsaken and Desolate so that they will turn back to Him.  For the Lord desires that His people live in the fullness of His promises.  He wants them to live with the abundance and joy that He offers his chosen upon the Promised Land.  He wants them to enjoy the fullness of the Covenant he established with them.  He earnestly desires to call Israel “my delight is in her” and “Married.”

The Lord prepares Israel for the moment when the embodiment of the Eternal covenant, the Christ, is born in the flesh.  The Lord proclaims through Isaiah, “Behold, the Lord has proclaimed to the end of the earth: Say to the daughter of Zion, “Behold, your salvation is coming; Behold His reward is with Him, and His compensation before Him.”12 And they will call them, “The holy people, The redeemed of the Lord”; And you will be called, “Sought Out, A City Not Abandoned.” 

On this ninth day of Christmas, we rejoice that the promised Christ was born. He came to us in the city of David.  Israel is blessed to receive the long awaited Christ.  Now, Israel may be a further blessing unto the world.  For they bear the Christ, the Savior. 

Jesus is born not only for the sake of Jerusalem and Israel. Jesus is born for the sake of the world.  Israel bears the Christ child to the world. It bears the hope of reconciliation with God.  In order for that reconciliation to be fulfilled, the Christ child enters fully into our humanity. He lives under the Law. Jesus receives circumcision and his name because he is under the Law.  Because Jesus is under the Law, he is presented in the temple according to the commands of God in Leviticus 12.  

The delight and joy of this Gospel passage is that once again, Jesus is affirmed as the Christ child. The Angels affirmed Jesus as the Christ to Joseph, Mary, and the Shepherds. In the course of fulfilling the requirements of the Law in the Temple, Simeon and Anna recognize the infant baby as the Christ.  For Simeon and Anna, their wait is now over. In their sight and within their arms, their hope is fulfilled.  Jesus, the Christ, is here.  Jesus is born for the sake of the world.  The child grows up to be a man.  A man who is the second Adam. Jesus lives under the Law perfectly.  Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam remains true and obedient, even unto death on the cross. Through his death on the cross, Jesus Christ reconciles the world to God.  

After that day in the Temple, Simeon and Anna lived out their days with a sense of fulfillment. They beheld the Messiah. The gift of God born in the midst of Israel.  He is born so that all people with faith in Jesus as their savior through the cross, may have the promise of forgiveness, peace, and everlasting life with the Lord in paradise.  

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.