Third Sunday in Advent Service

Advent Rejoicing and the Opening of Divine Service

I would like to welcome you to the Cognizant Lutheran Church for this third Sunday in Advent.

You'll note that the pink Advent candle, the rose-colored candle, has been lit and my stole is rose-colored as well. Today is Gaudete and the idea behind it is that the opening word in our intro is rejoice.

This is rejoice Sunday, if you would, in Advent. Always during penitential seasons, there's one Sunday where things kind of ease up just a little bit, and that's this Sunday. So, all right, if you are physically present here at Kongsminger, we're following the order of Divine Service Setting 1.

Opening hymn is 347, and if you are able, please rise. Divine Service Setting 1. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Let us then confess our sins to God, our Father. Most merciful God, we confess that we are by nature sinful and unclean. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment. For the sake of your Son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.

Forgive us, renew us, and lead us so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways. To the glory of your holy name.

Amen.

Almighty God, in his mercy, has given his Son to die for you, and for his sake, he forgives you all of your sins. As a called and ordained servant of Christ, and by his authority, I therefore forgive you all of your sins.

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

Amen.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Lord, you were favorable to your land. You restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of your people.

You covered all their sin. Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Let me hear what God the Lord will speak. For he will speak peace to his people, to his saints, but let them not turn back to folly.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

Amen.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. In peace, let us pray to the Lord. For the peace from above, and for our salvation, let us pray to the Lord.

For the peace of the whole world, for the well-being of the Church of God, and for the unity of all, let us pray to the Lord. For this Holy House, and for all who offer here their worship and praise, let us pray to the Lord.

Help, save, comfort, and defend us, gracious Lord. The Lord be with you. Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, we implore you to hear our prayers and to lighten the darkness of our hearts by your gracious visitation.

For you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. You may be seated. The Old Testament reading for this third Sunday in Advent is taken from the prophet Isaiah chapter 40.

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, and that she is received from the Lord's hand double for all of 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, every mountain and hill 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 say, what shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all of its beauty 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. This is the word of the Lord.

Speak the gradual together. You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth. Give ear, O shepherd of Israel. The epistle is taken from 1 Corinthians chapter 4. This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself.

But I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness, and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

Then each will receive his commendation from God. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew, the 11th chapter. When John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?

And Jesus answered them, You go and tell John what you see and you hear. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

And as they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds concerning John. What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing?

Behold, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses. What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messengers before your face, who will prepare your way before you.

This is the gospel of the Lord. Sermon hymn is 345. You may be seated. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You may be seated. In the name of Jesus. So I find Isaiah chapter 40 to be an interesting chapter because there's two messages in here that seem to be at odds with each other.

Let me explain. Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. And then you have John the Baptist. This is a prophecy regarding him, fulfilled in Matthew chapter 3. In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord.

Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. So we have two things. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her warfare has ended. Comfort her and call her to repentance. What is going on with that?

I would note that's an interesting juxtaposition. And so as I was meandering, kind of pondering, mulling it over in my head this week, I tried to come up with an analogy that I think will work. And if it doesn't work, email secretary at kongsfingerchurch .org and register your complaint.

I will gladly read your complaints about this. But here's how I think about it. And I think about it in the terms of warfare, as Isaiah says here. Tell her that her warfare is ended. If you're familiar with the history of the American Civil War, the war between the Union and the Confederates, and that was a horrible war.

In fact, if you think about it, what had happened is that our warfare implements, our artillery, our rifles and stuff like that, they had increased significantly in technology, but people didn't change their tactics.

They were still pretty much using the same tactics that were used at the time of the American Revolution. And with modern warfare, modern weaponry, and old tactics like that, it just equals a ton of casualties.

Horrible, horrible war.

That being said, you'll note that the fellow that finally had the stomach to actually do what was necessary to win that war, Ulysses Grant, that would require a huge human sacrifice. He was willing to make that sacrifice.

And what ended up happening is that Ulysses S. Grant eventually licked Robert E. Lee. It took a long time, but he licked him. And at Appomattox Courthouse, Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to the army of General Grant, and the war was over.

The Union won. But when you look at the history books, the last soldiers to die in the American Civil War died weeks later. There were battles that were still being fought, even though the victory had been won.

And the reason why is because, well, they didn't have the Internet, and they didn't have rapid technologies like we had. They had, truly, the telegraph, but it took a while for the news to travel. And as a result of it, a lot of people kind of needlessly lost their lives.

But to them, the battle was still waging. Using this idea then, I want you to think about the situation we find ourselves in. Christ so strongly hints at the fact that there was a rebellion that began in heaven that was launched by Satan himself, one of God's holy angels.

We learn from Isaiah and from Ezekiel that the creature that we call Satan was a beautiful, beautiful angel, and he got stuck on his own image and really fell in love with himself and really wanted to take over, to kick God off the throne, to kick Christ off the throne and take his place and have the creation worship him.

And as a result of his rebellion, he was successful in leading a third of the angels to join him in rebelling against him. And then we learn later in the book of Genesis that humanity was put in thrust under the dominion of darkness because of our rebellion against God.

If you were to kind of think of it, when we talk about great wars here on planet Earth, we talk about world wars. That's a big thing where you have armies from multiple nations from around the globe fighting each other.

There's conflict all over the place. But what do you call a war where it includes the heavenly and the terrestrial? What do you call a war like that? And I would note that the war has been going on for millennia.

But here's the thing. Christ has won. When you hear John the Baptist saying, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, I used to kind of think in terms very narrowly that, well, that's by virtue of the fact that the king is on the ground, that Aslan is afoot, things like this.

But it's a little bit more than that. If you were to think about it, Christ inaugurates his kingdom. He's coronated when he goes to the cross. And on the cross, Christ defeats Satan definitively. And you'll know, where is Christ presently?

Ruling and reigning. He's been granted the throne of David. He will sit on the throne of David forever. The kingdom of heaven is indeed at hand. In fact, it's reigning right now. That being the case, this starts to bend your mind a little bit.

And you'll note, when world wars come to an end, there's general complete rejoicing that goes on. I think about the famous photograph that the photographer took in Times Square when it was announced that the Japanese had surrendered and that they had signed the armistice on the USS Missouri.

When the news got back to New York City, everybody stopped what they were doing, and they had an impromptu party on the streets of New York City. And that famous photograph you have of a U .S. sailor spontaneously kissing a nurse on the lips.

And, of course, the question is, were they dating each other?

No!

That's crazy, right? So much rejoicing over the fact that the war had ended that you kiss complete strangers on the lips. It's really kind of interesting when you think about it. But you cannot think of more comforting, more amazing, more rejoice-filled words than that the war is over.

Right?

So consider this. This is what Christ wants us to hear and to ponder. The war is over.

Christ won.

He's ruling and reigning. And here Isaiah speaks to us, and he is told, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. And then listen to the words. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Cry to her that her warfare is ended and that her iniquity is pardoned.

Speak tenderly to her? Excuse me. Correct me if I'm wrong. But when a guy speaks tenderly to a girl, does he not have the hots for her?

Does he not love her?

Does he not consider her the apple of his eye? And so here you'll see a hint at that wonderful text that John says, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God says to his bride, speak tenderly to her. Comfort her. Tell her that the war is ended and all of her iniquity is pardoned and that she has received from the Lord's hand double for all of her sins.

Now normally when we hear somebody getting double, okay, usually it's like double punishment. I recently saw a video of a fellow who was receiving from the judge the sentence that he was to receive for a crime that he committed.

And this fellow did something really stupid, okay. While the judge was handing out his punishment, letting him know how long he would be in prison, the guy legitimately jumped at the judge, got over the wall behind the bar and was trying to assault the judge.

Well, you've got all the bailiffs at this point on this guy and they removed him from the courthouse and then just this week or the week before, he found out what his punishment would be. He was initially gonna be given three to five years for the crime that he committed.

This time he was given 27 years without possibility of parole and the judge who ruled on this said that his assault against that judge was an assault against the entire justice system. Therefore, he was getting what he deserved, right.

So we talk about people getting double. Usually it's double punishment. You don't like your punishment, I'm gonna give you more. You don't wanna clean your room, your mom says fine. I'm gonna not only make you clean the room, I'm gonna have you vacuum the carpet in the living room and I'm gonna have you wash your dad's car until you stop complaining, right.

Double, double, double, right. But here's the thing. What does God say to speak to his beloved, his bride? Not only that her warfare has ended, that all of her sin is pardoned, but that she has received double forgiveness, double grace.

Listen, I'm not good at math and I still think math is evil, but I know how to take six and divide it by two, right. When you take six and you divide it by two, you come up with three. Am I wrong, am I wrong?

No, I'm not wrong, I'm right. So a good way to think about what this text is revealing is that at noon while Christ was on the cross, he could have easily said it is finished because at that point all of our sins had been atoned for.

But instead he gutted it out another three hours in the darkness to give us double forgiveness, double pardon, double grace. And why is that important? Because here's the thing. The bride of Christ, you and I, we all know full well that what we've earned from God is not pardon, mercy, grace, and eternal life.

We've earned from him the fires of hell. We've earned from him his wrath and his punishment. And from time to time we listen to that voice of Satan that sits there and says to us, listen, I know that the pastor said that all your sins are forgiven.

I know he said that, but your sins are so special that God can't forgive you. And we sit there and go, really? Well, oh no, right? And you're tempted with the temptation of despair. But do not despair.

Regardless of how many sins you've committed and how deep and dark they are, Christ has given you double, double grace, double mercy, double forgiveness, double pardon.

Because of his tender love for you.

He's given you far more than you need. So you know, this is good news, the war is over. But then you hear this prophecy. The prophecy goes like this. In the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

And then the idea is this, is that although Christ has won the war, you're gonna note that Christ has not seen fit at this point to prosecute all the war criminals. Not at all, okay? Not at all. Instead, he wants the announcement, the gospel, the good news, that he has died for everybody to go out to all of his enemies, you and I included.

What does the scripture say? That God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still enemies, Christ died for our sins. And so the announcements of Christ's victory goes out to each and every one of us, all nations, all tribes, all languages, so that they can hear the good news that Christ has won and also hear that Christ is offering full pardon, full grace, full forgiveness, right?

And so this then is fulfilled when we go into the gospel of Matthew chapter three. In Matthew three, it says this. In those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Indeed, it is. Christ is about to be crowned. Christ is about to set up his throne. Christ is about to rule the nations. And for this is he who was spoken by the prophet Isaiah. And here Matthew quotes Isaiah 40.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Now John wore a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.

One has to wonder, did George Soros get ahold of this fellow too early? I'm not going to eat bugs, just saying, right? So then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region about the Jordan were going out to him.

All of these people, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan. And what were they doing? They were confessing their sins. So John the Baptist preparing the way, calling people to repent, and people hearing the message that the kingdom of God is at hand, they all repented.

Coming out to be baptized by him, and they were confessing their sins. And this is how he was preparing the way before the Lord. The high and exalted mountains were being brought low. Those who were low being brought high.

You got the idea, everything leveling out. But you're going to note here, there's kind of a cautionary tale in all of this. And now that the war is over, Christ has died for our sins. Christ has ascended into heaven.

He's bodily raised from the grave. There are those who want to persist in the rebellion under the pretense that they are still working for God. Beware of such folks. In Matthew chapter three, two tribes of that type of hypocrisy are mentioned.

One are the Pharisees and the other the Sadducees. The Pharisees we talk about a lot. Pharisees are the self-righteous. The Pharisees are those who have added to the scripture their own commands. The Pharisees are the ones who want to be in charge.

The Pharisees believe that they are saved by their good works. And then you have the Sadducees. Now, it's not a correct correlation to connect them to the woke left. But the best way I can describe the Sadducees is that these are the guys, when they read the Bible, they say, yeah, but, right?

And so when it came to the passages that talked about the resurrection, all the way back in the Old Testament, the Sadducees would say, I know the Bible talks about the resurrection.

Yeah, but.

And then they would basically say, that's silly. We've never seen people rise from the dead. This clearly has to be a metaphor and stuff like this. And so what do they do? They attack the scriptures to take away scriptural truth.

And what do they always replace the scriptural truth that they get rid of? They replace it with their own nonsense, their own ideas. Again and again and again. People say, you can't trust the Bible, but you can trust me to tell you what's right and what is true.

Oh, I see how this works, right? So when the Pharisees and Sadducees, they came to John's baptism, John the Baptist said to them, you brood of vipers. He knew for a fact that they hadn't repented. Of course, he's a prophet and more than a prophet, Christ says, in our gospel text.

And basically, I would note that Jesus engaged in a name calling here. He said, you slimy little snakes. You're just like your mother and your father. Brood of viper means that you're just children of Satan himself.

Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. But see, here's the thing. The self-righteous and those who attack the scriptures are not interested in repenting.

They're interested in people acknowledging their piety and them being in control and them being in charge. And as soon as they get in control and in charge, they drive the gospel away and burden people with their own kinds of commandments.

Pharisees have commandments. Sadducees have commandments. You get the idea. I would note that both the self-righteous uber-fundamentalists have a list of commands they expect you to follow that they've made up, but so does the woke left.

Just try having sugar that they haven't approved of that somehow is guilty of oppressing people colonially and stuff like this. These are sins that cannot be forgiven in the woke left, by the way. So he says, who warned you to flee the wrath to come?

Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Don't presume. And here's the other thing. The Jews of Jesus' day were Jewish supremacists. It's true. They legitimately thought that they were better than everybody else by virtue of the fact that they were the descendants of Abraham and all the Gentiles are gonna burn, baby, burn.

This is how they thought. So John the Baptist says, and don't presume to say to yourselves we have Abraham as our father, for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.

And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. And you can see the Pharisees going, but we are religious.

We are holy.

We tithe all the way down to a tenth of our spices.

Right?

Uh-huh, right.

So John says, I baptize you with water, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.

Comfort my people. Tell her that her warfare has ended. Repent.

Right?

It's an interesting juxtaposition. And our psalm for today is actually kind of helpful in this regard. I think it picks up on those themes as well. The assigned psalm for Gaudete is Psalm 85. Listen to what this says.

Lord, you were favorable to your land. You restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave the iniquity of all of your people. You covered all their sin. You withdrew all your wrath. You turned from your hot anger.

Restore us again, O God of our salvation, and put away your indignation toward us. So isn't it interesting? The psalmist here affirms the gospel in its entirety. Restored the fortunes of Jacob. Forgave the iniquity of your people.

Covered all their sin. Withdrew all your wrath. Turned from your hot anger. But, he goes on to say, so put away your indignation. Well, where's God's indignation if you've been forgiven and his wrath has been put away?

I would note we all still suffer the consequences of our sin. We all still do. And I would note that over and over and over again, we all just keep getting old. We're like grass. We wither and fade away.

I'm getting older by the minute. So are y 'all, right? And so when your health begins to fail, when your hair goes completely white, when you begin to experience difficulty health-wise and problems that never seem to go away and they don't go away until you die, it feels like you are still under God's indignation.

The rages of sin is death. But note then that that is not telling you what God really truly feels towards you. It allows you to experience and understand God's anger towards sin. But you come back to the gospel.

You are forgiven. Your iniquity is pardoned. All of your sins are covered. God has withdrawn his wrath and his anger from you. And so the psalmist says, so restore us, O God, of our salvation. Put away your indignation towards us.

Will you be angry with us forever? And the answer is, of course not. Will you prolong your anger to all generations? Of course not. Will you not revive us again? Indeed, God does, so that your people may rejoice in you.

So show us your steadfast love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. Let me hear what God the Lord will speak for. He will speak peace to his people, to his saints. But let them not turn back to folly.

You'll note that many of us have heard the gospel early in our lives. And our lives as Christians stretch out then over many decades. That being the case, don't give in to the temptation to return to sin and thus put God behind you.

That's what he's saying here. Don't return to that folly. Surely his salvation is near to those who fear him. That glory may dwell in our land. Steadfast love and faithfulness meet. Righteousness and peace kiss each other.

Faithfulness springs up from the ground and righteousness looks down from the sky. Yes, the Lord will give what is good. And our land will yield its increase. Righteousness will go before him and make his footsteps away.

And in this context then, kind of knowing what's going on here, consider a portion of our gospel text today. John the Baptist sends his disciples. John knows that he's not long for this world. He's about to perish.

And he's got to pass off his disciples to somebody else. Of course, he was always leading them to Jesus. So he sends them to ask a question. Are you the one who is to come or should we expect another?

And Jesus sends word back to John through his disciples. You go and you tell John what you see and what you hear. The blind receive their sight. The lame walk. The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised up and the poor have good news preached to them.

You hear those words in the liturgy. A foretaste of the feast to come. Christ's miracles are a foretaste of the resurrection. Christ coming to destroy the works of the devil. You'll note that Satan, by plunging us into sin, and we, of course, participating in that, we now have blindness.

Lame people. Lepers. The deaf and the dead, right? And poverty. All of the things. You'll note that what Satan promised us. You'll be like God. We're like a bunch of naked dead paupers is what we are.

Talk about be careful. Buyer beware. It's the worst con ever. Y 'all remember as a kid ever getting some cheap toys that somebody gave you that said made in China? They last for all of, what, 40 seconds when you play with them, right?

And you're sitting there. Some Chinese guy sitting there going,.

Oh, I fooled them. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I have that money, but they don't have no toy.

It's like I wanted to take that guy and punch him in the face. It's like why are you making a toy that only lasts for 30 seconds, right? Satan's even worse than that. He was flat out lying. He knew full well what he was up to.

He was trying to murder us. But that being the case, Christ, when he appears in his first advent, is undoing the works of darkness, showing that with his kingdom, everything that Satan had done to us is being undone.

It's kind of like liberation. Like each of the cities that was liberated during World War II as the Allies rolled back the Nazi tyranny and pushed back on it, right? That's what Christ is talking about here.

And then he says these words, Blessed is the one who is not offended by me. Which kind of begs the question, why would anybody be offended by Jesus? Well, I have a modern-day, super current example to give you.

How many of you, and you don't have to raise your hand, were offended that Joe Biden pardoned his son? How many of you were offended by that, felt like it was a complete miscarriage of justice? Indeed it was, okay?

So you're offended by Joe Biden's, is it mercy? I don't know, because here's the thing. Jesus pardoned a bunch of really sketchy people, okay? I want you to think about this, okay? The list of the people that Jesus has pardoned is far greater than the list of people that Joe Biden has pardoned, okay?

And the recent pardons, the list is quite scandalous, right? But I want you to think about this.

Christ has pardoned you.

He's pardoned me. He's pardoned Nebuchadnezzar. He's pardoned the Ninevites. He's pardoned Peter and yourselves.

You get the idea.

He's pardoned tax collectors, people who turned against their own people and participated in the tyranny of the Roman Empire against their own people. He's pardoned rank prostitutes, the sexually immoral.

In fact, the list of people who are Christians, it just reads like a list of who's who among those who are guilty of all kinds of sins. But here's where it gets interesting. So the reason why Jesus says, blessed is he who is not offended by me is because who was offended by what Jesus was doing?

Oh, the self-righteous were.

They were.

Jesus eats with sinners.

Right.

Because if Jesus didn't eat with sinners, he couldn't eat with anybody, right? He eats with tax collectors and prostitutes and stuff, right? Right, exactly. But here's then the big difference between Jesus and Biden.

Jesus, when he pardons, he pardons by virtue of the fact that he took the charges that were against you and had them laid on him. He suffered your punishment in your place. If what Joseph Biden did was truly grace and mercy, then what Biden should have done is said, I will take my son's punishment for him.

Big difference.

But you'll note, pardoned sinners offends people. But Jesus doesn't allow justice to go unmeted. Justice is fulfilled because Christ bore your sins and mine in his body on the tree. He suffered in our place, and so the pardon he gives is not somehow to avert justice.