The Price of Dedication

Texts:  Exodus 13:1, 11-16; Leviticus 12:1-8; Luke 2:22-35

WHAT IS THE PRICE OF dedication?

Today is Groundhog Day, and you could certainly say those men in the long black coats and tall black hats are dedicated to getting up at the crack of dawn on a cold morning to wake up a rodent.  I sometimes think they’re also dedicated to saying we’ll have six more weeks of winter regardless of the weather, but that’s another story.

  And I don’t need to tell you that tonight the Super Bowl is being played over in New Jersey.  Stick a microphone in the face of any given player and ask him what it will take to win, he’ll say it takes dedication.  By that he generally means wholehearted effort as an individual and as a team.  He means he’ll keep his focus on winning the game and bringing home that trophy, and not let anything distract him from it.

But dedication goes deeper and costs more than football games and folk customs.  On this day, the fortieth after Christmas, the Church has traditionally celebrated the Feast of the Presentation.  It marks the day when, as we read in the second chapter of the Gospel According to St. Luke,  Mary and Joseph took the Child Jesus, their first-born Son, to be dedicated to God in the Temple.

It’s easy for us to get distracted by the cute baby aspect of this scene.  But what they were doing gives us an idea of the price of being dedicated to God.

Verse 23 refers us to a verse from Exodus 13.  There we read that, “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Consecrate (or dedicate) to me every firstborn male.  The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether man or animal.”  In the name of the Lord  Moses commanded the people, “Redeem every firstborn among your sons.  In the days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.  When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal.  This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’”

Ever since the beginning of salvation history, to “dedicate” something or someone to the Lord was to give it up to death.  The only way your firstborn son could live was if he were redeemed by the blood of a lamb.  That’s how the Israelites saved their sons in Egypt the night of that first Passover.  The Angel of death saw the lamb’s blood on the doorpost, and they were spared-- but the firstborn of all the Egyptians were slain.

Blood was the price to get God’s people Israel out of slavery in Egypt.  The price was blood for them to be dedicated to God.  They and their sons deserved to die, but God graciously allowed an innocent animal to die in their stead.

When Mary and Joseph come to Jerusalem with Jesus, they are acknowledging the price of being dedicated to God, by obeying the terms of God’s Old Covenant with Israel.  Jesus is Mary’s firstborn son, and his life is forfeit to God unless He is redeemed in accordance with the Law.

Mary in her obedience is also paying another part of the price of being dedicated to God as a Jew: the cost of purity.  The Lord commanded His people Israel that they were to be pure before Him, in order to come into His presence.  All sorts of things could make you ceremonially impure or unclean, and tops on the list was anything that involved the emission of any bodily fluid, especially blood.  When a woman had given birth to a child, any child, she had to wait a set number of days to be purified from her bleeding, forty days for a son and eighty days for a daughter.  Before that, she could not enter the Lord’s sanctuary.  And even then, there was still a price in blood to be paid, before she could again enjoy the full benefits of being dedicated to the Lord.  Leviticus 12 says, “When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting [later, the Temple] a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. . . . If she cannot afford a lamb, she is to bring two doves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and one for a sin offering.  In this way the priest will make atonement for her, and she will be clean.”

We see in Luke that by Jesus’ time, the priests were allowing the sacrifice for the woman’s purification to also serve as the sacrifice for the redemption of the firstborn son.  And so it is implied that Mary and Joseph couldn’t afford the lamb, and offered the birds instead.

But even with such allowances, being dedicated to God as an ancient Jew cost you something.  It cost you purity, it cost you obedience, it cost you sacrifices of blood as a substitution for your own life.  In return, you and your people belonged to God as no other nation did.  You enjoyed benefits and satisfactions that no other nation received.  It cost a Jew to be dedicated to God, but the price was worth it.

But now, in this passage, Luke reveals that God is doing something new.  A time was coming and now had come when other nations could and would belong to God, too.  This had been prophesied now and then in the old days; our Call to Worship  passage from Zechariah is an example of it. It says, “‘For I am coming and I will live among you,’ declares the Lord.  ‘Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people.’”

But if a Jew thought about this at all, it never seemed quite real.  That day of the nations being dedicated to the God of Israel was always “someday,” far off in the future.  Or it wouldn’t happen until the Lord came and  judged the nations in power and set up the new age.  But now, on this fortieth day after the birth of Mary’s firstborn son, an old man named Simeon comes up to her as she is dedicating and redeeming her son Jesus there in the Temple.  This holy, Spirit-led old man takes the Child in his arms and declares to all who can hear that now salvation had come.  Now the light had come, that would reveal the Lord and His grace to the Gentiles, and make it possible for them to belong to Him.  Now, through this Child, Israel would find its true glory, because through this Child Jesus Israel would live out the reason it belonged to God in the first place.

Luke says that Mary and Joseph marvelled at what Simeon had said about little Jesus.  They knew what it cost for them as Jews to belong to God.  But how could Gentiles ever belong?  What could their son have to do with that?

What, indeed?  But let’s put that on one side for a moment.  For Simeon is still speaking by the power of the Holy Spirit, and he tells Mary that this change in God’s covenant would cost many in Israel dearly.  For being dedicated to God means also being dedicated to all others who belong to God.  And there are and were many who want to feel that God belongs only to them and their kind.   Simeon says, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”  This baby Jesus, Mary’s firstborn son, would be the means by which God was introducing a new way, a new order of being dedicated to Him.  Those who received Him would rise.  Those who rejected Him would fall.

Simeon says, “The thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”  Yes, that’s often how it happens.  Your relationship with some group or someone begins to go deeper, or some change comes in, even a good change, and very quickly you find out if you were really committed to that person or group, or if you were just there for what you could get out of it. You find out if you’re willing to pay the price of continuing to belong!

Mary belonged to God in a very special way.  She pledged to pay the price when she answered the angel Gabriel with “Behold, I am the maidservant of the Lord.”  She did what it took to make that journey down to Bethlehem when she was nine months pregnant, so the Christ Child might be born where it was prophesied.  She was willing to shoulder the responsibility of raising the Child who was Emmanuel, God with us.  But now Simeon says to Mary, “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”  With these words the Holy Spirit tells her that the cost will be much higher than she has thought or imagined.  The sword will pierce her soul, because she belongs to God and she belongs to the incarnate God who is her infant Son Jesus,  destined to be “a sign that will be spoken against,” given as a light for revelation to the Gentiles.

Which returns us to the question we left off before.  What could this Child Jesus have to do with bringing in the Gentiles to belong to God?

To answer that question, we have to ask another question that is the deepest one of all.  We’ve asked, what is the price for us to be dedicated to God?  The fundamental question really is, “What does it cost for God to be dedicated to us?”

God didn’t have to get mixed up with humankind.  He could have wound up the world and gone off and let it run, like some people believe.  But instead He chose to descend to us in care and love.  And He did that with our sins still on us, with our rebellion and selfishness still making us unfit and unclean in His presence.  The blood of lambs, bulls, and goats really could never take away sins.  But all those years and centuries the Lord graciously accepted that blood to atone for the sins of His people.  Imagine what it cost God in patience and forbearance, dealing all those ages with His rebellious chosen people and the wicked Gentile nations around them!

But He did more than deal with them.  He loved them, too, deeply and earnestly.  He loved them-- He loved us-- so much that when the time was right God paid the price of being dedicated to us by entering into the womb of a young Jewish woman and becoming a human being like every other human being, yet without sin.  God paid that extraordinary price!  As C. S. Lewis puts it, think what it would be like for you to become an ant or a slug!

But that’s not all He paid.  Again, Simeon ends his ominous prophecy by saying to Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul also.”  Also.  Who else’s soul will a sword pierce?  Who else will bear agony and pain and even physical death, for the sake of the new belonging that God is opening up to all peoples?  Why, it is this Child Simeon holds in his arms.   This Infant is the sign of God’s salvation that will be spoken against.  Jesus who is God in human flesh will pay the ultimate price for God to belong to us and for us to belong to Him.  Jesus who was God among us paid with His life, given for us on the cross.  He became the Lamb of God who made atonement for our sins and paid the price for our purification.  Not just for God’s chosen people the Jews, but for all whom the Lord will call, from every tribe, tongue, and nation.  “I will live among you,” says Christ even before His birth, “and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.”

And since He has paid the price of being dedicated to us, we don’t need to pay anything to belong to Him.  Jesus has borne all the cost in His body on the Tree!  There is no more need to dedicate our firstborn sons to Him and redeem them from death, for God has dedicated His only-begotten Son to us, and His death has brought us all eternal life.  There is no need for us to sacrifice lambs on His altar, for Jesus is the perfect Lamb of God who once and for all takes away the sins of the world.  We don’t have to prove our purity, or pay our dues by exerting our own righteousness, for Jesus Christ is our righteousness, and He has covered the cost of our being dedicated to Him from now to eternity.  Every time we baptise an adult or a child, and every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we affirm our membership in Him and He confirms His unity with us.  The Old Covenant has passed away, the New Covenant in His blood has been made, and a new way of being dedicated to God is open to all peoples everywhere.

Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion!  Rejoice with great joy, O nations of the world!  For the Jesus Christ our Lord has come and lives among us.  He has paid the price, and now He belongs to us and we belong to Him forever.  Alleluia, alleluia, amen!

His Father's House and Business

Texts: Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 2:40-52

IMAGINE FOR AWHILE THAT you're Mary of Nazareth. One day the angel Gabriel encounters you with the news that you, yes, you are going to bear the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of God. You spend six months with your cousin Elizabeth, who is miraculously pregnant in her old age. Your husband-to-be Joseph is told in a dream that the Baby you're carrying was conceived by the Holy Spirit. Then the Baby is born, and before you have a chance to shake your head over the less-than-ideal circumstances, a band of shepherds appears and tells you a whole host of angels had told them to come and find your little Jesus, because He is the Saviour of the world. Forty days later, you go to the Temple to dedicate Jesus in obedience to the law, and not one, but two prophets come up and announce that your Infant is Israel's promised Redeemer. Then you return to Bethlehem for awhile, and one day, magnificent Magi appear from miles to the east, bow down and worship your Child, and give Him lavish gifts.

I think you'd be convinced that your Child Jesus was unique among children, and not just the way all mothers think their children are unique. You'd understand pretty thoroughly that He had a special relationship with God and that God had given Him a particular mission and purpose in this world. Even when you have to flee to Egypt because King Herod is after Jesus to kill Him, that'd just go to prove that your Son has a prodigious role to play in the history of nations and men.

But eventually you and Joseph return from Egypt and resettle in Nazareth. You get back to your everyday lives. And the other babies start coming: James, then Joses, then Judas and Simon. And two or three sisters for Jesus, too. You don't have time these days to ponder how divinely special your Firstborn is or marvel over His relationship to the Lord Most High. In fact, you get to taking for granted what an obedient, trustworthy, helpful kid He is. "Never a bit of trouble out of Jesus," you say to the neighbors, when you think about it at all. "I wish all the children were like Him." But it's been a long time since you've considered why there's no way they could be. Jesus is just the good kid every mother thinks she has.

Meanwhile, every spring you leave all the kids with their grandparents and you and Joseph go up to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. As a woman, you aren't legally obligated to go, but Joseph as a Jewish adult male is. And this year, Jesus has reached His twelfth year and become a bar mitzvah-- a son of the covenant. He's now a man under the Jewish Law, and He comes with you to celebrate the Feast, too. You travel in a great cavalcade of friends and relatives from Nazareth and the surrounding villages, singing the Psalms of Ascents and praising God. At last, you and your husband and your Firstborn stand in the crowd in the Temple courts as the Passover lamb is sacrificed, and you're filled with awe at how God saved His people from slavery in Egypt so long ago.

Do you stay for all for the Passover and for all seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread? Probably not. Jerusalem is expensive, and work is waiting back home.

So you, Mary, leave the house where you've lodged and start out ahead with the other women and the little children. It's a chance to catch up on all the news, and you're sure Jesus is safe with His father Joseph. They'll be with the men, who bring up the rear.

But that night you make camp, and rendezvous with your husband. You say, "Joseph, where's Jesus? I thought He was with you."

Joseph says, "I thought He was with you!"

You ask friend after friend, relatives after relative, if they've seen Him. No one has. You begin to get worried, and having to spend the night not knowing makes it worse. Jesus has never caused a problem like this! Where can He be?

At first light, you and Joseph head back south to Jerusalem, seeking and inquiring among all the pilgrims who're heading back north. "Have you seen Jesus? Have you seen our Son?"

Your anxiety grows. You reach the capital. Could Jesus be seeing the sights? Maybe He wanted to see the Roman soldiers drill at the Fortress Antonia. Could He have been drawn away by the excitement of the marketplace? In yourself you cry, "Oh, Jesus, Jesus, how could You of all my children do such a thing to me! Where are you? My heart is about to break!"

Finally, the two of you exhaust all the places where you think a smart, curious twelve-year-old boy is likely to be. Then one of you says, "Where haven't we looked yet?"

"We've looked everywhere!"

"What about the Temple?"

Together you hurry up the hill to Mount Zion. But this time you aren't singing psalms, your words are a jumble of panic and hope. You enter the Temple courts, and there on the terrace you see the gathering where members of the Sanhedrin are teaching during these last days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The listeners seem very excited. There is a rumble of sage old voices, and then, right out of the midst of those venerable scholars, you hear an adolescent voice raising a question. A familiar voice. The voice of your Son Jesus.

Jesus! You and Joseph simply do not care who those teachers of the law are, Gamaliel or Hillel or Joseph of Arimathea or the high priest Annas himself. You rush right in and there, sitting respectfully among them, is your Son Jesus. All around, you hear the learned men murmuring, "Amazing child! Remarkable young man! Such wisdom, such understanding! Such insightful answers to all the questions put to him! Would scarcely believe it if I weren't hearing it myself. Amazing!"

But that doesn't make you feel any better. You are overcome with astonishment at where your Boy is and what He's done. You look at Him and exclaim, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Look, so anxiously your father and I have been searching for you!"

And that firstborn Son of yours, that Child who never caused you a bit of trouble in His life, replies simply and very respectfully, "Why were you searching for Me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" But it's been a long, long time since the angels and the wise men, and neither you nor Joseph can make head or tail of what Jesus could possibly mean. But He comes along with you obediently, and after this He is again the obedient, dependable, willing Son He always was-- if He had ever been anything else. And you, Mary, store up this incident in your heart, trying to work out what it means. It's only years later, after your Son has died and risen again, that you fully understand why you should have sought Him first in the Temple, His Father's house, and why He was so careful-- and so right-- to remind you and Joseph who His true Father really was.

"Why were you searching for Me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?" These are the first words of our Savior that we find recorded in Scripture, and we must consider them spoken in wonder and even disappointment. You do not search, either anxiously or not, for something that is in exactly the right place. You go directly to that place and get it. After twelve years Mary and Joseph should have known that Jesus' place and business was in the house of God. And as much as He was their son in human reckoning, even more He was and is the Son of His Father in heaven. It wasn't Jesus' purpose on this earth that He should live out His life as Jesus bar Joseph, the good and godly carpenter of Nazareth, building houses and mending broken tables and chairs. No, He came to earth to be the Jesus the Christ, to shed His blood to build up the house of His Church and to make sin-destroyed lives whole and new.

If Mary and Joseph could forget Who Jesus was and what He came for, how much more the rest of humanity down through history! You've heard what is made of Him, by unbelievers and by those who claim to be Christians alike. They say, "Jesus is primarily a great moral Teacher." Or, "He died to show us how much God loves us and how we should love one another." Or, "He came to be our Good Example for how we should live."

Friends, these ideas about Jesus seem really attractive and possible. But all of them make Him out to be the same thing Moses and the prophets were. They're about what we have to do to make ourselves acceptable to God, about Jesus somehow helping us keep the Old Testament Law, which is summed up in love to God and our neighbor. We didn't need the death of the incarnate Son of God to teach us that! We've known about morality and the love of God and right living for millennia! A purely human prophet would have done to remind us of all that.

But the Man Jesus was and is no less than the divine Son of God, come in human flesh to save us sinners and reconcile us to God. From His earliest youth He knew who His true Father was, and from His earliest youth He had a hunger and thirst for the word and counsel of God. Heeding God's word and counsel would eventually take Him to the Cross to die for your sins and mine, for that was the predestined goal of the Christ who was to come. Let us never get so used to Jesus that we make Him mundane and comfortable and merely human. To take Him for granted like that is to miss the new life He won for us in His blood, and all the blessings He came to give.

The scholars and teachers those three days at the Temple could well be amazed at Jesus' answers and understanding. If they'd only known it, He was giving the first proofs that He was the Messiah promised by the prophets of old. As Isaiah says,

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—

the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,

the Spirit of counsel and of power,

the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD—

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.

Among the teachers we see the Boy Jesus overflowing with wisdom and understanding; and in His answer to His earthly parents we see how above all He delighted in the fear of the Lord. Later on, the writer to the Hebrews would say that Jesus, "for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." From His earliest awareness He knew who His true Father was, and when the time was right, Jesus grew to understand that He had come to seek and save the lost, and to give up His life as a ransom for many. Jesus' focus on God's will for Him was total, even from His boyhood.

It is God's will for us that we be found in Christ, washed in His blood, clothed in His righteousness, enjoying His peace, focussing on His will, and delighting in the fear of the Lord. As His redeemed people, we now are able to follow Jesus' example as we choose our priorities in life and decide whom we will serve. When we know-- "know," mind you, not merely "feel"-- that any earthly authority is exalting itself above the revealed will of God as recorded in the Scriptures, we must obey God rather than man. And if our love for any human being-- parent, child, sibling, or spouse-- becomes an idol that takes the place of our love for God, that human idol must be dethroned, as much for that person's sake as for our own. God and His will for our lives must come first, as for Jesus they came first.

Jesus' place and business were in His Father's house. In Him, ultimately, our place and business are there, too. Wherever you go, whatever you do, study to be found in Him, living joyfully as a child of His heavenly kingdom. You belong in the salvation, love, and peace of the God and Father of your Lord Jesus Christ. May anyone who seeks your heart always find you with Him there, filled with His Spirit, expressing His wisdom, walking in His counsel, and delighting in the fear of the Lord. Not through your own works or virtue or strength, but through the finished work, the divine virtue, and the inexpressible power of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus, to whom be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

God's Answer to the Blue Christmas

Texts: Jeremiah 31:7-14; Luke 2:21-40

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A BLUE Christmas? I'm not sure why this year in particular, maybe it's the economy, but in the weeks leading up to this Christmastide I seemed to hear even more talk than usual about how stressful, depressing, and sad Christmas can be. You probably heard talk like that, too. It reflects a real problem. For many people, Christmas hurts. Maybe somebody you love admitted that their Christmas wasn't feeling merry. Or maybe the person having a blue Christmas was you.

Going by our passage in Luke 2, a blue Christmas isn't anything new. I wonder if that's what Mary, Jesus' mother, started to have when she heard all the words of Simeon in the Temple. There she was with her husband Joseph, bringing her infant firstborn Son Jesus to be dedicated forty days after his birth, according to the dictates of the Law. This venerable old man hobbles up to her, takes her Baby in his arms, and begins to prophesy. At first his words are full of comfort and hope. Simeon says:

"Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel."

What an act of God this was! A total stranger, seeing the salvation of God in this six week old infant! Mary's Child, bringing light and knowledge of the Lord to the Gentiles! This tiny Baby, recognized as the glory of Israel! How amazing! How marvellous!

But Simeon wasn't finished. He fixes his gaze on the young mother and prophesies:

"This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

Wow. And a merry celebration of the Messiah's birth to you, too, sir.

But Simeon spoke truly. Yes, the birth of Christ our Lord was and is an occasion for celebration and joy. Just ask the shepherds and the Wise Men. But there is a sad side of the birth of our Lord Jesus as well.

Let me say right now it's not the sadness we experience when we say we're having a blue Christmas. If we sat down and examined our feelings, we'd probably see we were depressed because we didn't have the time, money, or strength to make this Christmas all we wanted it to be. Or we were feeling upset because people around us expected us to make their Christmas the way they wanted it to be. Sadness might've gripped us because certain loved ones couldn't be with us on Christmas, maybe never again-- or because we were having to spend Christmas Day with people whose presence-- and presents-- we could do without. A blue Christmas can come because we're in a depressed state anyway and all the general cheer clashes rudely with the way we're feeling.

I'm not here to judge those wishes and moods. But know this: the tragedy and sorrow that God our heavenly Father mixes in with the happiness of His Son's birth is both deeper and darker than the blues we might feel at Christmas time. And God has determined that both His Son and we must go through that deeper darkness and woe if we are to emerge into the light and exaltation of Resurrection joy.

For why did the eternal Son of God choose to take on flesh and be born as a baby in this world? Is the nativity of our Lord merely about an adorable child in a manger, and we can forget about Him now that the new year has arrived? No, Jesus Christ came to this earth with a mission and a purpose. He came to bring God's judgment upon sin and Satan. He came to redeem His people from slavery to death and raise them up to live with Him forever. And He did all these things through the suffering of His cross.

Christian friends, without the Cross there is no point to the manger! Without the suffering of Calvary there is no joy in Bethlehem. Without the tearing of His flesh for the sins of the world, the Word made flesh brings no joy for us. Jesus was born to die, for without His death, there could be no payment for sins, no Resurrection, no life. But Jesus Christ the Son of Mary did die and rise again, that we His people might live and dance and sing for joy forever in His heavenly kingdom.

But before that would happen, our Lord walked the road of human suffering with us. And again, as Simeon said:

"This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too."

For others, too, from His infancy the coming of the Messiah Jesus meant trouble as well as peace, condemnation as well as rejoicing, and a sword in the soul as well as comfort and joy.

What? The Messiah's advent didn't bring universal cheer? We know that wasn't true by the reaction of King Herod. But even today, we don't have to be a paranoid ruler to have a hard time accepting the newborn King for who He is. Each of us is born bound up in our human sin nature. And unless and until God reaches out His hand in mercy to us, we think that's all right and normal. We think we're good enough the way we are, and God will let us and all our friends into heaven because we're nice people. But from the very beginning of His life Christ our Lord disturbs our peace and tells us we're living a lie.

Take His name. In Luke 2:21, we're told that "On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was given the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived." Jesus means "Jehovah saves." It's the same as the name "Joshua," but our Lord wasn't called that name because Mary and Joseph liked the sound of it. No, Jesus was given that name because He was to be the Savior of the world.

But that's uncomfortable, isn't it? To say Jesus has come as our Savior says that we need to be saved. His very presence on this earth condemns us for our sins. They aren't simply mistakes, or missteps, or inappropriate actions, or any of the other words we use to cover up what we do, they are sins, deepest offenses against our holy and righteous God. To say Jesus as a Good Example, most people are fine with that. But to proclaim Him as the Savior, Jehovah God come in human flesh to do for us with we could never do for ourselves, we sinful humans don't like that idea, do we? Not really.

But when the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sins, the news of the coming of Jesus who is Jehovah our Savior is the best news of all. When we accept that no amount of trying hard will make our Christmasses or our lives the way we-- or God-- want them to be, our eyes see Jesus as the glorious salvation that allows us to lay down our burdens in peace. Where stubborn sinners fall, repentant sinners rise on the grace of our Lord.

And then, there is offense in this world in the fact that Jesus was circumcised at all. As a Jewish boy, of course He would be. But nothing that is recorded of our Lord in the Gospels is done by accident. Circumcision was the sign of God's gracious covenant with Abraham. It was the outward, visible sign of God's one-way agreement with Abraham, where God promised to do great things for Abraham and his seed, including the blessing of all nations through him. All Abraham had to do-- if you call it "doing something"-- was receive the promise of God by faith. Ever since that time maybe 2,000 years before Christ, the sons of Abraham regularly received circumcision as the sign of God's covenant with them. And just as regularly, they broke God's covenant by failing to walk before the Lord in faith.

Jesus was born to be that ultimate Seed of Abraham who would walk before God the Father in perfect trust and righteousness. His faithfulness condemned Israel's violation of the covenant with Abraham. His inheritance of the promises of God shows up the failure of the false sons of Abraham who forfeited their inheritance by their faithlessness.

But for us who are the spiritual seed of Abraham through faith in Christ, all the promises of God belong to us through Him. Doesn't matter if we're born Jews or Gentiles, through trust in Jesus we become children of Abraham, too, and we inherit the perfect righteousness that Jesus showed on earth, especially in His death and resurrection. Through Him we rise, while unbelievers fall.

And then, Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple to be dedicated to God, as it is written in the Law of the Lord at Exodus 13, verses 2 & 12. The Law said that every firstborn male offspring belonged to the Lord. If it were a clean animal, it was to be sacrificed. If it were a human boy child, he was to be redeemed-- a price had to be paid to God to buy back His life. This is what Jesus' parents are doing for Him in the Temple. Through them by this action God identifies His Son with us.

What I mean is this: Because of creation, all our lives belong to God. He has the right to give us life or to take it away, simply because we are His. But because of Adam's fall, all our lives are forfeit to God because of sin. The wages of sin is death, and that's what we deserve. The traditional redemption of the firstborn symbolized this double debt to God. But when Jesus was redeemed by His parents, He became identified with all of us enslaved sinners who owed a debt to God we could never pay. He perfectly obeyed the Law of Moses that condemned us every time we broke one of its statutes. And so by His sinless life and sacrificial death Jesus became our Redeemer. He has paid the price we owed. And now because of Jesus' righteousness our Father God regards us as His own obedient children, made Christ's own brothers and sisters by His blood..

This is a cause for rejoicing, is it not? This hope is why we are filled with gladness at Christmastide, and all through the year! But there are those who reject the idea that they need a Redeemer. We rejected that idea until the Holy Spirit came upon our lives and showed us the depth of our sin. Jesus indeed grew up to be a sign that was spoken against, as the scribes and the Pharisees, the very religious people who should have recognized Him as Messiah and rejoiced in His coming-- those scribes and Pharisees rejected Him and spoke insultingly against Him. And why? Because they felt they did not need a Redeemer. Or if they did, they wanted to be redeemed from the power of Rome, not from the power of sin, death, and the devil in their own lives.

And so our Lord Jesus was arrested, condemned, and crucified as a blasphemer and liar, and thus the final part of Simeon's prophecy came true-- a sword pierced the soul of Mary, Jesus' mother.

But that wasn't the end of the story, was it? Oh, no. For the torn flesh and shed blood of Christ purchased the redemption of Jerusalem, as the prophetess Anna looked forward to, and not just of Jerusalem, but of all the world. The Resurrection of our Lord on the third day proved that He was, indeed, the Son of God, the Redeemer of Mankind, the faithful Seed of Abraham, the Savior of the world. The tragedy and woe that Jesus went through for our sake bought for us eternal gladness and peace that passes all human understanding, no matter what our circumstances might be at this Christmas or any other. Through Him the word of the prophet Jeremiah has come true, that the Lord will turn our mourning into gladness; that instead of sorrow He will give us comfort and joy.

The birth of our Lord did involve sorrow and woe, and that trouble was deeper than what we experience when we are having a blue Christmas. But it doesn't exclude that trouble. For when we bring to light the thoughts of our own hearts, we see that much if not most of our earthly Christmas sadness has to do with what we cannot do and what this world cannot provide. But rejoice, child of God! The birth of Jesus Christ, Immanuel, is all about what we cannot do and what this fallen world cannot provide! Offer up your inadequacy, your anger, your sorrow, and your need to Him, and accept Him in simple faith. In Christ, God has done for us all we could not do for ourselves; He has provided us with everything we need to be joyful and comforted in Him.

So let us dance and be glad; let us shout for joy on the heights of Zion! For the Lord has redeemed His people and will shepherd us forever. Christ, the Light to the Gentiles is with us; Jesus, the Glory of Israel has come!

The Throne of His Father David

Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 1:26-38

YOU PROBABLY RECOGNIZED our Call to Worship litany this morning as a version of the ancient Advent hymn, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." As I may have mentioned to you before, I belong to a community choir in the Pittsburgh area, and this semester we learned a new anthem using the words to that hymn. The rehearsal we first got it, we were looking over the music and I noticed something. I raised my hand and said to our director, "Excuse me, but there’s a mistake in the text on page 8. It says, ‘O Come! Thou King of David, come!’ It should say, ‘Key of David’ instead."

One of the tenors is a professor of Old Testament at Geneva College and he said, "She's right. It’s ‘Key of David,’ not ‘King of David.’"

Our director looked at the page for a couple of seconds, then pronounced, "I got this at a big choir convention. Nobody there said anything about there being an error in this text. We’ll sing ‘King of David,’ the way it’s written."

One of my fellow sopranos leaned over to me and whispered that the way our director makes us go easy on the consonants, our audiences would probably hear it as ‘Key of David’ anyway and it wouldn’t matter what was written in the score.

But that mistake in a 21st century choir anthem score says a lot about how contemporary Americans (Christian or not) think about Jesus and His Davidic ancestry. There’s the vague understanding that Jesus is connected to David somehow; something to do with both David and Jesus being kings, maybe; but how it really works nobody’s sure, and it doesn’t really matter, does it; it just has a nice ring to it.

But for the Holy Spirit speaking by the prophet Isaiah and for the angel Gabriel addressing the virgin Mary, our Lord’s relationship to King David meant everything about God the Father’s plans for Jesus the Son of Man and for us as His followers. Isaiah says of the Messiah to come,

For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace
there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness
from that time on and forever.

Gabriel says to Mary,

You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.

David’s throne! That’s not merely some nice-sounding phrase that made its way in with the Christmas wrappings. No, it’s a fundamental reality about our Lord Jesus Christ, who He is, and what He has done, and it powerfully affects all of our lives, now and in the world to come.

It starts with who our God is. He’s a promise-making and covenant-making God. He’s a God who keeps His promises. He made a promise to Israel at Mount Sinai that if they kept all the Law given through Moses, He would bless them and they would live and prosper by it. Keeping that covenant was up to the people just as much as it was up to God. And as we know from history, the Jews, our spiritual ancestors, weren’t able to keep it.

But God made a very different kind of promise to King David in 2 Samuel, chapter 7. There God swore that He Himself would build David an everlasting house. That is, He’d assured David a family dynasty with an unbroken succession of biological heirs. God promised David He’d raise up a son to succeed him and that he’d never take His love from him as He had from King Saul. He swore to establish the throne of the kingdom of David’s son before God forever. This promise required nothing from David and his heirs except humble, thankful acceptance. Its fulfillment didn’t depend on David, it all depended on God.

But how can God’s covenant with David possibly benefit us?

Actually, by Mary’s time, for long centuries many Jews probably wondered how it could benefit them. The promise was partially fulfilled in David’s son Solomon, and for a long time God made sure that a direct descendant of David ruled on the throne of Judah, no matter how wicked they might be. But then came the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, and as we read in the prophet Jeremiah, God laid a curse on Jehoiachin, who was king at that time, swearing that neither he nor any of his offspring would ever again sit on the throne of David or rule in Judah. Then the Babylonians captured the city and took almost all the survivors away captive, and Jehoiachin was the last king of Judah to have any surviving offspring at all.

What’s more, after the Exile there was no more Davidic king in Judah. The Maccabees-- who are being celebrated now during Chanukah-- were priests who took over the kingship in the first and second centuries before Christ. And then there was the Herod family in Mary’s own time who claimed to be kings of the Jews. But they were not legitimate kings according to the promise of God. They were not kings from the house of David.

So where was this everlasting throne of David that God had promised? And who was the son of David who could sit on it?

These were hard questions! But faithful sons and daughters of Israel still held onto the promise of God spoken to King David and confirmed by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets. They knew that somehow the Lord would work it out.

And then one day, in a humble home in the village of Nazareth in Galilee (Galilee of the Gentiles, as Isaiah calls it in our passage), the angel Gabriel appeared to a young virgin descended from King David, not from the cursed line of Jehoiachin, several-times-great-grandson of King Solomon, but from David’s son Prince Nathan. And this girl was betrothed to a man named Joseph, who was a direct descendant of Solomon and his legal royal line. By His virgin birth, Jesus through Mary was of the line of David’s son Nathan and did not fall under the curse against Jehoiachin (also called Jeconiah and Coniah). But with Joseph as His adoptive father, our Lord was legally in the kingly line.

And so Gabriel announced to Mary that her Son Jesus would be the one who could at last fulfill God’s faithful promise to David and sit on David’s throne. And you’ll notice, that the angel doesn’t say that her Son would leave His throne to His sons and their sons. No. The promise is that her Son, Himself, would be king forever.

But again, what’s in this for us? Why should be to our good that Jesus should reign on the throne of His father David?

It matters to us, because of God’s plan for our salvation, made before the foundation of the world. God prepared His people Israel to be the channel through which His own appointed Saviour and Christ would come into the world; not to save Israel alone, but to bring salvation to all who believe in Him. As Jesus Himself says in John chapter 4, "Salvation is of the Jews." David was the best king who ruled over God’s people Israel; he was the beloved of God, and despite his sins he was the one who walked with God most closely. David himself could never have been the eternal king and saviour of the world promised even from the Garden of Eden; obviously, David needed a saviour himself. It is his descendant Jesus, coming from David’s house and lineage, who inherits the promises of eternal kingship. His kingdom is not only everlasting, it is also universal.
As it says in Isaiah 9:7,

"Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end."

And Revelation 11:15 says,

"The kingdom of this world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ,
and he shall reign forever and ever."

Jesus is not merely the king of the Jews, He is the king of the whole world, and the king of you and me.

But it’s worth asking, why is He also called the "Key of David"? We find that term various places in Scripture, and sometimes it also reads "the key of the house of David." Jesus is the Key of David because by His sacrificial death He opens the house of David to us. Through Christ we enter in and enjoy the blessings promised to God’s beloved Son and King. Until Jesus was born and died and rose to take away the sins of the world, God’s fellowship, love, and favor were open only to faithful Jews and those who were willing to become Jews. But Jesus has opened the door to the kingdom of heaven to all believers, and what He has opened no one can shut.

I doubt Mary had any idea of the scope of God’s glorious, world-embracing plan when she said, "I am the Lord’s servant" that day in Nazareth. But God has revealed it to us in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, brought to us in the writings of His apostles and evangelists. No one in Mary’s day could have dreamed that God would ever invite all the nations of the world into the blessings promised to Israel . But those blessings are now freely given to everyone who, accepting Him by faith, willingly bows the knee to Jesus Christ as king. They’re available right now to us, whom God has chosen and reconciled to Himself through the blood of His crucified and risen Son.

Sadly, some people want the blessings of Christ without receiving Christ Himself. It isn’t possible. Every good thing Jesus grants from the throne of David is with Him and in Him and through Him. And so Isaiah sings in today’s passage, that Jesus our Messiah is our Wonderful Counselor and our Mighty God; He is the very representation of the Everlasting Father; He is our Prince of Peace. As a good king looks after the welfare and prosperity of his people, Jesus our king gives us everything we need to live and prosper in Him. He blesses us with the forgiveness of our sins, the indwelling of His Holy Spirit, with the promise of perfect joy in the presence of God forever, and innumerable graces beside.

Jesus Son of Mary has inherited the throne of His father David. He is the Son of the Most High, God of God from all eternity. He is the ultimate Child of promise, who confirms to us the love of God, love even deeper than that shown to David and Solomon. His kingdom and rule will never end, and so His love and favor to His people will never end.

And we? We can be His joyful servants, receiving His grace, welcoming His presence in Word and Spirit, and longing for His return. Or we can be enemies in rebellion against Him, doomed to defeat like Midian the enemy of Israel, whom Isaiah mentions in his prophecy. Either way, we will bow the knee to Him who sits on the throne of David. Receive the grace of your Lord Jesus Christ, acknowledge Him to be great David’s greater Son, and like Mary, humbly say, "I am the servant of the Lord."

Firstborn of Mary, the Firstborn of God

Texts: Exodus 4:21-22, 13:1-2; 11-16; Luke 2:22-40

I’M IN A COMMUNITY CHOIR, THE Village Singers of the Tri-County Choir Institute, and a popular song in our Christmas repertory is "Mary, Did You Know?" by Mark Lowry. The first verse goes:

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy
Would someday walk on water?
Mary did you know
That your baby boy
Will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
That your baby boy
Has come to make you new?
This child that you've delivered
Will soon deliver you.
Mary, did you know?

These are good questions for the mother of our Lord! If I could ask Mary anything, it’d be about that day in Jerusalem, forty days after Jesus was born. "Mary, did you know what was happening, when you and Joseph took the baby Jesus to the Temple to be presented to the Lord?"

The obvious answer would be, "Yes, we were obeying the Law of the Lord given through Moses: ‘Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord.’ We were obedient Jews; we did as the Law commands."

And that would have been true. It goes back 1,400 years before Mary’s day, when God set His people Israel free from slavery in Egypt. As it says in our reading from Exodus, on that dark night of the Tenth Plague, the Lord God Almighty punished Pharaoh by slaying all the firstborn of Egypt. Pharaoh thought he was a god, and he refused to let Israel, God’s firstborn son, go and worship the Lord. So the Lord brought judgement on Pharaoh and all the false gods of Egypt. He proved who the true God actually was.

But the plague on the firstborn was on all the firstborn sons dwelling in Egypt; as it says in Exodus 11, "from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well." But, said the Lord, He would "make a distinction between Egypt and Israel." Why? Because Israel was like that spoiled kid who gets away with everything because he’s his father’s favorite? Or because the Egyptians were such terrible sinners who deserved punishment and the Israelites were perfect children who always did everything right?

No, the Lord God caused the angel of death to pass over the Israelite homes that night because of the blood of the Passover lamb that was smeared on the doorposts. The Israelites were just as lost and deserving of death as the Egyptians were, but God in His sovereign grace chose to redeem them by the blood of the lamb. The firstborn of the Egyptians died; the firstborn of Israel were redeemed.

And so God consecrated to Himself all the firstborn in Israel. In Numbers 3:13 it says, "For all the firstborn are mine. When I struck down the firstborn in Egypt, I set apart for myself [or, "consecrated to Myself"] every firstborn in Israel. They are to be mine. I am the Lord." Ever since, the firstborn were set apart, consecrated, dedicated to the Lord.

It’s become fashionable in some denominations today for parents to "dedicate" infants to the Lord instead of having them baptised. But would they if they understood what biblical dedication meant? In the Old Testament, to "dedicate" or "devote" or "consecrate" something or someone to the Lord meant to totally give them over to God, often by totally destroying them. If you’ve dedicated something or someone to God, it or he belongs to God totally. You can no longer claim ownership of it, or enjoy any use of it.

This kind of dedication by death was absolutely the case with firstborn calves and lambs and young goats, all clean animals that could be sacrificed to the Lord. But it could not be so with an Israelite woman’s firstborn son. He was not to die. Firstborn sons had to be redeemed.

Mary and Joseph were good Jews. Jesus was Mary’s firstborn son and that day at the temple she was acknowledging He belonged totally to the Lord. She had to pay the designated price to redeem Him from the dedication of death.

But in the Books of Moses we also read that even though the firstborn sons of Israel were not to die, the Lord still had the right to claim their perpetual service as priests and servants in His sanctuary. This is how Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord in Samuel 1:24-28. But ordinarily, God substituted the men of the tribe of Levi for the firstborn Israelite males. The passage I quoted from Numbers 3 actually begins, "The Lord to Moses, ‘I have taken the Levites from among the Israelites in the place of the first male offspring of every Israelite woman. The Levites are mine, for all the firstborn are mine."

But Jewish parents couldn’t take this substitution lightly. When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple, they were confessing that God had the right to require His services there, all His life long. It was only because the Levites were dedicated to that work instead that Mary and Joseph could take Jesus home with them to raise Him as their own.

There’s something else Mary would have known as she dedicated Jesus, her firstborn son: The firstborn offspring of man or beast was like the firstfruits of the vineyard or field. The firstfruits were always given over to priests and Levites as the Lord’s representatives; as it says in Numbers 18:12, "I give to you all the finest olive oil and all the finest new wine and grain they give the Lord as the firstfruits of their harvest." And in verses 14 and 15, it says, "Everything in Israel that is devoted to the Lord is yours. But you must redeem every firstborn son and every firstborn male of unclean animals." The firstfruits were to be the finest and best of the crop so far. The firstfruits demonstrated the power of God working in Israel’s behalf, to bless and prosper them. The firstfruits and the firstborn represented all the richness and goodness that God would give His people thereafter, in crops and cattle and children as well.

So when Mary and Joseph presented Jesus that day in the temple, they knew that their firstborn Son represented the goodness and blessing of the Lord to them. They knew that Jesus stood for the children that would come after. That’s the way it was. That’s something every observant Jew would know.

But Mary, did you know the full extent of what you and Joseph did there in Jerusalem that day? Even after the announcing angels and adoring shepherds, did you realize you weren’t just fulfilling the Law as any new mother would? Mary, did you know that when you presented your Son, it was symbolic of the work of God that one day would change everything in heaven and on earth?

I’m sure Mary and Joseph got some idea of the magnitude of what was happening from the prophecies of Simeon and Anna. But Mary had to wait long years until Jesus had ascended into heaven to truly understand what she had done when she took Him to be presented to the Lord.

That day, Mary and Joseph dedicated her firstborn Son Jesus to the Lord, to acknowledge that God had first claim on Him, even unto death. That day, they paid the redemption price for Jesus and took Him home. But one day, thirty-three years later, Jesus, Mary’s firstborn Son and the only-begotten Son of God, hung on a cross to pay the redemption price for all God’s people. Our lives were forfeit because of sin. We stood under God’s wrath and condemnation, and we could never come up with a payment sufficient to escape it. But like the blood of the Passover lamb in Egypt long ago, the blood of Jesus Christ the Lamb of God interposes between us and the death we deserved. Jesus was and is the Firstborn Son of God, and "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

This promise is for you! You have been redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. And so you belong no longer to yourself, but to Christ. In baptism you died to sin and rose to new life in Him, that you should offer your bodies to God in righteousness and thanksgiving. You are no longer your own: you were bought with a price. And lest you think that means nothing but tedium and toil-- I know how the old Adam in us can think!-- remember that Jesus’ blood paid for all of it. Jesus is our righteousness, our health, our hope, our strength. In Him we can do the perfect will of God, for by His death He has set us free.

That day, Mary and Joseph dedicated her firstborn Son Jesus to the Lord, to acknowledge that God had the right to claim His services continually in the temple. But the day came, thirty-three years later, when the Levitical priesthood was abolished. On that day, Jesus, Mary’s firstborn Son and the only-begotten Son of God, ascended into heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father. He is there even now, serving God as our eternal and everlasting High Priest and mediator. As it says in the Letter to the Hebrews, "Because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to make intercession for them." One of the most important jobs of the Levites was to make sure that the common people did not approach the Holy of Holies. As it says in Numbers 3:10, "Appoint Aaron and his sons to serve as priests; anyone else who approaches the sanctuary must be put to death." But it is the joy and triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ to open the very presence of God to all who believe. Again as the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God in full assurance, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water."

This promise is for us! Since Jesus the Firstborn Son has become our great high priest, cleansing us by the sprinkling of His own blood, we are consecrated to serve God as priests under Him. As the Apostle Peter says, "You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." We offer those spiritual sacrifices as we demonstrate the love and praise of Jesus Christ in all we do and are. We are Christ’s priests as we study His word so we can to tell others what He has done on the cross to rescue us and all sinners from the judgement to come. Not just how He’s made our lives better or happier or more fulfilling. No, how Jesus has dealt with our sin and made us fit to enter the very presence of God.

That day, Mary and Joseph dedicated her firstborn Son Jesus to the Lord, to acknowledge that Jesus was the beginning of God’s blessing of children to them, the finest they could offer. But the day would come thirty-three years later when God Almighty would raise Jesus, Mary’s firstborn Son and the only-begotten Son of God, from the dead; as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, "Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came by a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him." And in Colossians 1, "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation." And later in the same passage, "And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy." In Jesus Christ God has offered the first and the best to Himself, and Jesus stands as the representative and symbol of all those who belong to Him.

This promise is for us! Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. When He does, He will raise us to be like Him, holy and without blemish, because Christ the firstfruits is holy. As the firstborn of Mary, He shares and redeems our humanity; as the firstborn of God, He gives us eternal life and will transform our mortal bodies to be like His immortal body.

In the Christian life we speak of being "dedicated to the Lord." But friends, we can only speak that way because Jesus Christ, Mary’s firstborn and the Firstborn of God, first dedicated Himself to His Father and to us. He died for in our place, He perfectly serves God in our place, and He is our Elder Brother and Head, so that His life and obedience is credited to us and overflows to our eternal benefit. He dedicated us to Himself when we were called to faith by His Holy Spirit, He confirmed that dedication in our baptism, and by His Spirit Jesus day by day makes us more and more like Himself, a perfect Offering fit for presentation to our holy God and Father. God has not left us on our own, to try to be holy and acceptable by our own efforts! He has given us His Firstborn Son. It is in Christ that we are justified. In Christ we walk in holiness and faith. In Christ and Christ alone we will be exalted and glorified, to the praise of God the Father.

Accept God’s gift to you this Christmastide, and through Jesus the Firstborn may you present yourselves to the Lord, growing in holiness, goodness, and all spiritual blessings, as you give thanks to God for His love, mercy, and indescribable grace. Amen.