Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning is from the 29th Psalm:
...The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord, over many waters. The voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks the cedars of Lebanon. He makes Lebanon to skip like a calf, and Sirion like a young wild ox. The voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire. The voice of the Lord shakes the wilderness; the Lord shakes the wilderness of Kadesh. The voice of the Lord makes the deer give birth and strips the forests bare, and in his temple all cry, “Glory!” The Lord sits enthroned over the flood; the Lord sits enthroned as king forever. May the Lord give strength to his people! May the Lord bless his people with peace!
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
In this morning’s psalm, perhaps you didn’t even pay that much attention to it, we find a magnificent description of what the Lord does, specifically through His voice. And we find that because of all these wonderful things, glory is due His name. If you listen, you hear that the voice of the Lord is over the waters, and it thunders, it’s powerful, and full of majesty. The voice of the Lord shatters the trees, the thickest and tallest of the trees, and also makes whole nations skip around like calves in springtime. The voice of the Lord gives life and He takes it away.
The voice of the Lord, the voice of YHWH, is indeed powerful. It is a creating voice, it is a destroying voice, it is a loving voice, it is a vengeful voice. This voice of the Lord was being sung in this Psalm by the gathering congregation of Israel. The voice of the Lord was being addressed in the worship of the whole Israelite congregation as they gathered together in the Temple. They would sing praises to God, and even in this Psalm, they cry out with a loud voice, Glory! But even their collective voices, raised high to heaven, as loud as they could make it, could not compare to the awesome, destructive, creating, marvelous power of the voice of the Lord.
The voice of the Lord always does as it pleases. And it should then not surprise us that when this voice of YHWH comes into the world, it accomplishes all things. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
This very voice of God spoke and it was. He creates out of nothing. This voice, John the Evangelist calls the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. The voice of God, the Word of God, is creative, He is powerful, and He is Jesus. For the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
This voice of God, the voice of YHWH, the Word of God is Jesus Himself, the second person of the Trinity who came to this world, took on human flesh in order that He would take all sin into it, crucify it, be killed, and rise on the third day for the justification of all of your sins. This is what the voice of God does. The voice of God has come to have mercy on you.
For, even in the garden. Back in Genesis 3, when, after eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve heard the sound, the voice of YHWH, walking in the garden, and God asked, “Where are you?” This simple question, a question that scared the poop out of Adam and Eve, was not to condemn them. God knew what they had done. If God had desired to destroy them from the heavenly places with a bolt of lightning, He could have. Instead, He came to where they were, He came into the garden, and asked a question, not to condemn them, but in order that He would show them mercy.
He came in order that He would give them the promise of a Messiah, the first Gospel message in the Scriptures. Speaking against the serpent, the devil, God says, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This is the first Gospel, the first time the promised Messiah is mentioned. And from this, every woman from the time of Eve until the time of Mary was hoping that her firstborn son would be that Messiah. Because of the voice of the Lord, the promise of YHWH, each woman was on the lookout for this Man who would be coming.
And He did come. He came through the virgin Mary, the one who carried God in her womb, incarnate by the Holy Spirit, yet of the seed of Mary, the eggs of Mary, the son of Mary. He came to take on this human flesh. The voice of YHWH that destroys cedars and causes deer to give birth, the voice of YHWH that is full of majesty and power, the voice of YHWH now cries for His mother, screams when He needs changing, learns to say mama and dada, counts His numbers, giggles and laughs, repeats the Scriptures. The voice of YHWH is now found in a little child, until He grows to be a man.
And there, the voice of YHWH does not speak in front of Pilate. The voice of YHWH is as silent as as sheep before His shearers, as silent as He can be in the face of accusations. The voice of YHWH is asking to be crucified for your sins and for mine. The voice of YHWH cries out, It is finished. This is what the voice of YHWH, the Word of YHWH, the Word made flesh, was born to do. He was born to die. And so He did.
He died for our terrible sins. He died for all the things we have done and all the things we have left undone. We, from our very conceptions, have not loved God at all; in fact we have hated God. And we hate our neighbor; we do not love them. We do terrible and horrible things to one another, to our families, to our friends. We deserve nothing but death.
And with David, in the Psalms, after he murdered Uriah and committed adultery with Bathsheba, cries out to God, “Against you, and you only, have I sinned, O Lord!” Our sin, certainly is against our neighbor, but it breaks God’s commandments, His holy Law that we must follow. That holy Law we cannot follow at all due to our sinful nature. And this should terrify us, for we would expect that the voice of the Lord would condemn us for all the terrible and horrible things we have done. And if it did, we would certainly deserve it.
But the voice of the Lord instead has said of us, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” The voice of YHWH says, “I desire mercy.” The voice of Jesus says, “It is finished.” For you, it is finished, for the Lord has had mercy upon you. The Lord will always have mercy upon you.
And why is this? It is not because of your own doing. It is not because you have obeyed the Law. Rather it is because you have DISOBEYED the Law. Christ comes for sinners, He has not come for the self-righteous. He has not come for the righteous, though there is no one who can actually claim this. He comes for sinners. And He comes to call sinners to repentance.
What does this mean? This means that the voice of the Lord calls to you, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” The voice of the Lord calls you to turn from your sin, and to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. The voice of the Lord calls you to hear His Word and to understand it. It is not enough that we should merely be in the presence of holy things, the Holy Word, the Holy Sacraments. The devil has been in the midst of such holy things, and yet he is not nor shall ever be saved.
However, receiving these things in order that we would receive the benefit of Christ and His sacrifice, these will save us. For indeed, receiving the Word and Sacraments cause us to have sorrow for our sinful state. It causes us to desire the Word of God more. It causes us to desire to eat and drink the righteous body and blood of Christ more. It causes us to pray without ceasing, sing without stopping, listen and hear. It causes us to serve our neighbor in love.
But these things will not save you. The voice of YHWH, the Word of God saves you. Your responses are good, and they bear much fruit, just as John told the Pharisees. True repentance always bears fruit. But fruit doesn’t save. Fruit is always for the benefit of the neighbor. We repent, yes, the Holy Spirit causes us to repent of our sin for the sake of Christ, but we then receive the Word and Sacrament, absolution in our ears, on our foreheads, and in our mouths, not to keep it for ourselves, but so that we may be strengthened to serve others. Our fruit feeds and sustains the neighbors in our lives. But the fruit of your repentance still does not save you. It’s the result of your salvation. It’s the result of hearing the Word of the Lord and receiving His sacraments. Baptism saves. The Eucharist forgives. It’s Christ’s promise.
For indeed, even this day as we celebrate the Lord’s Baptism, where He sanctified all waters to be used in Holy Baptism with His Word, we celebrate even our own baptisms, where we can look back on that day, for me, January 3, 1982, on the day that we were saved. That day, a singular point in history, I can say that the cross of Christ came to me. It came to me to wash me in the blood shed once for all sin. It came to me to wash me clean of my sin. It came to me to make a promise to me, that I am the Lord’s, and He is mine. For indeed, Jesus Christ is my Lord, as He is your Lord. For if we are baptized into a death like His, as Paul says, then we have the benefit of a life like His. And His is the voice of YHWH, where He says, this is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.
When you are baptized, the heavens are rent open as they were at Jesus’ baptism, and as you are baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus enters you, delivered by the Holy Spirit, and the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit is placed on you, where the Father says, “This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter, in whom my Beloved Son dwells, and in Him I am well-pleased.”
The voice of YHWH has declared you to be His child because of what His Son has done in this world for your sake. And the Father sees His Son every time He looks upon you, for you have received the Son’s righteousness in your baptism, just as Jesus emptied Himself of His righteousness in His own baptism. Christ has laid down all that is perfect upon our shoulders, and He has picked up all that is ours and is sinful and placed them upon His own. For in this, all we have is exchanged with all that Christ has. And the voice of YHWH says, “Forgive them.” And so the Father does.
For indeed, the voice of YHWH, the voice of the Lord, the voice of Jesus is powerful. It does as it pleases. It is a creating voice, it is a destroying voice, it is a loving voice, it is a vengeful voice. But the Lord desires no vengeance upon you, for you are His forgiven child. And for this, we may echo with the whole congregation of Israel, and with the Church across time and space, Glory to God in the Highest, and peace to His people on earth! In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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