Lent 4—Laetare
Dear friends in Christ. Our text today comes from the OT book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is really a series of Moses’ farewell sermons that he spoke to the Israelites shortly before his death and before the Lord would lead them, through Joshua, into the Promised Land. The general, overall theme of Deuteronomy, of Moses in these speeches as he explains the Law, the teaching of the Lord, is that God is promising the Israelites political security and economic prosperity so long as they prove faithful to Him; but He threatened to reject them if they reject Him.
In the verses right before our text, Moses tells of God’s promise to the Israelites: He would give them the victory over the people already in the land; the Israelites would serve as God’s rod of punishment on these people who had sinned so greatly. However, after the Lord gives His people the victory, the Israelites were not to unite with the people, lest the Israelites be turned away from the true God and faith in the coming Savior and be misled into idolatry.
1. Moses begins our text: For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. In Scripture, the idea of holiness is one that means “separate.” Here, when the Lord calls His people “holy,” He is saying that they are separate, different, distinct from all the rest of the people of the world. That the Israelites were holy, separate people, God made clear and drove home to them by giving them the Law on Mt. Sinai. It not only revealed His moral Law—the holy Ten Commandments—but gave them all sorts of other laws, rules, regulations that made them different and stand out from all the people around them—like laws on what they were or were not allowed to eat. Day in and day out, the OT people were constantly reminded that they were different; that they were separate; that they were holy. The OT Israelites were the true visible Church.
But, dear Christian, also to us we hear God saying through St. Peter [I Peter 2.9,10]: You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people…[You] once were not a people but are now the people of God. We, dear Christian, are a holy people. Does that title kind of sound a bit scary, a bit overwhelming? When we hear “holy” we normally tend to think of a person who in our eyes is without sin—or what we would consider very close to it; a person full of all sorts of good works; a person no one could say anything bad against. But certainly that can’t be/ isn’t us! It can’t be me!
But, dear Christian, remember the biblical notion of “holy.” It means “separate.” We Christians, the Church, are holy. We are a separate, distinct people from the rest of humanity—like the Israelites were from the unbelieving, idolatrous people around them. They were separate and distinct because God came to them; He chose them to be the people from whom the Savior, His Son, would take on human flesh and blood; He came and revealed His holy Law to them; in the following centuries, He would send His holy prophets to teach them His word and will and would try to draw them back to Him.
The same applies to us. The Lord came to us, to each of His dear Christians, and He claimed us to be His own. What Moses says to the Israelites in our text, applies also to us: The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. From all eternity, God chose us to be His dear Christian, one of His own special people. And in time He carries out that eternal decree to make each of us, His dear Christian, His treasured possession. From eternity God chose us but it was in the waters of holy baptism that God made us “holy,” separated us from the people around us and made us and claimed us as His own. In baptism, God separated us from the mass of lost humanity and brought us into His holy family, the Church. Here, in His Church, He comes to us in word and sacrament to strengthen and keep us in the faith so that we remain separate, holy.
St. Paul makes a wonderful baptismal connection. When the Israelites left slavery in Egypt, in order to escape Pharaoh’s army, they had to go through the Red Sea. That’s when through Moses, God parted the Sea so they Israelites could go through on dry ground. St. Paul connects that with baptism [1 Cor. 10.1]: For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud [that pillar of cloud that led the Israelites] and all passed through the sea, and all united with Moses were baptized in the cloud and in the sea. By going through the walls of water, by doing this in faith, the Israelites were “baptized.” They went from slavery in Egypt and the tyranny of Pharaoh to true freedom in the Lord. They were called out and by this “baptism” made a special, distinct people, clear to all that the Lord claimed them as His own, as His own treasured possession. They emerged a new people.
With that wonderful OT picture and foreshadowing of Baptism, we see that with our own baptism God led us out from slavery to sin and death and freed us from the tyranny of Satan. In baptism He claimed us and we now emerged as His own treasured people, part of His holy family, the Church. Our baptism marks us as special, separate people; God’s own people. We are now God’s possession He set apart for Himself. For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession.
The glorious thing about baptism is that baptism is God’s work. We, the Christian, are a people holy/ separate to the Lord. And why? Because the Lord chose us! He made us holy; not we ourselves. That’s why baptism is such a wonderful thing: it is certain; it is what God does for us—He claims us, He separates us. In our text, Moses points the Israelites to God’s certain/ past work for them: the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. In the same way, let us look back at our baptism and what God has done there for us—rescuing us from slavery and tyranny of sin, death and devil and making us His own treasured possession. Yes, baptism is a one-time event, but it has meaning and significance to us every day.
Because baptism is God’s work for us, it is certain. What He says and promises us there stand. What a glorious track record God has. Moses pointed to that in our text: the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers. What the Lord says, He does. In baptism, He claimed you, washed away your sin and brought you into His holy family, claiming and marking you as His own. Now there is no doubt—we are our Lord’s dear Christians; He has brought us to the faith and He is working to keep us in the faith and bring us one day to him in heaven.
This is all His pure grace and mercy to us! Just like Moses tells the Israelites in our text: It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. So also with us: the Lord has acted and He will continue to act toward us purely out of His grace, mercy and love.
The wonderful thing for us today, like it was for the Israelites then, is that God is most eager to show us mercy and love. Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, to a thousand generations. There is no time limit to God’s mercy—it’s there even to a thousand generations. That’s why we can be sure that the Lord is continually showing us grace and mercy because He started it: He chose us, He called us, He made us His treasured possession and He will do so for a 1000 generations. What a glorious position we are in—we are part of the Church, God’s Holy people whom He has claimed in holy baptism and called into His holy family and to whom He delights in showing continual mercy.
2. So, God has separated us; we are a people holy to the LORD [our] God. The LORD [our] God has chosen [us] to be a people for His treasured possession. So now what? What does that mean for us as we live our lives in the grace and mercy of God?
It means that we recognize that in baptism God has given us the Holy Spirit. Peter tells the crowds in his Pentecost sermon: Repent, and…be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Now we have been given the Holy Spirit in baptism, He is in us strengthening and leading us to do the will of God. We have the Holy Spirit in us always bringing to mind God’s grace and mercy to us and as He does so, our love toward God grows and in faith we strive to do the Lord’s holy will.
Where the Holy Spirit is in the heart, there is faith in Jesus as Savior. That Spirit-worked faith is constantly receiving from Jesus the forgiveness of sins and His perfect righteousness. That means that as we have the Holy Spirit, as we have faith in Jesus, we also have the forgiveness of sins. That’s because faith is always busy at work receiving Jesus’ forgiveness and perfect righteousness.
Because our sins are forgiven we, dear Christian, are holy; we are separate from the rest of lost, condemned humanity; we are holy to the Lord. Since the sin that we do is forgiven, God looks at us and sees nothing but purely good works and the perfect righteousness of Jesus. By that grace of God to us, we, then, are consecrated and set apart to serve the Lord in righteousness and holiness.
Our power to do the Lord’s will, to live lives serving the Lord in righteousness and holiness, comes by the Holy Spirit bringing to our minds our sin and the Lord’s mercy and grace to us. Our text: It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. That’s why Lent and our Lenten repentance over our sin and our pondering Jesus’ holy passion are so vital. By looking at our lives in light of God’s holy Law and recognizing our sin and that by our sin we earn nothing but God’s wrath and damnation, we regard ourselves as lost condemned sinners and our merits as nothing. By also looking to the cross of Christ and peeking ahead to Easter’s empty tomb, we see the mercy and love of God. We then also look back at our baptism and see that, yes, indeed God has washed away our sin there and brought us into His holy family, the Church; we then hear the absolution/ forgiveness of our sins
pronounced upon us in church; we then receive Jesus’ body and blood in the sacrament for the forgiveness of sins. And so we then all the more love the Lord for His mercy and love toward us and strive, in love and thanksgiving, to do His holy will. When tempted to sin, we ask: how can I sin against my good and gracious God who loved me and showed me such great mercy? We are a people holy to the Lord; He chose us as a people for His treasured possession for a reason—to do His will. His greatest delight is then to reward these works of love He led and empowered us to do.
We, dear Christian, are holy/ separate and by the power of the Holy Spirit we stand out and actually are different from the unbeliever as we live our lives to God’s glory, the God who in grace and mercy loved us, chose us and made us His holy people, His treasured possession, His Church. INJ Amen