The First Sunday after Christmas The Lord Has Bared His Holy Arm Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Amen. At the beginning of today’s Introit, and then again at its end, we prayed these Words from the prophet Isaiah: “The Lord has bared His holy arm before the eyes of all nations.” Dear Christian friends: When we learned about Samson in our Old Testament Sunday School lessons, we might have been given the wrong impression. We might have been misled because the mighty Samson is usually pictured with great, bulging muscles—as if he was a bodybuilder before he became a judge of Israel. Samson is usually pictured with big muscles because the Scriptures speak of Samson’s great acts of strength: he tore apart a ferocious lion with his bare hands (Judges 14:5-6); he killed 1,000 men, armed only with the jawbone of a donkey (Judges 15:14-16); he uprooted the giant gate from the city wall at Gaza and carried it on his shoulders, bar and all, to the top of a distant hill (Judges 16:3). Most significantly, Samson placed his hands on each of the two main pillars in the temple of a false god. Pushing against them and collapsing the building, Samson destroyed more enemies of God in his death than in his life (Judges 16:30). Samson’s great feats of strength have led us to think that we should depict Samson in our Sunday School lessons as a great, hulking man. Perhaps we should not have done that. Perhaps we should depict Samson as an average man of average strength—not Charles Atlas, but the wimpy kid come of age. A skinny Samson would: • help our children to understand that it was not the man’s personal strength that did such great things in Israel. The Scriptures repeatedly declare that Samson’s strength was not his body, but “the Spirit of the Lord” (Judges 14:6, 9, 15:14). • help us more clearly to see the many close parallels between that Old Testament judge and Christ Jesus our Lord, in whose birth we rejoice. As with Samson’s death (Judges 16:20), our Lord’s death likewise destroyed the enemies of God. • help us to understand what the Scriptures mean—WHO the Scriptures mean—when they speak of “the arm of the Lord.” It was “the arm of the Lord” that brought Israel up out of Egyptian slavery (Exodus 6:6, 15:16). That same “outstretched hand and strong arm” later swore to overthrow and destroy Israel’s Babylonian oppressors (Jeremiah 21:5). King Solomon also saw that people of all nations would come to the temple in Jerusalem because they had heard the wondrous deeds of God’s “outstretched arm” (1 Kings 8:42, 2 Chronicles 6:32). At the beginning and again at the end of today’s Introit, the prophet Isaiah declares, “The Lord has bared His holy arm before the eyes of all nations.” With these Words, Isaiah is saying that “the arm of the Lord” is a man (cf. Isaiah 53:1). With these Words, Isaiah focuses our attention upon Mary’s Son, Jesus. “We know that Isaiah is calling Jesus “the holy arm of the Lord” because these Words come from Isaiah chapter 52. Isaiah 52, just like Isaiah 53, is all about Jesus. Here is where it is written, for example, • that the punishment Jesus bore for our sins was so severe that He was completely disfigured by it, and no longer recognizable as a human (Isaiah 52:14). • Jesus had “no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him,” but that “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:2-3). • that “the Lord laid upon Him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6), and that “with His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5), that is, you are forgiven all sin, which is every cause of pain, injury and death. In God’s New Testament, Luke and John agree with Isaiah. Both Luke and John emphasized Isaiah’s Words when they wrote their Gospels. • Luke did it by recording for you the song that Mary sang, when Jesus was conceived in her womb. Singing about her yet-unborn Son, Mary rejoiced, “The Lord has shown strength with His arm” (Luke 1:51). • John did the same thing by explaining that many people refused to believe the signs and miracles Jesus had performed in their midst. John says that the people refused to believe “so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled [which says]: ‘Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?’” (John 12:38). I have spent plenty of time beating this drum, that Jesus is the Arm of the Lord. I have NOT done this merely so that you can understand more clearly the meaning of one Bible verse in the Old Testament. Why is it so important for you to know that Jesus is the arm of the Lord? Because it is Christmas; because “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). Isaiah explains our Lord’s birth by saying to us today, concerning Jesus, “The Lord has bared His holy arm before the eyes of all nations.” These Words mean that: • The birth of Jesus is NOT about God becoming a man. God became a man nine months before Christmas, when Christ entered the Virgin’s womb by the power of the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:34-35). • The birth of Jesus is about your God’s desire for you TO KNOW—for the entire creation TO KNOW—that God is a man. “The Lord has bared His holy arm BEFORE THE EYES OF ALL NATIONS; all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” As Simeon sang in today’s Gospel, holding the baby Jesus and echoing Isaiah: “My eyes have seen Your salvation that You have prepared in the presence of all peoples” (Luke 2:30). Why is it so important for you to know that Jesus is the arm of the Lord? Because the all-powerful arm of the Lord was attached to a newborn body. When Mary “gave birth to her firstborn Son… and laid Him in a manger” (Luke 2:7), a little girl could have reached out and wrapped her fingers all the way around the arm of the Lord. The arm of the Lord flailed helplessly until the thumb of the Lord somehow found its way into the mouth of the Lord. Jesus is our skinny Samson. What has God the Father done by means of our Lord’s birth? God has “bared His holy arm.” That is to say, God has rolled up His sleeves so that He may get down to work. God has stripped off every encumbrance so that His arm may move freely and unimpeded and may accomplish fully everything that is placed in His hands to do. In Jesus, God flexes the full strength of His arm and He displays His brawn—not a Charles Atlas, but a wimpy kid. In Jesus, God has • torn apart the shroud of death that once covered the nations (Isaiah 25:7)—just as Samson tore apart the attacking lion (Judges 14:5-6). • ripped the doors of heaven off their hinges for you (Mark 1:10) so that you may enter in—just as Samson tore away gate at Gaza and opened the city (Judges 16:3). • placed His hands against the pillars of the “synagogue of Satan” (Revelation 2:9, 3:9), just as Samson did with the temple of the Philistine god (Judges 16:30). As it was with the first Samson, so it is with our second Samson, our greater Samson, our skinny Samson: He destroyed more enemies of God in his death than in his life (Judges 16:30). This is what God has written: “The Lord has bared His holy arm before the eyes of all nations; all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.” This is the Song of the Faith: “Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things! His right hand and His holy arm have worked salvation for Him” (Psalm 98:1). _______________________________________________ Sermons mailing list [email protected] http://cat41.org/mailman/listinfo/sermons
