Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today we take time to understand and appreciate the deliverance from dangers that the Lord has worked for us. Listening to God’s Word, listening to our Heavenly Father’s protecting hand over us, our mood is one of gratefulness. As we prayed in the Collect Prayer, we realize that on our own we do not have the strength to stand. From the earliest point in our life, we have depended on God’s provision to even live.
I may from time to time think of myself as a responsible person in caring for my health, but already when I was first formed in the womb, I depended on the Lord’s protection through the course of pregnancy and child birth. And outside the womb, the care of mother and father were essential for my survival.
This was the Lord’s design for me and for all of you, to have parents to care and nurture and love the child who is completely helpless. Parents are designed as the vessels of God’s perfect love, caring for the need of God’s new creation found in a child, parents standing in the place of God our Father.
Psalm 71 describes this dependence on the Lord since conception:
In you alone O Lord I take refuge. For you O Lord are my hope, my trust O Lord from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth you are he who took me from my mother’s womb.
Even through old age the Psalm celebrates the Lord’s complete care for us:
Do not cast me off in the time of old age, forsake me not when my strength is past
And we ask for this care in our lives today. Again as we prayed in the Collect Prayer, we live in the midst of so many dangers that in our frailty we cannot stand. Amidst all these dangers we seek in the Lord strength and protection through both dangers from the outside and temptations from within.
On our own we are vulnerable to many temptations that come from within us which try to move us love the world more than God’s kingdom.
There are points in our lives where we are particularly vulnerable to danger. Throughout our country Satan attacks expecting mothers and fathers with fear and doubt as they begin to grasp the meaning of a new pregnancy. From early points in life young people hear messages on tv and in schools talking about a woman’s right to choose as taken for granted good thing about our society, as if there is no murder of a child involved in abortion.
Satan’s attack is always to replace the truth of God’s Word with the lie that man is god. And the lie about the good of a woman’s right to a choice to have an abortion is no different. At the root of Satan’s lie is the idea that what human’s choose to do is by definition good, even if it goes against God’s Word and can come at the expense of a living baby.
Satan is looking for weak points to exploit in our lives, so there is a need for us to seek the Lord for safety each and every day. As Psalm 71 speaks: “Be to me a rock of refuge, to which I may continually come. You have given the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.”
As we reflect on how we have always been cared for by the Lord without our realizing it- we can see that here and now it makes no sense to look anywhere else than the Lord. For Jesus alone is who we can come to time after time and someone who forgives us time after time.
In the gospel reading for today the people of Capernaum are astonished at the authority with which Jesus teaches to them on the Sabbath. In the synagogue Jesus is approached by a man with an unclean demon. The demons recognize who Jesus is, yet they think they are somehow safe in saying they are not impressed by Jesus and know who he really is as the Son of God.
It seems like they are implying to Jesus that as the Son of God he is a fool to even communicate with them, as in, ‘why don’t you concern yourself with higher things and let us possess these lowly men and women who we strike terror in.’
“Be silent and come out of him!” Jesus would entertain the insults of the demons no longer and with one command the man was thrown down, but ok- and the demons were gone.
The word of Jesus has the power to save us, to lift us up, to drive out demons. When Jesus speaks, we are hearing God’s love for us- from the foundation of the world. His living word has given us spiritual life from the beginning. He has given us physical life and come to us through the waters of Holy Baptism to bring spiritual life.
This spiritual life he gives us means that we have a share in the power of His Word. As a result of this gift of Jesus, we can fight the dangers of this world with the power of God’s Word!
In the gospel lesson we hear about how as the sun was setting Jesus healed all of those who were sick with various diseases, laying his hands on them and restoring them to life to the full.
And as we appreciate what the Lord has done for us, we appreciate the importance of speaking up for the afflicted, and praying to the Lord for protection of those who are afflicted.
We confessed in the Introit: Arise O LORD, lift up your hand, forget not the afflicted.
We ask for the Lord to deliver the oppressed and we as the church are the voice of Jesus for the afflicted, and we are given the power of his voice to speak for the afflicted.
Often the argument is made by American politicians that men cannot be involved in the public conversation about abortion because they do not have the first hand experience of childbirth. Yet God’s Word gives all of us, men and women alike, the authority to speak on behalf of the most vulnerable among us.
To say that men cannot have an opinion about the taking of human life is absurd. It would be like saying only those who have been slaveholders can actually say that slavery is wrong, because of their firsthand experience.
The voice of Jesus needs to go out powerfully from the men in our churches, and men must not be afraid to speak up, as it is particularly the role of men to speak up for and defend the most vulnerable among us.
We sang in our Hymn of the day: Son of God, eternal Savior,
Source of life and truth and grace, Word made flesh, whose birth among us Hallows all our human race. Jesus is indeed the source of life, truth and grace. Because Jesus is life itself born among us, truth itself born among us, and grace itself born among us- His birth hallows all of our human race.
His birth hallows even those who are the most defenseless and vulnerable and the most oppressed. If the world seeks to deprive the dignity of certain groups of people, Jesus hallows the oppressed and restores dignity. As we heard in our Introit, “O Lord you hear the desire of the afflicted; you will strengthen their heart; you will incline your ear to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed, so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more.”
Even if you do not consider yourself as someone who faces a good deal of oppression and affliction- Jesus will carry you in your time of need. On the Great Day of the Lord, the danger that the fallen world brings no longer will strike you, because Jesus has spoken those words: “It is finished.” He has defeated all death by his death on the cross. When your last hour comes Jesus will carry you in all of your infirmities and bring you to himself.
It indeed can be a dangerous world we live in, filled with perils from all directions. Yet the living Word of God is here to defend us and build us up against the attacks of the enemy. Find your refuge in this Word, and look to Jesus in all needs- He will deliver you. Amen.