“The Baby Named
Jesus”
Luke
Intro.: Many may consider the celebration of the
circumcision and naming of the baby of
Through the act of circumcision he would
demonstrate how this salvation would be accomplished as he placed himself under
the law and shed his blood for us. On
the eighth day Joseph and Mary took the infant child to the local rabbi in
Bethlehem where in his flesh he received the mark of God’s covenant and the
sign of his obligation to keep God’s holy law, to love God above all things and
love others as self. This was the day
when God cut His new covenant with us as His eternal Son, in the flesh of an
infant child, took up the task of fulfilling the law for us and spilled his
blood – as a promise of greater bloodshed to come. What a wondrous mystery that God has chosen
to secure our salvation through “The
Baby Named Jesus”.
To better understand the necessity of
this event and its significance for us we need to consider who our God is. He is first of all...
I.
The God Of Promise.
He makes lavish, outrageous promises
which boggle the imagination and defy all reason and common sense. God made such promises to Abram who lived
four thousand years ago in what we now call
More amazing than these promises, which
defied reason and common sense, was that Abram actually believed the Lord. Even though it all hinged upon he and his
dried up old wife having a child, He trusted that if God made a promise, God
would keep it. Yes, He would keep it no
matter how impossible it may seem. So
Abram and Sarai, held onto God’s promise, followed
where He led them, and became Abraham and Sarah, God’s people of promise.
The sign of circumcision was given to
Abraham to be a constant reminder to God’s people of what He had promised,
specifically that one day a seed of Abraham and Sarah would come forth to be a
blessing to all nations.
But the significance of the Baby named
Jesus would be lost if we did not also remember that the God who makes such
promises is also...
II. The God Of Holiness.
In our irreverent culture we sometimes
forget that the real God who is revealed in the Bible is awesome and terrible
in his holiness. Our standards of
faithfulness, goodness, kindness, and decency are an abomination to Him. When He makes people His own, and calls them
to be holy, he lays upon them His perfect law.
To belong to the One who is pure holiness and shining, means that their
lives must exhibit pure holiness and shining love. Through Moses God gave His law in 10 clear
and terrifying commands. According to
God’s instruction, Moses joined the sign of the promise given to Abraham with
the obligation to keep the Law. In
giving this Law and attaching it to the promise God made it clear that He
promises everlasting life and salvation to everyone who keeps it perfectly, and
threatens judgment and condemnation upon everyone who breaks it. Yes, even if a person breaks it only once.
The double edged knife of circumcision as
the sign of promise and of obligation found its fulfillment in the child of
III. The God Of Grace.
As John the evangelist writes: “the law
was given through Moses, (but) grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and
Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” (Jn.1:17-18) As foretold by the angel, the child was
given the name Jesus because He would be the one through whom God would
demonstrate His grace and save His people from their sins. With the saving name upon his lips the rabbi
cut the sign of promise and obligation into the infant Savior’s flesh.
This
was the circumcision which brought to fulfillment the promise made to
Abraham. Jesus was the royal descendent,
the king of kings and lord of lords.
Through Him all the nations of the world would be brought together into
the family of Abraham and Sarah. He was
the one who would open the way to the eternal dwelling place for God’s
people. He was the one through whom all
people would be blessed.
The blessing he brings is that he takes
the entire weight of the law off of us, and places it upon Himself. He takes on His newborn body the sign of our obligation
to God. Carrying on His body that sign He
does what no one had ever done before, nor ever will again. He kept God’s holy law perfectly. He came to live the life we have all failed
to live, the life that God’s holy and unchanging law demands. The baby named Jesus took our place in
becoming pure holiness and shining love.
Not once did He turn away; not when tempted in the wilderness, not when
under the stress of
Later more blood would be shed, and
additional marks would be added to His body, marks on His forehead, on his
hands and feet, and side. And all these
wounds are precious to us, but this is where it all began; the first blood
which was shed to purchase our salvation.
This is what we celebrate on this New
Year’s Day. The baby named Jesus
fulfilled God’s promise and became God’s holiness so that by God’s grace we may
be blessed with forgiveness and eternal life.
God is so great. He still takes
little babies and puts the sign of promise on them – but now no shedding of
blood is required. These little ones are
marked with the cross and born anew into the new covenant of grace through
water and the word. This is the sign of
the promise fulfilled, and the obligation kept.
Let us begin this new year, and each day
of this new year let us live in the constant remembrance of our baptism,
knowing that we have been circumcised not in the flesh by human hands, but in
our hearts by the very hand of the Holy Spirit.
With the sign of grace, the sign of the cross, let us remember the name
we have been given by adoption into the family of God: the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
As we do this, each day is given to us fresh and new as we are made clean
and pure. All of this because of the
Baby named Jesus. Amen.