Sermon – December 8, 2024
Everlasting God, You have always been and will always be. You remain amazingly present, available, and steadfast while so much in our lives is adrift, fleeting, and senseless. We trust in Your abiding presence in every moment of our lives; and give thanks for who You are. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Are you ever curious about your family background? Maybe you have wondered, where your great-great-grandparents lived. What did they do for a living? How many children did they have?
If you’ve spent time going through old family photographs maybe you have checked out ancestry.com or considered DNA testing to search for the distant roots of your family tree.
Jesus, whose birth we will soon celebrate, very likely grew up learning all about His human family tree. His earthly, father Joseph, was “of the house and lineage of David.” Jesus was the promised Son of David, the long-awaited Messiah of Israel, who would rule His people as Shepherd and King.
People who knew Jesus knew of his family tree, but not everyone accepted him as the promised Savior. The people of his own hometown of Nazareth were at first proud of their hometown hero, asking, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” But they rejected Jesus’ identity as the promised Messiah and Son of God. Some people questioned his claim to have come down from heaven.”
Many people then, as now, readily accepted Jesus’ human ancestry, but not his claim that God was his Father.
We know and believe that Jesus was exactly who He claimed to be—the Son of God. We know, too, that Jesus was of royal human lineage. There were many kings in His family tree. Yet, with the exception of Jesus Himself, the Lord’s family tree was like ours—composed of sinners and sometimes some less than sterling characters: Judah and Tamar, who were guilty of incest; Rahab, was a prostitute who married an Israelite and became the great-grandmother of King David.
David himself, a great king, but also guilty of adultery and murder. Yet to save sinners, Jesus, the Son of God, was born into a family line of sinners. In Hebrews 2:14, Scripture tells us, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil.” Jesus was born among sinners, as we are, but he was born without sin. The sinless Son of God became one of us to redeem us.
Now, even if you were not born into a royal family line, you may be rightly proud of your ancestry. Perhaps you have people in your family background who were important leaders in their communities or you may have relatives who served their country in the armed forces. But there might be a few branches on the family tree that do not inspire pride—maybe an eccentric aunt or uncle or a cousin who got involved in some shady business deals.
We all share a proud lineage, as human beings designed by our Creator and made in his own image. Yet we have a humbling lineage too, because we are descendants of our first parents, Adam and Eve. We all have inherited from them the DNA of sin and that is our condition before God. We are sinners and we sin daily in our thoughts, words and actions, as we rebel—like our first parents did—against the will of our God and Creator. We know what God wants of us, but still we turn from him to follow our own sinful desires.
We turn from listening to God’s Word and listen instead to the temptations of the world. We have earned for ourselves the penalty for sin first decreed in Eden—death and separation from God for all eternity.
Yet God our Creator does not leave us in that condition. He sent his Son to be born among us, Jesus, the descendant of David, the son of Mary. The sinless Son of God was born among us—born among sinners—to take our sins onto himself, suffering and dying on the cross, suffering the penalty of death that we earned for ourselves. He rose from the dead on the third day, and now in him we are a new creation, clothed in his holiness, his righteousness. In Christ, our standing before God has been transformed from sinner to saint.
We are members now of the household of God, sons and daughters of the King, brothers and sisters to the very Son of God. As Scripture tells us, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons and daughters—God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Gal 4:4-6).
Advent is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, as we wait for that final Advent when we, by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, will dwell in the household of God. We have a family, and we have a home—for all eternity. Amen.
O Lord our God, please be close to each one of us today. Our lives may be messy, and our faith may stumble, but You never fail to call us Your own. This grace, bountiful yet not deserved, is why we praise and worship You each and every day. In Jesus’ name Amen.
