“The Gift of Perspective” (Isaiah 61:10-62:3)

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Series: Christ The Savior is Born

Pastor Nate Walther

New Years Eve, 2025

Another year is in the books.  In just a few short hours, 2025 will be in the rear-view mirror.  How are you feeling about the past year?  This one is hitting me more than most.  After a decade of raising our kids and starting a church in North Dakota, I couldn’t have imagined how different life would be just one short year later in Madison.  And so many things seemed like a big deal back then.  So many problems to figure out a year ago!  But now they hardly matter.  In their place are plenty of other problems! 

Not here at church, mind you.  I love being here and just “being a pastor” after a decade of being all things that a small mission church requires.  But suddenly, I own a house after living in a parsonage for a decade – plenty of additional stressors come with that!  Then, both Heather and I are working full time for the first time since we had kids – plenty of juggling of the schedules there!  With that it dawns on me how quickly we forget what we’ve made it through, and how quickly we get fixated on new problems. Over the last few years, Heather and I even came up with a saying whenever we solved something: “onto the next crisis!”, because there’s always another crisis.

I know you can relate, and it’s also something Isaiah’s audience from our sermon text could relate to.  Like us, they faced plenty of crises.  Listen to how Isaiah describes it the first half of his prophecy.  First there’s God responding to his people’s sin in Isaiah 1:“Woe to the sinful nation, a people whose guilt is great. Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire; your fields are being stripped by foreigners right before you…”  Then, there’s God explaining the consequences when they continued their sin, Isaiah 24:“The ruined city lies desolate; the entrance to every house is barred.  In the streets they cry out for wine; all joy turns to gloom, all joyful sounds are banished from the earth. The city is left in ruins, its gate is battered to pieces…” Finally, there’s God’s Word to the king in Isaiah 39:“The time will surely come when everything in your palace, and all that your predecessors have stored up until this day, will be carried off to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the Lord…”  It’s just one hit after another, and if these times and these problems were all they had, they would be doomed.  But that’s also why God sent Isaiah to them, to give them the GIFT OF PERSPECTIVE. The second half of his prophecy – especially, what we hear in our sermon text – does just that. 

In the first part of our sermon text, God’s people are speaking. And what’s immediately clear?  Things have completely turned around.  Verse 10 describes an emphatic joy – it’s even pictured with the language of a wedding, one of the most joyful times of life – and it’s all because the people have found salvation & righteousness… Then, in the second part of our sermon text, starting with chapter 62, God himself starts speaking, and what stands out there?  Again, things have completely turned around.  Verse 2 describes how all those nations and kings – who previously attacked and conquered and exiled them –would now see Israel differently!  Why was that?  From start to finish in this text, it’s simply because of the Lord.  Verse 10, God is the one who clothes his people in salvation & righteousness; Verse 11, God is the one who causes his people’s praise to sprout up; Chapter 62, verse 1, God is the one who will not rest or be silent, Verse 2, God is the one who assigns to his people a new name; finally, verse 3, God is the one who holds his loved ones in his palm.

Dear friends in Christ, a new year with its new problems is an opportunity to remember God will always work things out.  We need that reminder, because the passage of time wears on us just as surely.  We face trouble like God’s people in the past, and we worry about it.  For all our faith & desire to follow God, we also have days where we think everything is falling apart & we don’t trust God to put it back together.  It’s why we don’t deserve salvation, nor are we worthy to bear God’s holy name.  Far from being symbols of God’s strength, we are symbols of weakness….

Yet, we just heard the opposite.  God tells us through Isaiah that we are God’s crown and we are God’s scepter – both symbols of a king’s strength.  How can that be?  It starts with Christmas: God showing his strength in weakness – in an infant child born in human flesh, a child who suffered under all human frailty & sin, a child who was born to die on the cross in payment for all sin… all so we could be adopted into God’s name by being baptized into Jesus name, all to show a strength from God that could overcome all human weakness, all bring us into the light.

Now that this light has dawned, it changes our perspective on things, much like the first light of morning.  Have you ever noticed that?  Maybe you are in your tree stand, and it is dark, and you can’t make out much in the shapes around you.  But then the sun rises, and everything is clear, and maybe that’s when you suddenly notice that buck standing in the clearing!…  So also, it’s the GIFT OF PERSPECTIVE God shows us in the light of the Christ child.  That’s what can make a real difference in your life this new year if you look at things in that light.  And not just for you.

As we heard in our sermon text, this wasn’t just for the Israelites to see – or, by extension, us Christians today as spiritual children of Abraham – this is for all nations to see!   Think about it: life is hard enough with Christ.  Can you imagine how much your friends and family and coworkers are struggling without Christ?  They may put on a good face, but what war do they face?  What siege surrounds them?  What has been exiled and carried from their lives – and they don’t have an answer for it?

We can’t settle for that!  We love these people in our lives!  So what can we do to shine this light on them?… Maybe that’s the New Years’ resolution you’ve been searching for.  Have you been trying to figure ot out?  So often, we think of New Years’ resolutions in terms of self, and so often we fail because of the shortcomings of our sinful selves.  But what if we thought if it in terms of others, in terms of service?   What can we do in the new year to shine this light on others in word or deed, through invitations to church or acts of love that meet others’ needs?

It’s something to think about.  It’s a different perspective.  Finally, it’s the Christmas gift God gives us in Jesus.  Everything looks different in that light. And also, that includes our new year.  Whatever you face, know that God will get you through it too.  See it in the light of the Christ child.  Amen.

“Salvation in the Flesh” (John 1:1-14)

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Series: Christ The Savior is Born

Pastor Nate Walther

Christmas Day, 2025

Have you ever met someone famous?  Maybe it was a president, or an all-pro athlete, or a famous singer.  But when you told someone else about it, perhaps you were immediately met with skepticism: “No you didn’t!”  That’s where you may have responded with something like, “I’m not kidding!…  I saw him with my own eyes. I saw her IN THE FLESH.”  Those final words are an appeal to the senses: this was so real that I could actually see, hear, and touch this person as I shook their hand.

It’s those same words that illustrate for us the blessing of Christmas.  Sometimes the things that religion offers can seem to be “pie in the sky”, too good to be true.  I mean, how can the divine and miraculous and transcendent actually cross paths with me?  Sure, God says he’s there for me, but how does that help me with the unexpected bill in my hand that needs to be paid, or the cancer in your body that is literally destroying it, or the sinful temptation in our hearts that keeps rearing its ugly head just when we think we’ve got it under control?  How can I be sure that I really will go to heaven, or that there really are good things waiting for me after I die, or that I really will see my loved ones again?

God’s simple, yet brilliant answer at Christmas is this: SALVATION IN THE FLESH.  i.e. Christmas is all about what’s standing right before us in skin & bone.  Through his birth into human flesh, Jesus offers the one place in all of time & space where the divine actually crossed paths with our human flesh, as unbelievable as it may seem. 

That’s exactly what God talks about in our sermon text today. Listen again to what we heard in verse 14 “The Word became flesh and dwelled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory he has as the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth…”  It’s a special title the Bible uses for Jesus.  What we heard at the beginning of our reading is also repeated here: Jesus is the Word.  Somehow, miraculously, Jesus is the same Word we pick up and read as we gather around it at home and in church.  Somehow, Jesus is also the same Word through which God once spoke and all things were created, as we were told back in verse 3. But he’s not just Word: metaphysical & abstract. No, “The Word BECAME FLESH and dwelled among us.” That’s really interesting. The Bible doesn’t just tell us that Jesus became a human being or a man – there were other words they would use back then for that.  No, the Bible takes it a step farther and says Jesus became flesh.  It’s a gritty, dirty kind of word.  The Bible even uses this word flesh elsewhere to describe our sinful flesh!  Of course, as the Son of God, Jesus didn’t have sinful flesh himself.  But this inspired word choice does remind us that Jesus got his hands dirty – he entered into our universe and our lives (tainted by sin) in a very real way – as real as the flesh on our hands that we can hold right before us…

Do you realize how much that changes everything?  Now we can look at all the other things God promises that may seem abstract – divine power to help us, which created everything we see with just a word; warm light, which can drive out the darkness of the sin in our hearts and evil in our lives; new life, which gives us hope even when we’re staring into the hopelessness of a grave – and we can finally believe that these impossible things really are true.  How?  It’s SALVATION IN THE FLESH.  It’s as real as a child lying in flesh in a manger, whom those shepherds first laid their very eyes on.  It’s as real as that child beginning to grow up found in the temple, whose understanding of God’s Word blew away the sharpest minds of his day.  It’s as real as that child now a man, who offered a glimmer of light through his love & his teachings to those lost in darkness with nowhere else to turn.  It’s as real as that same man raising the dead to life, who gave back to a grieving father his daughter & sisters their brother & masters their servants…

Dear friends in Christ, your help and your hope in this world doesn’t rest on dead prophets who once said some thought-provoking things, but whose words now ring hollow and distant when you’re hurting and suffering.  Your help and your hope rest on a living Savior whose birth is as real as any other event in history. That also includes the end of this child’s story: he died on a cross, for your sin and for mine; he rose from a grave, to deliver us from death undo the very worst thing this flesh does to us!

Again, it’s the value of something actually being in the flesh.  Granted, maybe you and I haven’t seen Jesus in the flesh personally.  But the fact is that he was seen in the flesh by others.  Countless thousands saw him, many of whom wrote about him, including the Apostle John who penned the words of our sermon text.  That makes it no less real to us.  Finally, if Jesus was going to enter our time and space, this is just the reality of it.  He could only come at one time, like all real things that have happened, and he could only come in one body, like all real people who have lived.  That means that not all the world would see it. But that doesn’t mean all the world couldn’t benefit from what he did. Just like the Caesars or the Popes, Johannes Gutenberg or Isaac Newton, George Washington or Abraham Lincoln had a lasting impact on things after them, though we have not seen them… so also Jesus, only in a far better and far more lasting way, and for all people.  In particular, this child was born to bring salvation to all who believe in him. Today, on this festival celebration, find a simple joy in the fact that you have all of God’s power, you have light in darkness, you have new life – as unbelievable and impossible as these things may seem!  Where is it all found? IN THE FLESH.  In Christ.  Your SALVATION is as real as a warm baby lying in his mother’s arms.  Amen. 

The Power of Imminence

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Theme: The Power of Imminence (James 5:7-12)

by Pastor Nate Walther

Do you know the tale of the Sword of Damocles?  It’s a Greek parable about a man named Damocles, who served under powerful king Dionysius.  One day as Damocles raved about the king’s power & position, Dionysius unexpectedly offered to trade places with him for a day.  Damocles gladly accepted and immediately enjoyed the feeling of sitting on the throne, surrounded by the finest wares with all the best food brought to him by servants. But then he noticed above his throne the point of a sword hanging right over his head, suspended by a single strand of horsehair and looking as if it could fall at any second.  Just as quickly as he noticed it, Damocles no longer wanted to be sitting on the throne…  As the fable goes, Dionysius put the sword there because he also had many enemies who wanted to kill him, so the sword was a reminder of the IMMINENCE of their threats.  And that was hard, it’s why Damocles didn’t want to sit on the throne!  But there was also a POWER in that sword, it prompted Dionysius to act swiftly and decisively in his actions as king since he was constantly reminded it this could all be over at any second.  As people interpret this parable today, it helps to explain why his real-life counterpart (also named Dionysius) was considered such a tyrant ruler.

            Perhaps we don’t have an actual sword hanging over our heads, but we get the idea. You’re playing a game and the hourglass is running out – it’s never quite clear when that will be just by looking at it! – and as the pressure mounts, you frantically shout out last-second guesses.  Or it’s the end of the year and deductibles are met, or the warranty is running out on your home or car, so there’s pressure get something looked at by the doctor, or to get your car or home inspected before it’s too late!  That’s the POWER OF IMMINENCE.  When we know something could happen at any time, it prompts us to action. There’s nothing like a deadline to get things done.  So also, God shows us today in his Word that the imminence of Christ’s return has the same power to change how we live our lives.

            A little background for our sermon text: James’s audience struggled to treat others well, including fellow Christians.  They often spoke poorly of each other, even cursing one other. And even when they talked a good talk, they still didn’t actually do anything for those in need.  Meanwhile, they showed favoritism to the rich who took advantage of the poor they weren’t helping.  Now, at the end of a letter James sent to help correct their behavior, James reminds them of the power of imminence in Christ’s return so it might motivate new behavior in them.

            We see that right in the heart of our sermon text.  Take another look at verse eight.  Under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, James writes, “You be patient too. Strengthen your hearts… because the coming of the Lord is near” — It’s imminent, it could happen at any time!  And in that light that James goes on to say things like verse nine, “Do not complain about one another, brothers, so that you will not be judged. Look! The Judge is standing at the door…” 

In a world that so often directs people to themselves to power through challenges and difficulties and to be a better person, God does not direct us Christians to our own heroic capabilities; rather, he directs us to the certain knowledge that Christ will return again soon. That’s what he means to empower our behavior.  It’s the same picture James painted with the farmer in the first verses of our sermon text.  The farmer doesn’t know when the rains will come, but still he prepares and perseveres because he knows it could be at any time.

            That said, how often does the imminence of Christ’s return not show in our lives?  Honestly, what would I say different, how would I treat people differently, what would look different in my life if I knew Jesus was coming tomorrow, or perhaps even this evening?… You realize he could, right?  That hourglass may only have one grain of sand left in it, we’ve seen all the signs of the end of time that Scripture talks about spill out into the bottom of the it!  Yet how often do we not live with such urgency, and we do things that wouldn’t matter to us the moment Jesus returned?  Even worse, how often do we live in sin and figure we could always come back to what God wants later?… What if God did the same?  What if he put off saving us and doing what’s best for us?  After all, he could always come back to us!  Hopefully we won’t be dead and in hell by then, or we won’t be too far gone and our hearts so hardened that we just reject him!

            Except, that’s never what God has done. In fact, the entire Bible is really the story of how our sin created an IMMINENCE in God’s behavior, which prompted him to use all of his POWER to act with urgency and love.  It’s why in the garden God’s immediate response to Adam & Eve was not, “here are the consequences for your sin”, but rather, “here’s what I will do to fix it!”  It’s why whenever God’s people cried out to him for help in the Old Testament after rebelling against him, his heart could never bear it and he would quickly send a Moses, or a judge, or a king to help them.  It’s why at the very moment king David confessed his ugly sins of covetousness and adultery and murder to Nathan the prophet, God forgave him.  Yes, there were earthly consequences to all these sins too, but one such consequence was never the removal of God’s grace and eternal pardon.  And that’s true for you and for me as well.  Even when we have shown so little concern for the signs of Christ’s coming, or even when we continue to live in sin by putting off whatever God wants us to do today, still we repent and believe. And then when the water pours over your skin in baptism, when Christ’s true body & blood in the bread & wine are tasted on your lips in Lord’s Supper, when the Gospel promise enters ears opened by repentant hearts – God only continues to save us through his Son Jesus, who felt the imminence of our condition, which powerfully prompted him to take all of his power and pour it into human flesh so that he would save us from our sin through his perfect life and innocent death on the cross.

            Dear Christian, there’s POWER IN IMMINENCE, especially when it comes from the God of all power. It’s why you don’t have to “try harder” or “find it in yourself” to be a better person. Jesus has already taken all that pressure off our shoulders.  Instead as James shows us, we just need to see more and more that Christ has come & Christ will return.  We may not know exactly when, but like we see the signs of the season – leaves changing & temperatures dropping, and you knew this past fall that winter was coming even though it took a while for it to happen; and sure enough, here it is – so also we know Christ could come at any time. Finally, that’s why tomorrow is not the day to talk to your loved one about their sin or tell that friend about Jesus.  Tomorrow is not the day to get your kids baptized or get that pet sin out of your life.  Tomorrow is not the day to start taking your family’s devotional life seriously with Bible Study and prayer or make church a bigger priority in your life.  No, today is the day for that…  There’s no other option, not when we consider Jesus’ IMMINENT ARRIVAL.  In fact, we don’t even want another option.  Because we don’t have a sword hanging over us like the rest of the world does, fearing the end of time and death and what it means for us.  We have salvation hanging over our heads.  We want to be in this chair, it’s only good, and it can only change our lives for the better.  Amen.

A Substitute Ram as the LORD Provides

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Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns.  He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.  So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide.  And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” – Genesis 22:13-14

A Substitute Ram as the LORD Provides

Did you long for a particular Christmas gift as a child?  Was there that one thing you desperately wished to open under the tree?  Depending on your generation, that special gift could be one of many things: a Barbie doll or GI Joe, a video game console, Hot Wheels, Legos, Squishmellow, or anything Star Wars.  There is something joyful about opening up the wrapped gift on Christmas morning and having that hope made into a reality.

For Abraham, that one hope was to be gifted a son.  Having a son was such a big wish at the top of his list, God had to repeat the promise to him again and again.  You may remember how his wife laughed, and how they tried to take matters into their own hands to provide an heir.  And yet God provided a son, according to his timetable, to carry on Abraham’s lineage and, even better, God’s promise to provide a Savior.  What a challenging request then in Genesis 22, to be tested and asked to sacrifice his one and only son.  

Our passage for today follows after Abraham and Isaac’s willing obedience to God’s instruction.  We find in God’s people hearts which reflect fear and love for God – even doing what he says when things don’t seem to make sense.  And we find in God, a mercy, care, and providence for his people.  

The angel of the LORD speaks from heaven before the sacrifice is carried out.  He blesses Abraham and speaks to the great gift God would give to the world through Abraham of a different one and only Son in verses 17-18,  “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

And there in the thicket, God provides a ram.  This year we have been learning about how God used his created creatures within the pages of Scripture to accomplish his good and saving plans for us.  Now in the month of December, we look forward to the coming Christ child, and in so doing, we look forward to God’s one and only Son who would enter our fallen world to take our sin to his cross.  He would be that needed sacrifice.

We find in Scripture a ram caught in the bushes who would take the place of the boy on the altar.  Here God provided substitution, sacrifice, and saving.  It would be on this Mt. Moriah years later many rams and animals would be sacrificed.  This very hilltop would house Solomon’s temple, where substitution and sacrifice would take place morning and evening and seemingly all hours between.  The temple sacrifices of rams and other animals would serve as a constant reminder of God’s promises, given to Adam and Eve, to Abraham, and to those worship attenders that God had not forgotten his promises to his people.  All nations on earth would be blessed by the one sacrifice needed for sin, through the coming Messiah.

And near Mt. Moriah stood another mountain height, one with a more ominous future.  In the same range, perhaps even in eyesight, stood Mt. Calvary.  Here the saving sacrifice of Jesus would take place at the precious cross.  Here sin would be paid for and life with God given as a free gift.  Here generations of God’s promises would be made complete in Christ.  Here would be our hope for forgiveness and eternal life with our God in heaven.  God has provided again.  This time through his one and only Son. 

That’s what makes our December joyful.  We look forward to Christmas, with it’s worship and gift giving and fun.  And yet as believers we also see in this season the Christ child.  We see God’s promises to substitute, sacrifice, and save us from our sins.  To recognize this truth by faith is a great gift.  Let’s share our hope and joy in Jesus all season long!  Our LORD has provided!