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Christ is risen. He has risen indeed. Alleluia. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Dear saints, we give thanks to God that Jesus has overcome the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh, and that he continues to overcome the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh. That, from the beginning, the Lord is fighting back the devil and all of his ways and all of his wiles and everything, and He continues to do it, especially in our own day when the devil is busy.
Now, I was thinking about it, Mother’s Day especially this week, and how the devil especially seems to have it out for moms. I don’t know how many first-year mothers there are here. I think there’s probably quite a few actually. I mean, happy Mother’s Day especially to you, and how the Lord continues to beat back the devil’s assault against moms, against dads, against babies with His Word.
And that the Lord Himself was pleased, if you can imagine this, it’s quite amazing, that the Lord Himself was pleased to also have a mother, that Mary was and is the mother of God. And we rejoice in this, that Jesus has so joined Himself to us, to our humanity, to our flesh and blood, so that Jesus is also celebrating Mother’s Day with us, and giving us this Christian vocation and gift.
I think especially – do you remember how it was in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve were there? The Lord gave Eve to Adam. She wasn’t named Eve yet. She was named Adamah, woman. The Lord gave the woman to Adam, and He said the two will become one, and they will become one flesh, and the man shall leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife. And I just have to think that Adam and Eve thought, what’s a father, what’s a mother? But it was right there in the garden, that blessing giving.
But then it was all the blessings were lost. The devil, remember, tempts Eve and she takes the fruit and she eats and she gives some to her husband and Adam eats and they realize that they’re naked. They sew fig leaves together, the whole world is broken and fallen. And the Lord comes and finds Adam and Eve in their fig leaves, hiding with the devil in the garden, and He says, now I’m going to make it right. I’m going to put enmity between you, devil, and the woman, between your seed and her seed.
I just realized maybe a week ago or two weeks ago that when the Lord said that to the devil, he was kind of sticking his thumb in the devil’s eye. When the Lord says, I’m going to put enmity between your seed and her seed, the devil has to say, wait a minute, I don’t have any seed. I can’t have kids. So the Lord is, the devil is always fighting against that great gift that the Lord has given to humanity, that we all have fathers and mothers, and that the Lord sometimes gives that gift also, that we would be married and have children and grandchildren, and the devil hates it. He always hates it. He’s always fighting against it.
He’s always doing battle against the Adams and the Eves and trying to bring in death. The Lord covers their nakedness, and then the Lord kicks them out of the garden, and then Adam has to do the work that he was doing of giving everything a name. He had named everything so far in creation, all the plants in the garden, he’d named all the animals. There was only one thing, one person left to receive a name, the woman, and there she’s named outside of the garden.
And this is an amazing thing. If it was me, if I was Adam, I think I would have probably been pretty frustrated by the whole situation, and I’m just guessing that I might have given to the woman the name of Halah, which is the Hebrew word for trouble, or maybe Moth, which is the Hebrew word for death. But Adam names his wife Eve, which is the Hebrew word for life. That is amazing. Adam is such a good Christian here and a faithful confessor because he recognizes first that through Eve, the seed who would crush the head of the serpent would be born, and also through Eve will come all of life.
So that we’re called to look at our own moms and call them today Eve, and to all the moms that are around us, and to rejoice that the Lord continues to give this great gift of life. God be praised.
Now, I was thinking about a particular, I wrote a parable this week, and I want to confess to you that it’s not quite finished. It’s called the parable of breakfast in bed, but it needs to be preached on Mother’s Day. I also should tell you that we’re wandering our way toward Revelation 7 and the white robe, so that’s where we’re going to get in a minute here.
But let me try out this parable for you. It’s still a little bit in rough draft mode, but I think you’ll get the point because the question always comes to me, Pastor, don’t we do anything to serve God and so that he would bless us more? Don’t we do good to, don’t our good works in one way or another kind of earn his affection or his attention or something like this?
So here’s the parable. A mom wakes up one morning by hearing clanging in the kitchen. She goes and looks down in the kitchen and this is what she sees. She sees her children there, there’s three of them, and they are busy doing the Lord only knows what. Because there’s eggs all over their faces and their hair and the floor, and there’s something that looks like oatmeal on the stove, but it’s spilled over and burning and kind of smoking a little bit. And there’s toast that’s burning in the toaster, and there’s orange juice mixed with coffee grinds on the cabinet and the kids are kind of fighting with each other.
The mom goes into the kitchen and says, what are you doing? And the children all stand next to each other and they look up at their mom and they said, we’re making you breakfast in bed. So the mom gets to work. She cleans the egg out of the hair, she fixes up the stove, she makes the oatmeal cooking right, she throws the bread away and puts the toast in, and the eggs are cooking, and the kids are cleaning, and the counter’s being wiped, and the food is all fantastic, and the kids are now sitting down at the table, clean, and the breakfast is done, and mom puts the plate down in front of the kids, and she says to the children as she sits down at the table, thank you for making me breakfast.
This is how the Lord thinks of our good works. We are just making a mess of it. But you know what? The Lord loves it. Not because you’re actually doing good, I mean, maybe every now and again we manage to kind of scramble together a good work, but the Lord loves it, and the Lord is grateful for it, and the Lord thanks you for it. You want to know why? Because he loves you and he’s adopted you into his family and he thinks of you as his children not because you are his children, because he’s baptized you, because he’s cleansed you, because he’s called you his own, because all of your sins are already died for by Jesus and his wrath and his anger is already spent so that he loves you and he thanks you for all the good works, for even trying, for imagining that we might try to love God for a moment, and He receives it with great joy.
This is the power, this, dear saints, is the power of the blood of Jesus, which takes away all of our sin, which cleanses our conscience, which sets us in the favor of God, so that He looks at you and He smiles. The blood of Jesus makes us holy. That’s the picture of Revelation 7, I told you it would get to Revelation 7, so we’re there now, which is this text that we’re familiar with, especially because we hear it so often in funerals, because I’m not sure there’s a better place in the whole Bible that tells us how it is with those that we love right now.
The vision is this, John has heard the number 144,000, and so now he looks and he sees that there’s a huge crowd, an innumerable multitude of people, and they’re all coming towards the throne, and they’re all waving palm branches and they’re all dressed in these perfectly white robes. And John with the elder there next to him sees this huge crowd coming, and the elder says to John, who are all those people? And John says, I hope you know. And the elder says this: these are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.
I hope there’s some comfort for you is that the Lord calls this life that we’re in the Great Tribulation. He knows it’s hard. These are the ones coming out of the Great Tribulation and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Now I’ll confess to you, and this is probably going to be a big surprise, I will confess to you that I do not know that much about laundry. But I do know that blood normally is not good for cleaning things. In fact, this is my whole childhood, was mom saying, just the face, the look on her face that when she would see grass stains and blood stains, oh boys, and she would call us and hold up a shirt and say, whose blood is this?
The blood stains, but this is the blood of the Lamb, and this blood cleanses. This blood washes, this blood purifies, this blood takes away sin. So here’s the picture. We’ve had it before, but you’ve got to imagine that you’re wearing this white robe, right? And you’re going through all this trouble, all this tribulation, so this robe is just drenched with sweat. It smells. But it’s not just sweat. This robe also has all these stains on it. Every time you sin, every time you break a commandment, you’re staining this robe so that it’s filled with all of these stains. But not only that, this robe is all torn to shreds because, and this is something, every time we’re sinned against, it’s like someone tears the robe. Every time we’re abused, or cursed, or lied about, or hurt, it’s like the robe is torn. And so we’re wearing these tattered, filthy, stinky, stained rags. And we have to stand before the Lord in those robes.
But as we’re on the way, there is this big vat, this big font, this big pool that’s filled with the blood of the Lamb, and we take those rags off, and we put them in the blood, and we pull them, and they come out perfect, holy, clean, every tear stitched back together, every stain washed out, all the filth and the exhaustion and the terror and the tears and everything from this life and all the wrongs that have happened, it’s all been washed away. It’s perfect now. Those stains that you think will never get off of your conscience, those rips that you think can never be mended, it’s all made perfect by the blood of the Lamb. It’s amazing that on Good Shepherd Sunday, the shepherd comes to us as the lamb.
The crucified lamb, the bleeding and dying lamb, the taking away sin lamb, because that’s who Jesus is for us. The lies that you’ve told, washed away. The things that you’ve stolen, forgiven. All the uncleanness of your life, gone. All of the anger, and the violence, and the rebellion, and the blasphemy, and the idolatry, all of it, it’s washed, washed away. You can’t even tell it was there. All of the affliction, all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the hurt, all of the abuse, all of the neglect, all of the sadness, it’s all been repaired.
Who are dressed in white robes? It’s you. This is the white robe that Jesus clothed you in his baptism, and the same blood that makes this robe white is the same thing that Jesus has for us here today. We’re in this crowd, and we’re on the way, and this is your future, there before the throne of God. Pastor, I do not deserve to stand before the throne of God. I don’t even feel worthy to come into the church. This is your future, to sit before the throne of God, to serve him day and night in his temple, and the one who sits on the throne will shelter you with his presence, and you will hunger no more, and you will thirst no more, and the sun will strike you no more, nor any scorching heat, because why? The Lamb in the midst of the throne is your good shepherd.
He’s guided you to the springs of living water, and he will wipe away every tear from your eye. Dear saints, dressed in white robes, I do not know why you came here today. I don’t know if you wanted to or you didn’t. I don’t know if you were happy about it or you were upset about it. I don’t know if you were just hoping that the sermon would get over so you could get to lunch, or that you were longing to hear the Lord’s Word with all of your might. I don’t know if you came because all mom wanted for Mother’s Day was for me to go to church with her.
But this is why Jesus has you here today, so that your conscience and your heart would be washed perfectly clean by the blood of the Lamb, and that you would know that all of your sins and every one of your sins are forgiven. This is our confidence and this is our peace through Christ who is risen. He is risen indeed! Hallelujah.
The peace of God which passes all that your mind can do keep you body and soul in his peace and his kindness. Amen.
