“Consecrated to Fulfill All Righteousness” Mount Olive Lutheran Church 1st Sunday After Christmas Sermon December 29, 2024 – Luke 2:22–40

Mount Olive Lutheran Church / Pr. Ted A. Giese / Sunday December 29th 2024: Season of Christmas / Luke 2:22–40 “Consecrated to Fulfill All Righteousness”

And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.” Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon Him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the Law, he took Him up in his arms and blessed God and said,

         “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace,

                 according to Your word;

         for my eyes have seen Your salvation

         that You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

         a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

                 and for glory to Your people Israel.”

And His father and His mother marveled at what was said about Him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

And when they had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. And the Child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon Him.

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in Your sight O Lord. Amen.

Grace peace and mercy to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Good Christian Friends years later when Jesus was an adult and had arrived at the Jordan River to be baptised by John the Baptiser John would have prevented Jesus, saying, “I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me?” But Jesus answered [John], “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then [John the Baptiser] consented[1] and baptised Jesus. We see the same sort of thing happening in our Gospel Reading today as Jesus is brought to the Temple in Jerusalem from Bethlehem forty days after His birth by His mother the Virgin Mary and His guardian and earthly father Joseph to formally be consecrated to the LORD. Remember what we heard from the Book of Exodus where Moses speaking on behalf of God says to the people, “When the LORD brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as He swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb,”[2] because the LORD had said to Moses “Consecrate to Me all the firstborn.”[3] And with Mary being a virgin there was no question as to whether Jesus was her firstborn son, for it would have been well known in Nazareth that she had had no other pregnancy before the Holy Spirit miraculously conceived Jesus in her womb.

The sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons,” according to what is said in the Law of the Lord,[4] was for her atonement[5] not for Jesus’ atonement because unlike Mary[6] He was conceived without sin and born without sin so that He who had lived a life without sin, and had no sin of His own, could take the Virgin Mary’s sin and Joseph’s sin and my sin and your sin upon Himself at His Good Friday Cross[7] and legitimately atone for it all. His miraculous sinless conception, His virgin Birth, His circumcision, His being set aside as the firstborn consecrated to the LORD and His eventual Baptism by John and His innocent suffering and death were all part of His life of flesh and blood lived to fulfill all righteousness, so that He could give this sinlessness, this perfect righteousness to you as a gift, because you were not able to attain it for yourself by your own efforts. What our Gospel reading today shows is that even as a baby, but forty days old, Jesus is already keeping the law without fault in your place, it shows that He was doing that from the get go.  

Some Christians believe in this teaching called the age of accountability, wherein an infant or a child is not accountable for their actions regarding the Law of God until they are old enough to express a certain amount of reason and discernment; some put that at the age of 6 or 7 or 8 or 12 or 13 and these days the modern sciences say the human brain is not fully developed until sometime between the ages of 25 and 30 but as Christians trusting God’s Word we confess that the true age of accountability is the moment of conception. Inspired by the Holy Spirit King David in Psalm 51 writes, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.”[8] This is why Jesus needed to be without sin even from His conception.

Jesus in the Gospel of Saint John says of Himself, “I Am The Way, and The Truth, and The Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”[9] Jesus the Word of God, made manifest in the flesh, being The Way for you as a Christian, starts at His sinless conception and that redeeming way is paved for you from that very moment through His mother’s pregnancy, through His virgin birth, through His whole life, death, resurrection and ascension and return to the throne of His Father at His right hand. Resisting temptation, resisting effects of sin on every aspect of life in the World, resisting Sin itself was not something Jesus started to do later when He hit a certain age, it was something He was doing from the moment of His conception and all along the way as He walked through His life fulfilling all righteousness, even though He was righteous the whole way through. So this is why we sing in stanza three of Once in Royal David’s City these words:      

For He is our childhood’s pattern;

Day by day, like us He grew;

He was little, weak and helpless,

Tears and smiles like us He knew;

And He feels for all our sadness,

And He shares in all our gladness.[10]  

Ultimately this means that there is no point in your life that Jesus is not for you. He is for you from the moment of your conception, through your mother’s pregnancy, through your birth, through your childhood, through your adulthood, through your old age (if you are so blessed to have one) straight through to the moment of your death. There is no time wherein Jesus is not for you; wherein He has not fulfilled the Law of God without fault for you; wherein He has not lived the common human life you’ve lived for you, which means His forgiveness and redemption for you is for your whole life from beginning to end right through to your promised eternal life in Him. This is the wonderful gift of Christmas that we celebrate and the meaning of Jesus being called Immanuel (which means, God with us).[11] This of why King David can write in Psalm 23 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.”[12] From your conception to your last moment, at every point that death could come to you Jesus has lived a life accountable to the Law of God where the wages of sin original or individually committed sin could be paid out in full. This is why Saint Paul can write, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.”[13] And so we sing in the first stanza of the Epiphany hymn Songs of Thankfulness and Praise,

Branch of royal David’s stem

In Thy birth at Bethlehem;

Praises be to Thee addressed,

God in flesh made manifest [14]

The Word of God made manifest in the incarnation, His taking on of flesh and blood made Him accountable to the Law but He was paradoxically also apart from the Law in His holiness. This distinction is a lot to wrap your mind around, put more simply Jesus was in the World and experienced all of it, to fulfill all righteousness, but was not of the World.[15] He lived His life surrounded by sinners and yet they did not corrupt His thoughts words or deeds He remained holy and righteous through and through, what did happen was that Jesus by faith became the ultimate change agent in their lives contrary to what was expected. On the one hand Pharisees who pretended to be righteous before the Lord based on their works regularly avoided sinners to avoid the thoughts words and deeds of the sinner from rubbing off on them either actually or by reputation, Jesus’ on the other hand who truly was righteous and holy demonstrates how His good reputation and His thoughts words and deeds actually rubbed off on the sinners He spent time with. Again, this is the wonderful gift of Christmas that we celebrate and the meaning of Jesus being called Immanuel (which means, God with us). In our Gospel just holding the long promised Baby Jesus in his arms prompts Old Simeon to say;

“Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace,

               according to Your word;

        for my eyes have seen Your Salvation

        that You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

        a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

               and for glory to Your people Israel.”

Words inspired by the Holy Spirit: words we often sing after having received Holy Communion. Jesus is the glory of believers, the glory of the Church, the glory of the faithful, the glory of all who have received Jesus as the Christmas gift, the Word of God made manifest, Jesus is the glory of the forgiven.       

In our Epistle reading Saint Paul writes, “as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” what Jesus does as the Word of God made manifest in the flesh is not referred to here by Paul in the future tense but rather in the past tense. Saint Paul here is point back to Jesus upon the cross, pointing back to Jesus’ words “It is finished,”[16] pointing back to the moment your sins were finished with. Old Simeon in the Temple in Jerusalem as Jesus is coming to be presented is pointing forward to this moment when Simeon calls the Baby Jesus the Salvation prepared for all people and sent by the Lord. This is the moment pointed to by Simeon which comes at the end of Jesus’ pre-resurrected life when Jesus hung dead upon the cross, this is the moment from where your forgiveness in Christ Jesus ultimately comes to you, and being a fixed moment in history it comes to you from a time before you’d ever even sinned. This then becomes an eternal inheritance handed down to you from Jesus upon the cross where your sins hang there as dead as He does as the Roman solider runs the spear through His precious side.[17] The fact that this was in the Baby Jesus’ future right from the beginning of His life is why we sing these words in the second half of the second stanza of the Christmas hymn What Child is This:

Nails, spear shall pierce Him through

The cross be borne for me, for you

Hail, hail the Word made flesh

The Babe, the Son of Mary[18]

Old Simeon likewise points to this future life ahead of the Baby Jesus when he blessed the Holy Family and said to the Virgin Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.”

What does understanding that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection fulfilled the whole of the Law and that He from eternal life to conception to birth to death to resurrection to eternal life again has been entirely and eternally accountable to the law of God in your place mean to you? What does this prompt you to consider regarding the thoughts of your heart? Knowing that He was never unaccountable to the law means you have likewise never been unaccountable to the law of God. Dear ones you have sins in your life that are unrevealed to everyone, maybe even unrevealed to you, but they are not unrevealed to Jesus. They are not unrevealed to the one who came to redeem you from them, who has already washed them away in His blood. This is why in the section covering confession and absolution in the Small Catechism we are taught that “before God we should plead guilty of all sins, even those we are not aware of, as we do in the Lord’s Prayer,”[19] “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In the same passage you are counselled to talk with your pastor when your sin is known to you and it’s eating you up inside your heart.

Lastly in our Gospel we hear of 84 year old prophetess Anna who did not depart from the Temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. Who coming up at that very hour began to give thanks to God because of the Christ Child and to speak of Jesus to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem: this redemption, this wonderful gift of Christmas that we celebrate, God in flesh made manifest, this Jesus our Immanuel (which means, God with us) is no longer something waited for but something which has arrived, in which we can now rejoice. As we await His Second Advent we are not left to wait for it unredeemed, we are not left to wait for it un-forgiven; we now wait for His Second Advent as ones who have received redemption washed over us in baptism,[20] as ones who have received forgiveness spoken over us,[21] as ones who have tasted and seen that the Lord is Good.[22] This gift of Jesus has been given to you not just for this particular sin or that particular sin, not just for this particular problem or that particular problem in your life, not just for this particular failure or that particular failure to do the right thing but for every aspect, every part of your life from the particular to the common, from conception to death, in Jesus with your sin cut away there is not a spot left in you that is unredeemed or unredeemable. He has fulfilled all righteousness for you and now gives it to you, His very flesh and blood, as your righteousness fulfilled in Him. He has done this from the beginning, He promises to see it through to the end. Amen.    

Let us pray:

Lord have mercy on us, Christ have mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us, “take our minds and think through them, take our lips and speak through them, take our hearts and set them on fire; for the sake of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Amen.

[1] Matthew 3:14–15
[2] Exodus 13:11
[3] Exodus 13:2
[4] Luke 2:24
[5] Leviticus 12
[6] Romans 3:23-25
[7] 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 1:3-5; 1 Peter 2:24
[8] Psalm 51:5
[9] John 14:6
[10] Once in Royal David’s City, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, 376 stanza 3.
[11] Matthew 1:23
[12] Psalm 23:4
[13] Romans 3:21-25a
[14] Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, 394 stanza 1.
[15] John 17:11, 14–15
[16] John 19:30
[17] John 19:34
[18] What Child is This, Lutheran Service Book, Concordia Publishing House 2006, 370 stanza 2.
[19] Confession, Luther’s Small Catechism, Concordia Publishing House 2017, Page 25
[20] Matthew 28:18-20
[21] John 20:21-23
[22] Psalm 34:8

Photo Credit: Main Photo of Stained Glass of Simeon beholds his Salvation from Flicker.