I.

"Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?"
Genesis 18:1-15; 21:1-7

 When Abraham was 75 years old, God told him to leave his country and his home and go to the land of Canaan.  God promised Abraham that He would make him into a great nation, and that all people would be blessed through him and his descendants.  Though Abraham was childless, he followed God's words.  Abraham went with Sarah his wife, a few relatives, and all their possessions to this new land in which they were strangers and foreigners.

 The Lord later confirmed his promise to Abraham.  He told Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  It is written that Abraham believed in the Lord's word, and God accounted it to him as righteousness.  Abraham trusted what God said, even without any evidence, and through that faith, that reliance on the Lord's promises, he was declared righteous before God.

 In today's reading, Abraham is 99 years old, and Sarah his wife still has had no children and is of course now past the age of childbearing.  Abraham, however, is still clinging to the Lord's promise, despite the fact that humanly speaking, it seems impossible.  You can imagine how their faith must have been tested in these 24 years.  The waiting must have seemed endless and futile at times.  It appears that Sarah has all but given up on the promise.  But Abraham continues to hold to God's Word.

 Advent is all about that sort of waiting in humble faith.  Not only did Abraham wait for the fulfillment of the promise, not only did the people of Israel wait for the coming of the Messiah, but we now wait for fulfillment of the Messiah's salvation on the Last Day at His second coming.  As we prepare to celebrate Jesus' first coming at Christmas, we pause to meditate on the fact that much of the Christian life is characterized by waiting, looking forward in hope to what is yet to come.

 Sometimes the waiting can be discouraging.  It can seem so long.  The doubts begin to creep in, "Is the promise really real?"  We can begin to turn the focus of our hearts to other things which  give us more immediate results and gratification.  We push the promises of Christ to the side instead of dwelling on them in faith and eagerly anticipating their consummation.  Patient waiting doesn't come easily for us sinners.  But it is written in the Psalms, "Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart . . .   I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I do hope . . .  O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption."

 We see that being demonstrated here in the life of Abraham and Sarah.  In His grace, the Lord comes to Abraham to announce that the waiting is just about over.  And the Lord does so, interestingly enough, as three men, which certainly calls to mind the fact that our God is the Holy Trinity.  Abraham prepares a special meal for his special guest.  And in the context of that meal, the Lord confirms the promise one last time.  "I will certainly return to you in one year, and behold, Sarah, your wife shall have a son."  In the same way, the angel of the Lord also came to Joseph in a dream to announce Mary's pregnancy by the Holy Spirit, "She will bring forth a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins."  The waiting was almost over for the whole people of God; the Christ was coming.

 Sarah and Mary's reactions, though, were a bit different.  When Sarah heard what the Lord said, she laughed and said to herself, "After I have grown old, shall I have the pleasure (of having a child), my lord (husband) being old also?"  Sarah focused entirely on the implausibility of the whole concept.  Now Mary also wondered how she, a virgin, could conceive.  But when the angel explained that it was by the power of the Holy Spirit, she said, "Behold, I am the maidservant of the Lord!  Let it be to me according to your word."  Mary responded in faith, focusing not on what was humanly impossible but what was divinely possible.

 When confronted, Sarah tried to deny that she had laughed, but the Lord then posed the rhetorical question, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"  The obvious answer is "No, nothing is too hard for the Lord."  The angel said to Mary, "With God nothing will be impossible."  And so it was that a 90-year old Sarah gave birth to a son who would be the direct ancestor of the Messiah, and the Virgin Mary gave birth to that Messiah Himself, the Savior of the world, God in the flesh.

 "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"  Certainly not; and that includes not only causing miraculous births but also saving poor, miserable sinners and giving then new life.  Once Jesus' disciples were despairing that if even the most exemplary people on earth are not good enough to be get into heaven, who then can be saved?  Jesus said, "With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible."  Not even the best of us can enter the kingdom of God by our own strength.  But God has made the impossible possible through Christ.  Even we poor sinners are saved by His holy birth among us.  Though we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God made us alive together with Christ through His death and resurrection.  Nothing is too hard for the Lord, not even saving us.  That is the Word of the Lord that God calls you to believe.

 Abraham believed that nothing is impossible with God.  He believed, as Romans 4 says, that God gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist into existence.  Therefore, it is written, "Abraham did not consider his own body, already dead (since he was about a hundred years old), and the deadness of Sarah's womb.  He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and was fully convinced that what God had promised He was also able to perform."  God brought life out of death, and Sarah gave birth to a son.  They called him Isaac, which means "he laughs."  For God had brought laughter and joy to Abraham and Isaac by fulfilling His promise.

 And God has done the same thing for us.  He has brought life out of our death and has given us joy and laughter through the birth of the Son of God.  The long-awaited promise of the Savior has been fulfilled.  In Him we are set free from sin and fear and death.  In Him we have hope in the midst of this fallen world.  In Him we truly are the children and descendants of Abraham.  For remember, Abraham gave birth to Isaac, Isaac gave birth to Jacob, Jacob became the father of the 12 tribes of Israel, out of Israel came the Messiah Jesus, and we have been baptized into Christ, we are one with Him by faith.  Therefore Abraham truly is our father as Christians.  It is written, "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants." Just as Abraham was accounted righteous before God by faith, so are we who trust in God's promises in Christ.

 God has done for us just what He did for Sarah and for Mary.  He has conceived new and eternal life in us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Out of the barrenness of our sin He has created a living faith.  In the emptiness of our souls He has caused Christ to dwell, to fill us with His love and His merciful presence.  He makes our hearts His manger.  Nothing is too hard for the Lord.
 

II.

"The Birth of Samson"
Judges 13:1-24

 The children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and so the Lord delivered them into the hands of the Philistines for 40 years.  This is a recurring theme for God's Old Testament people.  Over and over they repeat this pattern, particularly in the Book of Judges.  The Israelites forsake the Lord to run after other idols that give them more of what they want.  God's anger is roused against them, and He allows their enemies to overtake them.  Then in their distress at the oppression of their enemies, they cry out to the Lord for help.  And the Lord raises up a judge, a deliverer, to rescue them and free them from the power of their enemies.  The land has rest and everything goes well for a period of time, but then the judge dies, the people become spiritually complacent and apathetic, and they again forsake the Lord, and the whole process starts all over again.

 We can see ourselves in the children of Israel, can't we?  Very often it's when everything is going well and we become complacent that we forget about the Lord and forsake Him for the things of this world.  In the pursuit of our own desires, the Lord then often allows us to fall into trouble or allows hardship to come upon us, that we might be brought to see what we have done.  He works penitence in our hearts that we might call upon His name in faith.  He turns us to Himself again and restores us through Christ, our deliverer.  In Jesus we have rest once more.

 Thus we see that even the bad things in our lives God seeks to work for our good.  He lets the judgment of the Law come upon us sometimes, not only through His Word, but even in events, in order that we might be brought to see our need for the Gospel and for Christ the Savior.  He works repentance in us with His left hand so that with His right hand He might pour out His eternal blessings of forgiveness and life upon us.  It is written in Proverbs 3, "My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest His correction; for whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights."  In the same way that proper parental discipline is a sign of love, so also that is how it is with God toward us.

 And the story of Samson's birth gives us the Advent reminder that even though we are wayward children, God not only disciplines us but sends someone to rescue us from our enemies and bring us back into His fatherly embrace.  The Angel of the Lord comes to Manoah and his wife.  Manoah's wife up to this point had been barren, sterile, unable to have children.  But the Angel of the Lord now declares to her, "You shall conceive and bear a son . . . and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."  The Angel of the Lord announces that through divine intervention, her womb will be opened and she will give birth to a son who will become the judge and the champion of God's people.

 So just who is this Angel of the Lord that speaks to Manoah and his wife?  We discussed this very question on Sunday in Bible class in connection with another Old Testament story.  The Bible reveals that the Angel of the Lord is perhaps someone different than you might at first think.  He is not a created angel like Gabriel or any of the myriad others that God made in the beginning.  This Angel is uncreated.  That's why in many Bibles, the "A" for this Angel is capitalized.  This is an eternal and divine Being.  Angel literally means Messenger; we might even translate it as "Word," as in John 1, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."  You see, this is the Messenger of the Lord, the Word of the Father, the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit.  The Angel of the Lord is the Son of God, Jesus, before He was born among us and became man.  Here the Son of God has come down to man to announce a miraculous birth through which God the Father would deliver His people, just as centuries later the Son of God Himself would be miraculously born to bring eternal deliverance to His people.

 So let us give our attention for a few moments to this Angel of the Lord, this divine Word of the Father, and how the events here in Judges 13 point us to the ultimate event of His own coming at Christmas.  First of  all, you will notice that when the Angel of the Lord came to Manoah's wife with the message that she would have a son, she believed the Word of the Lord, even as Mary believed when God  told her that she would give birth to the Messiah.  Both of those women had good reason to question God's message.  One had been unable to conceive for years and years.  The other was a Virgin.  And yet they both were given to accept the message in faith, as  Mary said, "Let it be to me according to your Word."

 The Angel of the Lord then appeared to Manoah himself, just as God also came to Joseph after he found out that Mary was pregnant.  You will recall that Joseph had resolved to break off the engagement with Mary because he assumed that she was pregnant by another man.  But then God spoke to Joseph in a dream that what was conceived in her was of the Holy Spirit.  So also the Son of God comes to Manoah to declare to him the truth of what his wife had said and how their son should be raised.

 Specifically, Samson was to be raised as a Nazirite.  Nazirite means "set apart" or "dedicated" to the Lord.  Being a Nazirite involved never drinking wine and never cutting one's hair.  But the larger point of being a Nazirite was that you were separated out as holy to the Lord for devotion to His work.  Is that not precisely also a description of our Lord Jesus?  He was set apart by the heavenly Father from the very moment of His conception, dedicated for the work of redeeming His people from their sin and delivering them from the power of the devil.  The Word of the Lord came to Mary, "That Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God."  Jesus, true God and true man, was and is indeed holy, without sin, set apart, in order that He might make us holy.

 Manoah asked the Angel of the Lord to stay so that He might prepare a goat for Him to eat.  For Manoah didn't yet fully grasp in whose presence he was standing.  The Angel of the Lord said that He would not eat Manoah's food; rather, He directed him to offer a burnt offering to the Lord.  Then Manoah asked Him, "What is Your name, that when Your words come to pass we may honor You?"  And the Son of God answers, "Why do you ask My name, seeing it is wonderful?"  His name, you see, like His countenance, was awesome and beyond human comprehension.  His is the name that is above every name, a name that was not yet to be revealed but would later be made known as Jesus, the One who saves His people from their sins.  His name is indeed Wonderful, as it is written, "Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son if given . . . And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

 Manoah did offer a sacrifice to the Lord.  And then the One whose name is Wonderful did a wondrous thing.  He ascended in the flame of the sacrifice on the altar out of their sight!  This reveals to us the purpose of Christ's coming and His birth.  He descends to earth as one of us in order to offer Himself up in sacrifice.  He comes down to bring deliverance and salvation to His people so that through His sacrifice we might arise with Him to new and everlasting life.  Remember that Samson would win his greatest victory over the Philistines in his death.  He who had been captured would extend his arms between the two pillars and cause the building to collapse on himself and all the Philistines who were gathered there.  So also Christ won the victory over our enemies as He extended His arms in death between the two criminals.  By His sacrifice He conquered sin and Satan and the grave.

 When the Angel of the Lord ascended in the flame, Manoah and his wife finally recognized who had been in their presence.  Manoah said, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God!"  They rightly believed that sinful people cannot stand in the presence of a holy God and live.  But it is written in John 3, "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him."  Jesus came at Bethlehem so that sinful man might be able to stand before God and live.  That is the message of Christmas.  Christ, being both God and man, came to be the bridge to bring God and man back together.  In Him God and sinners are reconciled.  In Jesus we see God and live forever by the power of His forgiving love.

  Let us, then, during this Advent season, look to Jesus as our Samson.  Let us with penitent hearts hope in Him who is born to be our eternal Deliverer and Savior.

III.

"Heard by God"
I Samuel 1:1 - 2:11

 For some, Christmas is not a happy but a depressing time of year.  Feelings of loneliness or discontentment or inadequacy are only amplified when it seems like everyone else is so happy.  All the music and the gifts and the get-togethers leave many feeling left out and isolated.

 That may have been something like how Hannah felt in today's reading.  Every year Elkanah went up with his two wives to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts in Shiloh.  But this annual event only seemed to remind Hannah that she was childless, that the Lord had closed her womb.  Elkanah's other wife, Peninnah, had several children.  When Elkanah made the sacrifice, he would give portions of the food to Peninnah and her children.  But because he loved Hannah he would give her a double portion, as if she also had a child to feed.  But Hannah wept and would not eat.  For it was bad enough that she had no children–to her it felt like she was cursed and not blessed by God; furthermore, as the Israelites waited for the coming of the Messiah from among their offspring, the fact that she had no offspring made her feel as if she was outside of that divine promise.  But on top of all of that, Peninnah would provoke her and make her life miserable because of her barrenness.

 We can also be tempted to feel like Hannah because of our earthly circumstances, to think sometimes that we are cursed and not blessed by God.  We can fall into the trap of thinking that God's promises only apply to somebody else and not to ourselves.  "Sure, I know what the Bible says about God's love, but I know myself too well, and look at the things that are happening in my life.  I don't think God could possibly love or forgive me."  The devil tries to provoke us to unbelief and despair.
 
 Elkanah tried to comfort Hannah by saying, "Am I not better to you than ten sons?"  The question also rings in our ears, "Is not the love and the provision of your heavenly Father sufficient?"  But in the end it is only the birth of a son that truly comforts Hannah, and it is only the birth of the Son of God that brings real comfort to us.

 Even in the bitterness of her soul, Hannah still looked to the Lord in faith and called upon His name.  Hannah prayed and made a vow to the Lord at the tabernacle, that if He would grant her a son, she would dedicate that son to the Lord and give him over for the Lord's service all the days of his life.  This wasn't mere bargaining with God.  Hannah was entrusting the entirety of her situation into the Lord's hands.  By making this particular vow, she was acknowledging that if she received a son it would be solely by the grace and giving of the Lord.  So also we come before the Lord in prayer, not so that we might manipulate Him by what we say, but so that we might commit ourselves and our needs into His gracious hands, the hands of Him who alone can help and save us.  Though our faith be weak, yet we still believe and confess, "Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
 

 Hannah prays without making any sound, only moving her lips.  When the priest sees this, he thinks that she is drunk and scolds her.  But Hannah explains that she is simply pouring out her soul to the Lord in grief.  And then, from the servant of the Lord, Hannah finally hears a blessing.  "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition which you have asked of Him."  And with that blessing from God's priest, she went in peace.  She ate, and her face was no longer sad.  In the course of time, God remembered Hannah, and she conceived and bore a son by Elkanah.  She called him Samuel, which means literally "Heard by God."  For God had heard and answered her prayers for a son.

 Even as the birth of Samuel brought peace and joy to Hannah, so the birth of Jesus brings peace and joy to us.  For in Jesus God has answered your prayers in a most profound way.  In Christ all of your needs are supplied; every petition finds its "yes" in Him.  Christmas is living proof that you are blessed and not cursed by God, that God does indeed love and forgive you.  For the Son of God took on your very nature, your flesh and blood, in order that He might redeem you from all that brings you bitterness and sorrow in this life.  He became like you in order to rescue you from your isolation and bring you into His everlasting fellowship.

 The birth of Christ is an unmistakable sign that God is with you, that God is for you, that God is on your side.  And it is written in Romans 8, "If God is for us, who can be against us? . . .  Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?"  And then St. Paul concludes, "I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."  Having that unconquerable certainty of God's love for us in Christ His Son, we are made to be like Hannah, with a face that is no longer sad, able to eat and drink in peace at His table.

 Jesus truly is your Samuel, the sure evidence that you have been "Heard by God," even before your prayers were offered.  As it is written in Isaiah, "It shall come to pass that before they call, I will answer."  Just as Samuel entered into the tabernacle to appear before the Lord and remain there all his days, so also the Son of God entered into the tabernacle of our human body and soul to remain there forever as both true God and true man.  So fully did Christ assume our humanity that He who created the Blessed Virgin Mary now was dependent upon her for nourishment and nursed at her breast, that we may learn to long for the pure spiritual milk of the Word and grow up into our salvation.  When Samuel was weaned He ministered to the Lord before Eli the priest in the place of sacrifice.  In the same way Jesus served His Father by becoming both priest and sacrifice, offering up His own body to atone for the sins of the world.

 Through the humility of the cross Jesus has brought low and defeated all the Peninnahs of this world–even the devil himself.  And through His resurrection He has lifted up and exalted all those who trust in Him.  This is what Hannah proclaims in her prayer after Samuel's birth, a prayer that is a precursor of Mary's Magnificat, which we will sing in a moment.  Notice how in Hannah's prayer the exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted.  "The bows of the mighty men are broken, and those who stumbled are girded with strength.  Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, and the hungry have ceased to hunger.  Even the barren (woman) has borne seven (children), and she who has many children has become feeble.  The Lord kills and makes alive; He brings down to the grave and brings up.  The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up.  He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the beggar the ash heap, to set them among princes and make them inherit the throne of glory."

 This is the way of the Lord, to turn the thinking of the world upside down, to take down the strong and self-sufficient who trust in themselves, and to raise up the weak and the needy who trust in Him.  Peninnah is put to shame in the end; Hannah rejoices.  The Lord opens her womb to have five more children after Samuel, even as He opens the womb of the church to bring new life to all who believe and are baptized into Christ.  God wins his victories through humility, the humility of the manger and the cross, the humility of the font and the altar.  Let us therefore in this Advent season humble ourselves before the Lord in faithful trust that He may exalt us in due time.