Advent 4

Advent 4

Micah 5:1-5a, Luke 1:39-55

We begin in the context of captivity. You are walled around with a wall. A siege is laid up against you. Is it not so?

And we are crying out to be saved, and we are given the promisethat we will be saved by this king. This Ruler, this Messiah. He will come from Bethlehem of Ephrathah, a little clan of Judah.

What’s so interesting about this though, is that the thing we’re enslaved to, what we are crying out for salvation from, the thing holding us captive, is our own sin. All of the problems we face, we brought upon ourselves. Israel didn’t just so happen to fall into the hands of their enemies. Adam and Eve didn’t just so happen to slip and fall from perfect righteousness and blessedness. The Israelite didn’t just so happen to, by chance, become enslaved by the Egyptians. All of this very much happened by the fault and by the sin of the people themselves. It is just the same with us.

We suffer, yes. We are in captivity, yes. We are enslaved, yes.

By ourfault, by our own fault, by our own most grievous fault.

And so we end up in our own exile from paradise, into our own oppression, into our own slavery to sin by nobodies fault but our own. We are our own captors. We are our own slave masters. But look!

Here’s why this is so important. Today is 4thSunday in Advent, so what is one week from now? It’s Christmas. So what are people’s minds set upon? It’s Christmas. And what does the culture tell them time and time and time again that Christmas is about? Do good, get things, do bad, get punishments. What’s really really really important is that it’s understood that the salvation being preached is not one that’s deserved. What is deserved is the coal. The exultation of the oppressed or the poor is not out of some kind of deserved right or worthiness within them for God to do so. There is no virtue in being poor. Let me repeat myself, there is simply no virtue whatsoever in your lack of strength, or money, or abilities, or holiness, or anything else that you lack. There is no virtue in being weak and there is no virtue in being at the bottom of society. God’s lifting up of those people is mercifuland gracious. It’s undeserved, and it’s without reason. Just as God warned Israel time and time and time again, if you do not do my commandments you will be punished, you will be put into exile you will be enslaved, so on and so forth.

We’ve seen, we’ve heard, and soon we’ll speak about these texts in the gospel of Luke. Of the exaltation of the lowly, and the humbling of the mighty.

Let us remember how our KING CAME. He came in royal robes and splendour? No-no. He who was mighty, humbled Himself for our sake. Though he was in the form of God,

He did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

7 but became nothing,

taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form,

8 he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross

That we who were poor, who were destitute might beblessed in spite of these things. We who were without, who were lowly and at the bottom have been brought up high because He who was on high, who was the King of glory, for our sake took our place at the bottom that we might sit on His throne, and be raised up to heavenly places in and through Christ Jesus the exalted King of glory who for us became nothing.

Their understanding of oppression is that that person suffering did nothing wrong to deserve, woe is them, let’s all have sympathy for them, they don't deserve to suffer and so on. They posit that salvation is a right not a privilege. That it is deserved and it is owed it is not freely given.