God’s Word for You
Psalm 53:6b God restores his people
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Sunday, December 25, 2022
When God restores his people,
let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!
When Martin Luther brought a pine tree into his house (what did his wife say?) and decorated it with candles wired to the branches, he said that he had been moved by the beauty of the starry sky overhead, and that he thought it would be a way for his family to remember the glory of God, and his almighty power used for the salvation of mankind.
From each flaming star in the heavens to each tiny flame flickering and dancing atop slender spires of wax, light of every kind reminds us of God’s willful act of creation, of the declaration: “Let there be light!” (Genesis 1:3).
After Adam and Eve sinned, they were hiding under the canopy of the trees in the Garden when God came to them. They were cowering, shivering from fear, covering their nudity with leaves stitched together stem-through-leaf, stem-through-leaf, into aprons or kilts. He did not come as a storm, but he came to bring light to the darkness of their shame. He did not holler, but he asked questions to draw out their confession, to expose the wrong so that he could make it right again and restore his people.
Caught up in the Hebrew phrase “restores” is a double use of the word “turn.” God returns what was turned away. He un-exiles the exiles. He recaptures the captured, except that they are not his captives; they are his own dear children. He gathers the scattered.
This restoring happens whenever a sinner is called to repentance by the preaching of the law and the gospel. Our hearts are led to fear and even terror over our sin, and our shame and grief is lifted up by God’s forgiveness and the gospel promise of forgiveness and life.
This restoring happens whenever we gather as a congregation and hear the absolution, the forgiveness of sins, spoken by the minister, usually with his hands lifted up in blessing. We are assured and reminded as a group that we are all forgiven all our sins.
This restoring happened when Christ was driven out of the city carrying a cross and carrying all of our sins, a burden too heavy, but a thing nevertheless nailed up to a tree to suffer and die as a criminal. His innocence made no difference to his captors, but the purity of his sacrifice made all the difference in the world to God the Father. Here was God the Son, God the Creator, restoring David’s fallen tent, repairing its broken places, restoring its ruins, and building it as it used to be. The terrible death, the bringing down of his lifeless body, the placement in the tomb, was the conclusion of the sacrifice. In Israel up to that moment, the sacrifices were slaughtered before they were carried to the altar; they died at the hands of respectful worshipers without anger. But Christ was put to death on the altar of the cross, not before it, at the hands of disrespectful enemies, without dignity, in dishonor. But no matter, his shame removed our shame. His suffering removed our suffering. He lived and died in hell on that cross so that we need never approach its gates.
This restoring began when the sinless Son of God entered into our world in the womb of a virgin girl, wrongly suspected of a crime by her fiance, but loved nevertheless. It was the love of God that sent his Son there, that sent his Son here, to restore his people.
O come, let us adore him: Christ the Lord.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.