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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
“I lift up my eyes to the hills,” the psalmist says in a much‑beloved passage, before asking rhetorically, “From where does my help come?” The psalmist knows the answer to that question and goes on to say, “My help comes from the Lord, Who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1-2). The hills—or, perhaps better, the “mountains”, as the Hebrew word can be and elsewhere is more-often translated—were places where the Lord God revealed Himself, and so the mountains were places where the Lord God was worshiped. As is said, “The antiquity, majesty, power and height of mountains reaching up to the heavens above the clouds” may well have “naturally led people to associate mountains with gods” (Waltke, TWOT I:244), and mountains may have in some sense reduced the distance between earth and heaven, but the Lord God’s revealing Himself and being present on mountains made them holy places and so places of worship. From the high-point of the glory of God revealed from the flesh of the man Jesus on the unnamed mount of transfiguration (Mark 9:2-9), the season of Lent in a sense takes us to a seeming low-point of the glory of God hidden in the flesh of the man Jesus on Mount Calvary. And, so, this Lent, our special Midweek Lenten Sermon Series calls you to “Lift up your eyes to the Bible’s mountains”, beginning tonight with “The Mountains of Ararat”.
This Sermon Series is considering five of the Bible’s mountains, but there certainly are more than those five mountains in the Bible. For example, the Bible mentions mountains named Gerazim and Ebal (Deuteronomy 11:29; 27:12-13), Nebo and Pisgah (for example, Deuteronomy 32:49; 34:1), and Tabor (for example, Judges 4:6, 12, 14). And, the Bible narrates events that happen on mountains that it does not name, such as Jesus’s so-called “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5:1), the mountain of His transfiguration (Matthew 17:1), and what St. Matthew records as Jesus’s last appearance to His eleven disciples on a mountain in Galilee (Matthew 28:16). Frequent mentions of mountains are not all that surprising, given that what we think of as the Holy Land has running through it two north-south mountain ranges: one range east and one range west of the Jordan River and its Valley. The single and plural forms of the Bible’s usual Hebrew and Greek words translated “mountain” variously refer to mountain ranges or to single mountains. While the mountains in the Holy Land are not as high above sea level as some mountains in this country, the mountains in the Holy Land can appear to be dramatically higher than they actually are in contrast to other elevations that in some cases are more than one‑thousand feet below sea level. Although in the eastern part of modern-day Turkey and not in the Holy Land as we may think of it, Mount Ararat is the tallest mountain of those mountains that we are considering, at nearly 17‑thousand feet above sea level, and Ararat arguably is the first single mountain or mountain range named in the Bible (confer 2 Kings 19:37; Isaiah 37:38).
As we heard in tonight’s First Reading (Genesis 6:9-9:17), the mountains of Ararat are named as the place where the ark came to rest and so the place where Noah and his family and the animals came out of the ark and the place where God made a covenant with them, as God later made covenants with other people on other mountains, perhaps including Abraham and the covenant of circumcision, as we will hear this coming Sunday in the Old Testament Reading (Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16). Normally in our series of appointed Readings, we do not hear the full account of the flood, as we did in tonight’s First Reading; nor do we hear those verses of the Psalm we prayed (Psalm 104:1-13; antiphon: v.6); or those verse of St. Peter’s second Biblical letter, as we did in the Third Reading. Our focus on the Mountains of Ararat tonight brought together all those passages of Holy Scripture! Yet, our focus is really least on the Mountains of Ararat, and less on the flood, but our focus is more on God’s deliverance of Noah and his family (confer TLSB, ad loc Genesis 6:9, p.25), and most on God’s deliverance of us and our families.
In tonight’s Psalm we praised God for His creation, including His creation of the waters that stay in their boundaries and sustain life, though at the time of the flood, as we heard in the First Reading, those waters covered all the mountains of the world with a depth of at least twenty feet! The waters of the flood certainly destroyed all the other people of the earth, described as corrupt in God’s sight and filled with violence: not in a right relationship with God, and not in right relationships with one another. A few verses earlier, the wickedness of human beings was described as “great in the earth”, and “every intention of the thoughts of [a human’s] heart” was said to be “only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). We may think that things are worse now, but in some sense nothing has changed! Even after the flood, as we heard in the First Reading, God described the intention of a human’s heart—in that case even of Noah and his family—as “evil from his youth” (confer TLSB, ad loc Genesis 8:21, pp.27-28, citing Chemnitz, Loci Theologici, 1:288). Conceived and born sinful (Psalm 51:5), you and I are no better by nature, both before our conversion and, according to our sinful human nature, even after our conversion. Our sinful nature and our actual sins deserve temporal death and eternal torment. As we heard in the Third Reading, the Lord knows how “to keep the unrighteous under punishment until the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority.” That day of judgment in some sense will come as suddenly as the flood in Noah’s day (Matthew 24:37-38; Luke 17:26‑27), and it will likewise destroy us, unless, enabled by God, we repent.
Tonight’s First Reading described Noah as “a righteous man, blameless in his generation”, and the verse just before the First Reading said that “Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (confer Ezekiel 14:14, 20). Noah was different from “his contemporaries” (TLSB, ad loc Genesis 6:9, p.25), but Noah was saved by God’s favor—or, maybe better, “grace”—through faith. The Divinely‑inspired author of the book of Hebrews says (Hebrews 11:7):
By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Noah believed in the Savior Who was to come, and we likewise believe in the Savior Who has come. The Son of God took on human flesh as the man Jesus, a descendant of Noah (Luke 3:36), and died on the cross for our sins. Life is in the blood, and, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (Leviticus 17:11, 14; Deuteronomy 12:23; Hebrews 9:22). Having come out of the ark, Noah built an altar to the Lord and offered offerings, but such sacrifices are no longer needed. As we heard in the Second Reading (1 Peter 3:18-22), Jesus Christ “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God”. Jesus died and was buried, and He descended into hell, where He proclaimed victory to those there who did not believe in the days of Noah, and then Jesus rose again from the dead, and proclaimed victory on earth to His followers, and then He ascended into heaven and is at the right hand of God. When we are sorry for our sinful nature and all of our actual sin and trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. God remembered Noah and all those with him in the ark and acted kindly toward them, and God remembers us and our families and acts kindly toward us. God kept His covenant promises to Noah, and God keeps His covenant promises to us. God forgives us through His Means of Grace.
In tonight’s Third Reading, Noah was called “a herald”—or, maybe better, a “preacher”—“of righteousness”, and, in tonight’s First Reading, God gave the rainbow as a sign of His covenant promises with Noah and his family and the animals, and the rainbow can still function as a reminder of God’s covenant with us, despite the rainbow’s modern perversions. More important for us, however, are the reading and preaching of the Gospel of righteousness through faith in Christ and the application of that Gospel to individuals: with water in Holy Baptism, with a pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in the Holy Supper. The Second Reading directed our attention especially to Holy Baptism, which St. Peter there says “saves” us, as we believe the words and promises of God about Holy Baptism. And, we are reminded that, in the Holy Supper, Jesus gives us His blood of the new covenant, poured out for the forgiveness of sins (Matthew 26:28; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25). If we drink His blood, we have life in us, and He raises us up on the Last Day (John 6:53‑54).
Up the hill on Broadway at Florey Street, as people apparently used to say, Pilgrim’s Sanctuary may not be on a mountain, but God surely reveals Himself to us here and leads us to worship Him by seeking and receiving the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation here. As a result of that forgiveness, we are different from our “contemporaries”: opposing abortion but supporting capital punishment and the waging of just wars; trusting God in His way and time to rescue us from trials; and trying to suppress our sinful nature, until it is finally purged from us on the Last Day when we begin to dwell for eternity in the nearer presence and glory of God.
In recent centuries, people have searched the Mountains of Ararat and elsewhere for Noah’s ark. But, our saving faith does not depend on someone’s finding Noah’s ark, for, like Noah on the Mountains of Ararat, our saving faith depends on the Son of God and His ark of the Church.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +