December 2024 – What Does This Mean?

Once He Came in Blessing

Once He came in blessing,
All our sins redressing;
Came in likeness lowly,
Son of God most holy;
Bore the cross to save us;
Hope and freedom gave us.

This verse speaks of Christmas, the First Coming of our Lord, born of the virgin Mary. He came in blessing, but how did He bless us? He blessed us by dying on the cross for us and forgiving all of our sins. Perhaps we do not often think of “bless” and “death” in the same sentence. But this is grace, that God died for us instead of us, and this is a blessing we could never accomplish on our own. This is why Jesus came to us on earth in the first place. He came in likeness lowly, like us, but was God most holy. There is no other god that would come so humbly and die so terribly. What a blessing this truly is for all of us!

Now He gently leads us;
With Himself He feeds us
Precious food from heaven,
Pledge of peace here given,
Manna that will nourish
Souls that they may flourish.

Here we see the Good Shepherd language, that He gently leads us. This is what Christ does for the Church now, for each of us now. He leads us and He feeds us, not only with the things we need for body and soul, but even with something greater than the manna from heaven in the wilderness. Jesus Christ offers to us His very own Body and Blood at this altar, not as a re-sacrifice, but as the cross and Passion of our Lord personally applied to us and granted to us. While the first verse retold Christmas and Good Friday, this verse applies what Christ did to us, that Christ is still doing among us this work of forgiveness. The cross is only past, but present, received and believed in our life as the Church.

Soon will come that hour
When with mighty power
Christ will come in splendor
And will judgment render,
With the faithful sharing
Joy beyond comparing.

The first verse was set in the past. The second verse was set in the present. This third verse is set in the future. Here we sing of the Last Day, of the Second Coming of our Lord. Jesus regularly referred to “that hour” as the hour when He would die for the sins of the world. But we know that there is another “hour” that awaits us. And now the Lord comes not to forgive sins nor to defeat the devil, but He comes in splendor for judgment. As Christians, we do not need to fear this judgment, for we believe in the first verse of this hymn and we receive the Lord’s Supper that the second verse mentions. The judgment that we shall receive is simply this: “Not guilty!” And that is most certainly “joy beyond comparing.”

Come, then, O Lord Jesus,
From our sins release us.
Keep our hearts believing,
That we, grace receiving,
Ever may confess You
Till in heaven we bless You.

This final verse is not a doxology like we have seen in the past. But the writer of this hymn has reversed the thought he began with. In the first verse, he sang of Christ’s First Coming, and that this was a blessing. But in this verse, he encourages us to confess the Lord until we bless the Lord. Once again, this “blessing” word shows up, and this is eternal worship of the Lamb on the throne. This we even do witness on Sunday mornings. After receiving the Sacrament, toward the end of the Divine Service, we sing, “Bless we the Lord.” Perhaps we say it without faith. But in reality, this then is what Christianity seeks in the end of days, to “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name!” It doesn’t get any better than that!

Rev. James Peterson
St. John Lutheran Church
Curtis, Nebraska

The Advent of our King

The advent of our King
Our prayers must now employ,
And we must hymns of welcome sing
In strains of holy joy.

“Advent” means “to come toward.” When we use the word Advent, we speak about Jesus’ first coming toward earth and His Second Coming on the Last Day. In this verse and during this season, we recall when Jesus first came to earth as a baby in Bethlehem.

The everlasting Son
Incarnate deigns to be,
Himself a servant’s form puts on
To set His servants free.

Jesus is the Son of God. This verse reminds us that Jesus is “everlasting,” both before the creation of the world and after He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven. The Son became flesh as a servant, the opposite of King, to set His servants, all of us, free from sin, death, and the devil.

O Zion’s daughter, rise
To meet your lowly King,
Nor let your faithless heart despise
The peace He comes to bring.

“Zion’s daughter” is an Old Testament phrase for the Church. And here there are two meanings for the word “rise.” The obvious meaning is to stand up while we sing for “the King is coming.” But here also, the hymn means for us to consider the resurrection, that the Church shall rise from the graves on the Last Day and see the King, our Lord Most High.

The Advent of our King
As judge, on clouds of light,
He soon will come again
And His true members all unite
With Him in heaven to reign.

Suddenly, the hymn shifts from the First Coming to the Second Coming of our Lord. Now the Lord Jesus, the Judge of the living and the dead, comes on the clouds as the Scriptures testify. This verse puts the hymn in our own context, for we await the Last Day with patience and joy in the midst of suffering.

Before the dawning day
Let sin’s dark deeds be gone,
The sinful self be put away,
The new self now put on.

What can we do while we wait for the Last Day? We put the new self on. While we worship, we ask for God’s forgiveness of our sins, and He forgives them. This He has promised to us. Then we hear the Word of God, which works faith in us. Finally, we receive the Sacrament, the foretaste of the feast to come.

All glory to the Son,
Who comes to set us free,
With Father, Spirit, ever one
Through all eternity.

The triangle reminds us that this is a doxology. “Dox” means “glory.” These final verses of some hymns give glory to God. In this particular hymn, the doxology serves as a profound conclusion that our lives in heaven on the Last Day will be endless refrains of giving glory to God forever and ever.

Rev. James Peterson
St. John Lutheran Church
Curtis, Nebraska

Kindle and Print Copies of Post Series

Dear Friends,

Over the past month, I’ve received feedback that readers would love to have all the posts in a particular series all in one file for future reference. At the urging of my sons, I’ve experimented with producing Kindle and print booklet form through Amazon’s publishing service.

I’ve created a Kindle Book of my Preparation for the Gospel series, which will run on the blog this month. Ironically, it is too short to offer as a booklet, so I will have to say more in it to flesh it out. (Imagine telling a pastor to talk more!) I will price these inexpensively, mostly covering cost, but truth in advertizing, I’ll make a little money with each one bought.

To follow how I’m doing on this, my Amazon Author page is:

Amazon.com: Robert E. Smith: books, biography, latest update

If you like this idea, please leave a comment.

In the peace of God in man made manifest,

Pastor Robert E. Smith
Pastor Emeritus
Publisher of blog What Does This Mean?

Stir up Your Power, O Lord, and Come!

Encore Post: Great forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods are all over our news. Acts of unspeakable evil and cruelty occur on almost a weekly basis. A nation routinely kills babies in the womb, celebrates immorality and lectures the church when it doesn’t join them. All the signs of the end of days fill our T.V.s, cell phones and computer screens. It makes you just want to scream, “Tear open the heavens and get down here, Lord, and do something about it! What are you waiting for? (See Isaiah 64)

To most of the world’s religions, the high god who made the world is a distant god, who made the world and tired of it, going away to leave it to lesser gods and our own devices. We are left alone to deal with the mess that is our world and our part in making it worse. Even more modern thinkers, like the Deists, thought of God as a great watchmaker, who made the world capable of running itself, wound it up and walked away. Pop songs muse: “God is watching us… from a distance” and “The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died.” We just have to cope, they advise.

Advent breaks into that mood and reminds us that is not true at all. The God who made the world and called it “very good” intends to do something about it. He promised to come himself, in the person of his Son, born of a woman, to become one of us. It reminds us that he kept that promise and to prepare to celebrate that coming, receive him as he comes to us each day and how he will finally come to set things right.

The season of Advent developed over the centuries to do just that. Like Lent prepared the church to celebrate Easter, Advent would come to celebrate Christmas. For some, it was also a season of repentance, as a deliberate counter to the wild and immoral way pagans celebrate their December holidays. So in many places, Advent’s color is purple or black, the Gloria is not sung and people fast. For others, it is a season of hope, with the color being blue and carols sung to anticipate Christmas.

Either way, the church cries out: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come!” Come as you did, born to die that we might live. Come with your grace and live among us. Come and bring us all home to be with you. Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana