We celebrate the sacrament here this morning and we were anticipating today celebrating sacrament of baptism and then also of the Lord's Supper and due to sickness of course that's not going to happen but I had chosen this one verse to preach on which really unites those two as well as capturing something of the the sense of the season in which we're in, in which we meditate on the incarnation of our Lord. And as we turn to God's Word and as we think about the sacraments, we're reminded by the one Old Divine that in the sacrament we don't get a better Christ than we get in the Word of God, but Lord willing, we do get Christ better through the sacrament, and so we want that certainly to be true today as we gather together. So we're going to be focusing especially on Luke chapter 21 when Jesus' parents, Joseph and Mary, present him for circumcision, but we're going to begin our reading in verse 8 of Luke chapter 2. So let's pray before we read. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given Christ to us. And we thank you that you have given him to us in such a way that we can receive him. So we pray that we would receive him and his word with faith and with love in our hearts today. Open our minds to this end, we pray in Jesus name, amen. Luke chapter two, beginning in verse eight, this is the word of God. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling claws and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem to see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning the child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. And at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. Thus ends this reading of God's holy word. We pray that you write it on our hearts today and forever. As we come to the end of the year, it is a common thing for us to reflect back on the things that God has done over the course of the year. And for some of you, that brings to mind surgery that you've had this year. Maybe it's a new hip or maybe it's a new knee. Maybe it's an appendectomy or something else that was done where you were in fact cut open and there is a scar that remains as a result of seeking to fix whatever it was that was wrong or broken. Or maybe it didn't even require surgery, but there was simply something that you did to yourself or something someone else did that created that scar. But we know that every scar tells a story. of the things that have happened this year and through the rest of the history of our lives. And as we come here to the 21st verse of Luke's second chapter, we see the story, the record of a scar that our Savior receives. It's just a brief mention here of this event in the life of our Lord and yet it tells us a great deal of what we need to know if we are to appreciate who our Savior is and how he connects to us and how we should understand and view him and ourselves today. And so we see that as Mary looked at everything that was happening in the birth of Jesus, we're told that she pondered these things in her heart as she treasured all of these revelations and these realities of her son. And so today we would do well to treasure in our heart the circumcision of Jesus, to meditate on it, and to ask what the Lord would have us to know and to believe and to do as a result. So we want to begin here briefly today by simply meditating on the reality of Jesus' circumcision. The reality of it, that this is true history. Look again at verse 21. It says, and at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised." So here's Mary and Joseph, they're desiring to be faithful covenant parents, and they know the instruction of Leviticus 12, verse 3, that on the eighth day, the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised. And this, of course, is simply a continuation in the law of Moses of the command that was originally given to Abraham when the covenant promise was given to him that in Genesis 17, 12, that he who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. So every little Jewish boy was to be brought to the priest to have the flesh of his foreskin removed. And Martin Luther put it this way about Jesus. Jesus did not flutter about like a spirit, but he dwelt among men. He had eyes, ears, mouth, nose, chest, stomach, hands, and feet, just as you and I do. He took the breast, his mother nursed him as any other child is nursed. Jesus in the incarnation took on flesh in all of his body parts. He came to identify with us. And so the Lord Jesus came on that eighth day to receive this sign of the covenant. It really happened. He was really taken in hand, in the priest's hand. The flint really came out. And Jesus really and truly experienced the pain of that knife cutting his foreskin. And in that moment, the air was pierced with the cry of the Son of God at the pain that was inflicted upon him. And for poor Mary, she must have winced to see her son cry out in pain in that way. we need to recognize here that this event actually took place. It's not simply a record, it's not simply a sort of fanciful piece of someone's imaginary history, but on that particular eighth day, Jesus was brought. And we need to feature that scene in our minds and take it to our heart that this is how God has actually acted in human history. The second thing that we need to meditate on here today as we meditate upon Jesus' circumcision is not only the reality of this circumcision, but the meaning of this circumcision for Jesus. Cast your eye there to verse 21 again, it says, at the end of eight days when he was circumcised. Jesus was really the recipient of this circumcision. It was an experience of life for him. And what did it mean? Why did he do it? Well, we've already recounted that this was commanded by the Lord for all of the Jewish boys, all of the descendants of Abraham. And we know from Galatians 4, that Jesus came into the world, that God, we're told, when the fullness of time had come, sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. Jesus is born of a woman, truly man, but his circumcision reveals more than that. He was to be identified here as one being under the law, specifically the law given through Moses. He was to be identified here with the covenant people of God. You know that the promised seed of the woman was declared by God to be the one, clear back in Genesis, to be the one who would overcome the evil one, who would crush the head of the serpent, who would deal with the sin and the rebellion people and God had now promised that that would come through Abraham and so he had marked out Abraham's seed and of course the promise was that the seed of Abraham was going to come in Galatians chapter 3 and Galatians chapter 3 reminds us that that seed is not many but ultimately it refers to one there would be one culmination of all of that and it is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. So he's covenantally united to his people, just like all of the others received that sign through the old covenant. So Jesus comes and he identifies with his particular people. But we know that it is also more than this. There's an acknowledgement here, not only that he had to be made like his brothers in every way, as Hebrews 2 says, but that he was also required to fulfill the law. He's one who's under the law, he's of the seed of Abraham, and his calling was to bring to fulfillment everything that was required in the law. Now every person who's born under the law is required to keep that law and we know that every person who's born under the law who doesn't keep that law is required by the holiness, by the righteousness of God to be cut off from his people, to be separated from God if you violate that law. And this is part of the picture of circumcision. It's a picture of the cutting away of sin. God knowing that every person is under the curse. And that every person deserves to be cut off. But this sacramental symbol is given to God's people. as a reminder that He will cut away their sin. It's a reminder, as we see in Deuteronomy 10, verse 10, that people needed not only a circumcision of the flesh, not only a cutting away of filthy flesh, but they needed a circumcision of the heart. Why? Because there are calyps of flesh around the human heart, which has been deadened toward God because we're all born in sin. But as we think about the meaning of this for Jesus, we're reminded that he is the one who knew no sin. So why on earth? would Jesus need to receive this sign? He's not one who needed a new heart because through the whole course of his life, as you know, he would be perfectly faithful to God and he would fulfill the law. Why did he do this? Well, he came because he not only needed this sign of the seal of righteousness that Abraham had by faith, Jesus didn't need that seal of righteousness that would come by Jesus' faith in something else. That was there for Abraham. Jesus would bring the righteousness that would ultimately belong to others who have faith. And Jesus comes as this intermediary. He comes as God in the flesh. to take on our sin. He comes in order to bear our iniquity, to be the one who is the Savior. And so what was going to be required? Well, keep your finger there in Luke 2, and turn with me to Romans 8. You'll find this on page 944. We see what Jesus is up to here and what his circumcision means for him as he comes and he humbles himself. Romans 8 says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh. Jesus has come in the flesh to live righteously and to fulfill the law in that sense, and also to fulfill every curse that was required for sinful flesh. And in His body, He bears the sins of His people. We know and are comforted much by those words from Isaiah, that it is by his stripes we are healed. And what is it that we see here in Luke chapter two with the circumcision of Jesus? But we see the first of the stripes. that he endured. For Jesus, this was the beginning of his suffering. This was the foreshadowing of what he would ultimately do in complete fulfillment of the law of God for his people. It's a bit of a prelude in the ministry of Jesus. That's the word that Calvin uses to describe what's going on here with this surgery, with this rite being performed. The initial indications of what Jesus is going to do for his people are starting and it begins with a trickle of blood. and it shows Jesus identifying with his people. We're told in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 27, that Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born, and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross, in being buried and continuing under the power of death for a time. Jesus began in a sense here in his circumcision to bear the wrath of God for sinners in a visible and experiential kind of way as he felt that pain even in his infancy. This is not one of those events that's commemorated much in carols and in other memories around Christmas time, we suppose for obvious reasons. But John Milton has in one of his great poems, and in that poem, in reflecting on the circumcision of Jesus, he writes this, alas, how soon our sin sore doth begin his infancy to seize. In that slice, Jesus began experientially to feel the bearing of our sin. And it was, yes, through that stripe that we are healed, but it began to seize him and it would mark the very course of his life that Jesus had come to suffer in the flesh for sinners. We need to meditate on the reality of Jesus' circumcision. We need to meditate on the reality of what it meant for the Savior as He experienced that loss even there in His infancy as a prelude to the things that would come. And you know that the notes of His life begin to fill that great symphony as we read the Gospels. And through the course of that, we begin to see ever more clearly, not only the meaning of the circumcision for Jesus, but the meaning of his circumcision for us. And we move then to contemplate, to meditate, to treasure up, to ponder the meaning of Jesus' circumcision for us. And to this end, I want you to cast your eye here to the second half of the verse where it says that at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus. It's not only a circumcision ceremony, but it's a naming ceremony. And of course we know that His name, as Matthew records for us, is given because He would save His people from their sins. That the name of Jesus means Jehovah saves. And this is indeed the purpose for which He has come. But notice too here that in Luke, there's a little bit more. Luke highlights the fact that this was the name that was given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. What does all this mean? Well, it means in part that God didn't see this boy being born into the world and decide, you know, I think I'll take that one and we'll do some really amazing things. We'll do some miracles and then we'll declare that he's the one who saved the world. No, no, God is showing that for the sake of his people, He has carefully planned their salvation, that He has looked down upon a sinful humanity, and this idea of salvation is His. He sent Jesus to be circumcised, not for the fun of it, not just because He could do it, but because He intended to save people like you and me from our sins. And so turn your page, your Bible back a page to the prophecy that was given or the command that was given in Luke chapter one when the angel comes to Mary and says in one verse 30, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there will be no end. He was to be named Jesus because he is going to be the son of the most high. He's going to sit on the throne of David. He's going to reign forever. The picture is becoming more clear in the giving of his name, that name of Jesus, because he would be the everlasting father. He's a son of Abraham, yes, but he is the true Abraham of his people. He's the son of David, but he's the ultimate king to sit on the throne. He's the one who predated David, and he's the one who today rules over David, and his name means the Lord saves. The Lord had promised salvation to Abraham. He had promised salvation to David. He's promised salvation to us, and dear friends, He has given us His Son, who was given that precious name, Jesus, at His circumcision. And how does it relate to His circumcision and His relationship to us? Well, as we've already said, this circumcision pointed to the salvation of God. It pointed to none other than Jesus Christ through the whole Old Testament. And it pointed to the fact that Jesus would bear the sin of his people, that it was the first wound by which we would be healed. And it is the way in which he began to become acquainted with our grief. He of course would end his ministry of humiliation at the cross and the tomb, but he would begin it here by right in his circumcision. And the gospel writer here wants this to be fixed in your mind. This scar was given to Jesus from the beginning as a reminder of what he would do for his people. And Colossians 2, verses 11 and 12 begins to draw the connection even more closely to us. What does this mean for us? Well, it means, as Colossians 2.11 says, that in him, that is in Jesus, also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead." When Jesus was circumcised, you were circumcised in him. And what Jesus did there, in being united to his people and symbolically becoming our circumcision. He became the fulfillment of that by fulfilling the circumcision that comes without hands. This is why circumcision is of no value anymore to the people of God as we're so clearly reminded in the book of Galatians. This is why we don't bring our babies at the eighth day to see their flesh cut. Why? They're brought to be washed now by the waters of baptism because the blood has already been shed. The work in history of the incarnate Savior coming to work that great circumcision of the heart that has worked without hands through his work on the cross has been completed. It wasn't all accomplished through the circumcision of Jesus. That is where the blood began to flow. And that blood flowed still further into an ever descending stream that would culminate in His work on the cross. And so His circumcision foreshadows the fullness of your sin being done away with. It's here in promise form. And listen to what Paul goes on to say. He reminds us that we don't need to be circumcised because we're circumcised in Jesus. We now receive baptism. But the next verse goes on to say, and you who were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh. He's looking at you. He's looking at me. And where were we? Dead. unclean, without hope, without life. What did God do for the likes of you and me? Well, he says, God made alive together, that's you and me, with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. You see the imagery that we have in the circumcision of Jesus. Here we are, dead in our trespasses and sin, the legal demands being brought against us. Satan can bring this charge, and he still brings it to us today, but before the life of Jesus, there was still a sense in which he could say to the Father, see, The sin hasn't been canceled. All that's happening is there are all these circumcisions, all these sacrifices of bulls and of goats, but it hasn't happened yet. They're still guilty. Their sin still hasn't been paid for and they keep dying. but in the life and in the death and the resurrection, all that was promised, that salvation promised to the saints of old and for the saints of the New Testament era is brought to its fulfillment and the blood begins to flow at Jesus' circumcision. The trickle begins and it ends in this torrent of Jesus on the cross, nails in his hands and in his feet and the circumcision being brought to fulfillment. as that spear pierces his side and his blood flows for sinners. When Jesus cried at his baptism, he had not yet learned to speak Hebrew or Aramaic, but we can well imagine what Jesus really meant in that cry. He was saying, It is started. It is started. His symbolic suffering for his people began there in his circumcision, and that blood trickled and began to flow, and it culminates at the cross, and you know what he said there at the cross. When he cried out, it was not, it is started, but it is finished. Jesus blood shed once for all so that people like you and me who are dead in our trespasses and sins. might have our sin blotted out, the debt canceled, taken away so that we might sit today as those who are free at the table of the Lord. And when the bread is broken today, you will not hear the cry of the Savior wincing in pain over your sin. This is given to us as a sacrament that we might partake of the Savior, but the work has already been done, and it is once accomplished for all time. And so, as we come together, we remember, we meditate on, we ponder the circumcision of our Lord, but we don't stop there. We follow that trail of blood straight to the cross, and we remember the scars that Jesus received there at Calvary. And you remember what happened on the eighth day after his resurrection, don't you? On the day of his resurrection, he appeared to his disciples, or at least most of them, but there was somebody that wasn't there. And you remember that it was Thomas, don't you? And Thomas said at that point, I'm not gonna believe unless I see those scars, unless I can put my fingers, my finger into the holes in his hand and my hand into his side. And on the eighth day, that next Lord's day, Jesus appeared again to his disciples with Thomas there in the midst. And Jesus reached out his hands to Thomas, and he told him, go ahead, you check out these scars. You put your fingers in the holes, your hand in my side. And you remember Thomas's response. He saw those scars, and in some amount of shame, but also with great joy and reverence. He bowed down and he said, my Lord and my God. And Jesus said, you believe because you've seen, but blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Jesus was circumcised and he never calls us to pay attention after this to that scar, but he does call us to pay attention to the scars in his hand, his feet, and his side. and though we are not able with our own eyes to see them because Jesus has risen from the grave and he has ascended to the right hand of the father, nevertheless, the great calling for us as we meditate on the circumcision of Jesus is to see the scars by faith in his hands and his feet and his side and be not unbelieving, but believe. and if you believe today and maybe you're looking on and you're saying, you know, I have been dead in my sin and I have not known the hope and the joy of salvation and I feel the condemnation of God upon me. Then what the Lord calls you to do even today is to look upon Jesus in the scriptures and to receive him by faith. to join the ranks of Thomas and everyone else who has ever believed upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and know for really, for truly, and for certain that his name is Jesus, because he not only saves his people from their sins, but if you are one of those people, you know that he is called Jesus because he has come to save you from your sins. Brothers, let us look upon Jesus, and let us be not unbelieving, but as we cast our eyes by faith upon him and his scars, let us believe. Lord, we thank you that you call us to faith. So build our faith, we pray. as we contemplate the birth of our Savior here in coming days, and as we not only contemplate His birth, but also His circumcision, and not only His circumcision, but ultimately His death and His triumph over the grave, and how we thank you that He has canceled the record of death that stood against us so that we might be free. So Lord, we pray that you would bless us as we partake now of your table by faith, and we pray this in Jesus' name, amen.