Dear Friends in Christ Jesus,
What creates a crowd? It could be a national holiday. Thousands gathered last Friday at Carmel Fest. It could be fire. This generally draws a crowd. A family reunion and a baptism create a crowd. The Exodus from Egypt three months prior created this crowd in the Desert of Sinai.
To put it another way, one cause created the crowd of likely around 2 million men, women, and children now camped at the foot of Mt. Sinai. They were loaded down with the spoils of Egypt, and safe from surrounding enemies. The singular cause for all of this was God’s love for them.
The same is true for us. We are redeemed, and the disciples of Jesus Christ, the crowd we call the holy Christian church, because of one cause that called us together. We are the Creation of God’s Love. God’s love brought judgment on our enemies. God’s love carried us on eagles’ wings. God’s love motivates us to obey fully his commandments.
Enemies come in all types and sizes. They try to separate us from God’s love but can’t. Last week in a wedding text, the Apostle Paul asked if “trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” could separate us from God’s love. The apostle answered his own question, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us…nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.”
The LORD had enabled this crowd of Israelites to conquer famine when Joseph brought Jacob’s family originally to Egypt. They grew and after Pharaoh enslaved them, God sent Ten Plagues and Pharaoh led God’s people go. God hid them from the Egyptians first, and then drowned the army along with their swords in the Red Sea after delivering his people on dry ground between walls of water.
Aaron and Hur held up Moses hands and they had defeated the Amalekites. God had given them manna from heaven and water from a rock. God had given them a government of a sort with wise leaders. In the coming 40 years, even though they would have to travel through the wilderness as judgment against sin, they would conquer nakedness because their clothes and shoes never wore out. The list could go on. God’s love brought judgment on their enemies in all those types and sizes. The Israelites were more than conquerors through him who loved them.
God’s love has brought judgment on our enemies. We have food and drink, clothing and shoes, house and home, good government, good weather, peace and order and all the rest we mean by “daily bread.” We are safe from peril and the sword. We are more than conquerors over sin because of Jesus’ righteousness. We have conquered death because Jesus died in our place on the cross, and rose again from death. We have conquered the devil’s power as Christ has rendered Satan powerless.
God’s love has created us not only as people but then as his people. God’s love applies to the First Articles of the Creed and Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer for he is our Maker and Preserver. God’s love applies to the Second Article for he is our Redeemer and Lord.
The LORD would take this nation out of all nations his treasured possession. He had carried them “on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” God had not delivered them so they could be independent. He brought them to himself at the foot of the mountain. Israel would be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” God made this two-way covenant of law not with the individual but with the whole nation.
That covenant was a fence God put around them to separate them from the other nations in preparation for the coming Savior. It was to train them in their spiritual immaturity much like a tutor trains a small child as he or she grows into an adult. Israel would break that covenant but God never intended it as the means of salvation. The individual had salvation only in the promise of the Savior God had given to Abraham about 450 years earlier.
God’s love had created Israel as a nation. Even when that nation broke the covenant and ceased to be God’s nation, God’s love for the individuals in that nation continued as he brought and preserved many in saving faith in God’s promise. God’s love continued to carry sinners on eagles’ wings, that is on powerful wings, to him.
We are the creation of God’s love as believers. God carries us on the powerful wings of his love to himself not only protecting us from our enemies, but through the means of grace by which the Holy Spirit sanctifies us, brings us out of unbelief into faith. The Holy Spirit preserves us in that faith to the fulfillment of our calling, eternal life in heaven at Gods right hand. The Third Article teaches us that work of the Holy Spirit. We are the creation of God’s love; created and preserved by the Father, redeemed by the Son, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
God’s people responded to this good news, “We will do everything the LORD has said.” God’s love motivates us to obey fully his commandments.
God’s people, united in heart and voice, promised to hold up their end of the covenant. This commitment to God’s bilateral law covenant was not the way the individual thought God would save him. The nation pledged obedience so that they would remain God’s people. God soon gave them more specifics about that obedience in the Ten Commandments, and in the Ceremonial and Civil Laws. When the believing Israelite was distressed by his failure to obey the Mosaic Law, he was to find comfort in the covenant with Abraham.
Like Israel, we are the creation of God’s love. God’s love motivates us to obey fully his commandments. Do we do this to be saved? No. When I break the old covenant of the law and sin, I trust God has saved us through the forgiveness of our sins in Christ.
An eagle soaring high above a desert landscape is a good picture of God’s care. We are a crowd of millions of men, women and children gathered around the gospel in Word and sacrament, the visible signs of our existence. We are here because of one cause. We are the creation of God’s love. Amen. <SDG>