LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 2019, Page 270

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270

II. THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS­­—COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
• The fact of God’s anger itself indicates that they have
sinned, for He meets the righteous as a friend.

4. John Oswalt says in his commentary on this verse,
“Thus to wait for the Lord is to live the covenant life, to
commit the future into God’s hands by means of living a
daily life that shows that we know his ways of integrity,
honesty, faithfulness, simplicity, mercy, generosity, and
self-denial. The person who does not do these things
may be waiting for something, but he or she is not
waiting for the Lord.”6 What do you think he means? Do
you agree? How does our behavior reflect our trust in
the Lord?

• This sinful rebellion has persisted for a long time, it was
no brief memory lapse of God’s righteous ways.
• All have sinned, and this sin is defilement, “defilement
in the presence of the absolutely Clean One.”7
• They can no longer distinguish clean from filthy; in
fact, what they regard as righteousness is in reality
disgustingly unrighteous.
• Sin’s wages are manifested in them — they wither and
dry up like a leaf until the sheer force of their sins severs them completely from their source of life.

5. We have argued that this verse should be seen as the
way God acts. (Cf. Delitzsch’s statement above, that
God comes to meet us again and again as a friend.) In
what ways does God come to meet us now?

• “[N]o one is even concerned enough about the situation to cry out to God for help.”8
8. Oswalt suggests that one of the ways we experience
God hiding His face is when His Word seems to be
ineffective. Have you experienced this when trying to
share God’s Word with another person to comfort them,
encourage them, admonish them or warn them? How
was your response similar to or different from Isaiah’s?

• Israel won’t even wrestle with God anymore — won’t
take hold of Him, cling to Him for rescue and blessing,
hold on to His promises for dear life.
“You have hidden your face from us.”

6. There is a tension in this passage already that the
commentators seem to pass by on their way to the
bigger tension that the second half of this verse will
introduce. Isaiah seems to be pleading insistently with
God to act how we expect Him to act — to come and
deliver His people, to intervene and rescue them from
their enemies. At the same time, Isaiah admits that God
acts in unexpected ways. How well do you think you
know how God works? Do you expect Him to act in
unexpected ways in your life? If God acts in unexpected
ways, can you still trust Him?

Luther explains the Biblical idea of God “hiding His face”:
God’s face is God’s very presence either in the
Word, the promise and the sacraments, where God’s
thought is set before my conscience, or in deed,
when God removes evils, pestilence, and murder.
Summary: The face is called the design, or the appearance; the “face” of a house or the “face” of a tree.
Therefore when God hides His face, both Word and
deed, nothing remains but the face of the devil, of
death, and of sin. So he says here, You have hidden
Your face from us, that is, “We see no joy and peace.
We see nothing but death and sin.”9

Isaiah 64:8–9
The dilemma that verse 6 brought us to has no humanly instigated or humanly managed solution. Sinful humanity can
neither pacify God’s anger nor claim a right to His friendly
aid. The prophet and the people for whom he speaks are left
with nowhere to turn, except to God.

John N. Oswalt, The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40–66, The New International
Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 623–624.

6

“Even in times of darkness and the hiding of Your
face, You will act no differently. Your promises are
there, and they stand, and you remain our Father.”11

If joyfully doing righteousness is the key to meeting
God and having him work on our behalf, but we are
fundamentally unable to do righteousness until God
makes it possible, we are in a vicious circle. We cannot do righteousness until God enables us, but God
cannot work in our lives until we do righteousness.10

Isaiah 64:5b–7

7

Oswalt, 40–66, 625.

8

Oswalt, 40–66, 626.

9

AE 17:370–371.

10

Although the “forever” of “remember not iniquity forever”
leaves us looking to the future and hoping against hope that
something might break this vicious circle of sinful rebellion,
for the moment we rest here with Isaiah and Israel. All that
the sinner can do, in the end, is simply to place himself before
God and say, “Look! Your child,” and wait for Him to act.

Oswalt, 40–66, 624.

Justifying Christmas — Participant’s Guide |

11

5

12. Are we confident that God is our Father, too? How do
we know that? (John 20:17 might provide help with
this one.)

We are beginning our study with 1:18, but that should not
be taken to mean that verses 1–17 are unimportant. Raymond Brown provided a very valuable introduction to these
verses in his little book A Coming Christ in Advent:
If a Christian today were asked to tell someone who
knows nothing about Christianity the basic story of
Jesus Christ, where would he or she be likely to begin?
I am willing to wager that not one in ten thousand
would begin where the author of the Gospel that the
church puts first begins — where the first line of the
first page of the New Testament begins — with the
majestic assurance: This is “the story of the beginning/
the origin/the genesis of Jesus Christ.” Indeed, we
might approximate: “the story of the advent of Jesus
Christ.” For Matthew the origin of Jesus Christ starts
with Abraham begetting Isaac! In other words the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, of the kings of Judah and
of other Israelites is the opening stage of the story of
Jesus Christ. That such an Old Testament component
to the Jesus story would not occur to most Christians
today is a sad commentary on how far we have moved
from our ancestors’ understanding of the good news.
Matthew’s list of people who are an integral part of the
origin of Jesus Christ contains some of the most significant names in the biblical account of God’s dealing
with His people Israel, and I for one wish strongly
that at least once a year their names were allowed to
resound in the Christian church on a Sunday when all
the worshiping New Testament people of God were
there to hear.15

THAT HOLY THING.
They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes, and lift them high:
Thou cam’st a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
O son of man, to right my lot
Nought but thy presence can avail;
Yet on the road thy wheels are not,
Nor on the sea thy sail!
My fancied ways why shouldst thou heed?
Thou com’st down thine own secret stair:
Com’st down to answer all my need,
Yea, every bygone prayer!

10.What have we learned about God in this passage? Can
we confess with Isaiah that “no eye has seen a God besides” our God, the God who makes Himself known to
us in Christ Jesus (cf. 64:4)? How is our knowledge of
God’s ways even better than Isaiah’s knowledge was?
(cf. Luke 10:23–24; John 14:8–11; Heb. 1:1–2)

12

AE 17:372.

Focus Question: Matt. 1:18–20
1. Why does Joseph feel that he should divorce Mary?
Read verse 18 again carefully. How much does Joseph
know at this point?

The majority view: Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant.
The “other” view: Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant
through the working of the Holy Spirit.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of these two different readings of the text?
2. Why is any of this material important for Matthew?
Why does it need to be included in his narrative at all?

3. What if Mary had become pregnant before the
engagement?

4. What if Mary had become pregnant after the wedding?

1. Why does Joseph feel that he should divorce Mary?

The theme of waiting in hopeful expectation and with
patient faith comes through clearly in Isaiah’s words, but
this may not have otherwise felt very much like an Advent
Bible study. The opening words of our text were “borrowed”
by Friedrich von Spee for the opening words of his hymn
“O Savior, Rend the Heavens Wide” (LSB 355, LW 32). Fred
Precht details the connections with our passage and others:

2. What is Matthew telling us about Joseph when he refers
to him as “just/righteous”?

5. Why should Joseph’s internal deliberations even be
recorded for us?

3. Why is it important that Joseph be involved in naming
the Child?

13
Fred L. Precht, Lutheran Worship: Hymnal Companion (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing House, 1992), 40.

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2019 Convention Workbook

9. What have we learned about ourselves in this passage?
Most of us here would probably say we have known
for a long time that we are sinful, but, in light of this
passage, we should be asking ourselves why we
still feel sometimes that we know better than God
does. What do our “Oh, if only You would have …”
complaints say about understanding that we are the
ones who need justifying — not God? Do we solve the
“justification dilemma” by slipping into thinking, “I can
understand why God chose me to be His own; I know
that when He meets me it will be as a friend”? How
often do we thank God for being the One who justifies
us but then refuse to trust Him when He doesn’t act as
we expect Him to?

In this session, we will focus on three questions:

Closing Thought

A somewhat unique characteristic of this Advent
hymn is its direct reference to numerous bold images, or metaphors, from Holy Scripture. Its theme
reflects the ancient Introit for the Fourth Sunday in
Advent with its dramatic call: “You heavens above,

AE 17:371.

Read Matt. 1:18–25.

Perhaps, though, in light of our devotion and what we’ve
learned from it, we should always pair this hymn with the
following poem from George MacDonald:14
13. What have we learned about justification by grace
through faith in this passage? The passage begins by
raising the question of whether or not we can put our
faith in this God — He hasn’t always acted to save His
people the way His people expected Him to. And yet,
Isaiah, like us, cannot go far without admitting that
there is no other God, no one else who acts to save.
The description of a sinful condition that we share with
God’s people of Isaiah’s day leaves no doubt that, if
there is to be a justification, a setting right of things,
it can only be by grace. Finally, we place ourselves
before God our Father and Maker/Remaker in simple,
childlike faith: “Look, God, Your children!”

Our ways of talking together about justification by grace
through faith may too often risk making it seem about as significant as getting a rebate check in the mail or paying a traffic ticket online. We don’t begin to really understand and care
about justification until we begin to feel the crushing weight
of our own sinfulness. Otherwise, as Luther says, “we are only
talking about the letters without the experience.”12 The more
truly and fully we know God and the more truly and fully we
know ourselves, the more powerfully do we feel the dilemma
that this passage lays before our hearts. And keep in mind,
Isaiah is not talking about the fate of the nations, not raising
the question of whether or not the heathen can ever be found
right with God — no, he is speaking of God’s chosen, the
nation He called into being and bound to Himself with His
covenant of steadfast love. Justification’s dilemma is felt more
powerfully by those who know that they are God’s people (cf.
Rom. 7), so it is “meet, right and salutary” that we, God’s people today, should return again and again to these questions.

6 | Justifying Christmas — Participant’s Guide

Session 2: Matt. 1:18–25

[rain] down righteousness; let the clouds shower it
down. Let the earth open wide, let salvation spring
up” (Is. 45:8). Closely associated with this are “Oh,
that you would rend the heavens and come down”
(Is. 64:1) and “A shoot will come up from the stump
of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit”
(Is. 11:1). Not to be overlooked are the references to
Christ as the sun (more direct in the German) —
“His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance”
(Rev. 1:16b)—and as the “bright Morning Star” (Rev.
22:16b), all pointing directly to him as the Redeemer,
whose coming is entreated with deep fervor.13

11. Is the knowledge that God acts in unexpected ways
comforting or disturbing? Why? What has been the
most surprising way in which God has ever acted?
(Phil. 2:5–11)

Concluding Discussion

As Luther expresses it,

John Oswalt points out the dilemma we find ourselves
facing:

Isaiah may be able to say that God must come and deliver
them because of His character, but Isaiah knows that he
cannot say God must deliver them because of their character. In a passage that reminds us of Romans 3, we see the
breadth and depth of Israel’s sin:

7. The image that Isaiah uses in verse 6 is both
embarrassing and offensive. It is not the sort of thing
that Christians talk about on Sunday morning — or ever.
And yet, the metaphor is extremely well chosen. In a
way, the image of the menstrual cloth is even more
forceful than that of the corpse. The corpse may
illustrate the loss of life and the rotting of the body
that follows, but the menstrual cloth symbolizes an
opportunity for new life that will never be realized. It
is the chance for life now turned to waste. What other
images does the Bible use for man’s complete inability
to rescue himself from his own sinful condition?
See Psalm 38 for another cluster of images.

7

Raymond E. Brown, A Coming Christ in Advent (Collegeville, Minnesota:
Liturgical Press, 1988), 18.
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It is this intricately interwoven situation that allows Mary to
give birth to her child in safety, the true story of the child’s
origin to be told and Joseph to assume the role of legal
father/guardian. Truly, this is a wonder, and it should make