Sermon notes  01-09-22                    Making Claims

Isaiah 43:1-4a But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
² When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
³ For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
⁴ Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you.” (ESV)

 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22  ¹⁵ As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, ¹⁶ John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷ His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” ²¹ Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, ²² and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”(ESV)

 I want to talk with you this morning about making claims.  I wonder what comes to mind for you when you think about making a claim?  Maybe you think about making an insurance claim; your car was damaged in an accident so you make (or file) a claim with your insurance company to get them to repair your car.

That’s one definition of a claim: to demand something that is due or owed, something that is your right.  Your insurance company owes you because you have a policy with them and you have paid your premiums, so you claim what you are entitled to, what is owed to you.

Or maybe when you think about making claims, you think about making a statement of truth or fact.  I might make the claim that the temperature outside my house this morning stayed above freezing, or the sun rose at 7:17.

Or I might claim something about myself, something I have accomplished, or something about my identity.  I might claim to be a runner (that’s hard to prove lately) or I might claim to be from the Midwest (even though I am now proudly a Southerner).  That is another definition of a claim: to state or maintain something as a fact.

The passages of Scripture that Vance read for us have to do with making claims.  They describe persons making claims of identity, claims that identify them with other persons.  They contain claims that are critically important to each of us as we claim our identity as Christians.

Today is the Sunday on the church calendar in which we commemorate the baptism of our Lord, when Jesus submitted to being baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.  This is an event that is described in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and is referred to in the Gospel of John.  We might remember, having just been through the Christmas season, that the story of the birth of Jesus is found in only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, yet all four Gospel writers deemed it important to bear witness to the baptism of Jesus.  So we should ask, why is the Baptism of our Lord such an important story?  The answer is, because of the claims that are made in the story, and what those claims mean to us.

Let’s go back to our passage from Luke’s Gospel and see if we can find the claims are made in it.  You might be thinking, ‘I don’t remember anybody making a claim in this story.’  And it is true that we won’t find anyone saying explicitly, “I claim to be this” or “I claim to have done that” in this passage.  We have to read between the lines somewhat to find the claims in this story.  In fact, we have to go back a few verses and ask some questions of the Scriptures to find one of the most important claims in this story.  It also happens to be one of the most important claims in the story of our salvation.

Earlier in the third chapter of Luke’s Gospel, in verse three, Luke tells us that John the Baptist came on the scene, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  We know that Jesus was sinless, so he did not need repentance or forgiveness of sins; yet we know that John baptized Jesus.  The question is, why?  And the answer is that Jesus submitted to the baptism of John in order to identify with sinful humans.  Jesus had to claim our sins for himself, so that he could pay the penalty for our sins himself.  By submitting to John’s baptism, Jesus claimed identity with us sinful humans; he identified with our sins so that he could redeem us.  If Jesus had not claimed our sins for himself, there would be no salvation for us.

But that leads to another question, and another claim: how is it that Jesus was able to take our sins on himself?  How could one man pay for the sins of all humans?  And the answer is, because of a claim made in this passage at the very moment of Jesus’ baptism.  Luke tells us that when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, ²² and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”  These words tell us that this is no ordinary man who John had baptized; this is none other than the Son of God.

At our Lord’s baptism, God claimed Jesus as his beloved Son.  God made the claim by his own voice to be Father of the Son with whom he was well pleased.  God indicated by this claim that, because Jesus is his very Son, God would accept the sacrifice that Jesus would make for the redemption of our sins.  And because of the redemption God provided for us through his Son, we then are able to make claims as redeemed persons who have the Lord as our Savior.

Many of the claims that we can make are beautifully described in the passage Vance read to us from Isaiah 43.  Listen again to some of the important claims that we can make as those who are redeemed by God:

¹“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
Friends, as persons redeemed by God, we can claim that we need never fear what we will happen to us; in fact, we are commanded not to fear.  We can make the claim that we belong to God, who claims us as his own, saying “You are mine.”  God knows who we are, what our names are, and what will happen to us.  We know that our circumstances are not unknown to God.

² When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
We may not like part of this claim.  The word of the Lord through the prophet Isaiah uses the word when, not if (Whenyou pass through the waters and walk through fire).  This tells us, brothers and sisters, that we will have trials and tribulations in life.  Like it or not, that is a claim we must make, that we will not get through this life, or any significant stretch of time in this life, without troubles and trials.

The Bible speaks of these troubles and trials using the metaphorical language of passing through waters and rivers and walking through fire.  Those waters and rivers and fires might be for us something like the loss of employment or another type of financial setback; maybe we will experience conflict and turmoil in a close family or work relationship, maybe we will receive a potentially life-threatening medical diagnosis, maybe the well-being of a family member will keep us in a constant state of worry, maybe we will have legal troubles, maybe someone close to us will suffer, maybe we will grieve the loss of a loved one.  These are just a few examples of the waters and rivers and fires that we will pass through on this journey of life.

But here is the promise and the absolutely essential claim we can make as those redeemed by the Lord: when those things happen to us, God will be with us (v.2).

God promises that our trials and troubles and tribulations will not destroy us, they will not consume our souls.  God will see us through those things.

We may wonder why is it that the Lord makes these promises to us?  He spells it out in verse 4 in what I think are some of the most beautiful words in all of Scripture.  He does all of these things for us …

… because (He says) you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you.

Sisters and brothers, if you don’t remember any other claim that you can make, remember to make the claim that in God’s eyes, you … every single one of you… are precious and honored, and deeply loved.

Today, when we are still very early in this new year, we will make claims, by remembering: remembering God’s promises, remembering who we are and whose we are.  First, we will remember our baptisms.  In baptism we are claimed for Christ, and we claim him for ourselves.  We remember that in our baptisms we were marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit and identified as belonging to Christ; our identity is in him.

And then we will receive Holy Communion.  Communion is also a sacrament of remembering.  We remember Christ’s life, death and resurrection that he experienced for us in order to redeem us and make us one with him.

Thanks be to God for claiming us and redeeming us, because he considers us precious and honored and beloved.

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen.