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Disclaimer: This is a transcript of Pastor Fenker’s sermon. It was preached from an outline, and the transcript taken automatically from the audio. Please forgive any typographical or formatting errors.

᛭ INI ᛭

We commemorate and remember and celebrate the blessed Virgin Mary, the festival of the Blessed Virgin Mary, mother of our Lord, not because of her. But because of what God did through her, and for her, and for you too, Taking her up as an instrument. In the order of salvation, the plan of salvation. 


When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman. As Lutherans, we remember her as our blessed lady holding to what the scriptures say, or maybe deduced from God’s word alone. We do not hold to marry as some sort of intercessor for us or hold to her being somehow sinless in either who she is or what she did, or hold to her bodily assumption into heaven, or whatever other doctrines there may be about her. 


Most of whom were finally fashioned for her, according to traditions, culminating in the 1800s, 1900s. But in Mary, mother of our Lord, remembering her and what we have for us today in the scriptures, We see 3 things come together. Three truths that also loosely tie to the 3 articles of the Apostles’ Creed. 


1. God keeps his promises.
2. Christ is, in fact, God of God.
3. And finally, We thus then defend the life of the pre-born.

First, God keeps his promises.

This is what Mary rejoices about, that all of these things that God has done as she sings in her, what we call the magnificent, the song of Mary, My soul magnifies. “As he spoke to our fathers. To Abraham and to his seed forever.”


That when God makes a promise, he keeps it. The seers in old time chanted of with one accord, the prophets promised in their faithful word under the direction and moving of the Holy Spirit. God made a promise, and he kept it. 


Made 1st in the Garden of Eden. I will put enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed, he shall crush your head, and you shall strike his heel. The promise was renewed. 


Isaiah chapter 7, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. And they shall call his name, Emmanuel. Whenever the Lord makes a promise, he keeps it. 


He is faithful to his own word. Even Zechariah and Elizabeth. They had John. 


Our reading today had Mary visiting Elizabeth and Elizabeth is pregnant with John according to the Lord’s word and promise. And the Lord’s word and promise is true not only for what happened with Mary, for what happened with Zechariah and Elizabeth, but his word is true, his promises are true for you too.

He saves the lowly. He brings the low and despised sinners into his kingdom. He forgives their sins. He dies for your sins. 
And so you are saved. Save by faith. We can go to the bank With his promises. We don’t have to doubt whether they’re true. Christ was born of the virgin as promised. He died, According to God’s promise. He was raised on the 3rd day for your justification according to the promise. 


Because Christ was born of the virgin, because he died on the cross, because his tomb was empty, 3 days later, all his promises are true. He’s kept them, and he will keep them. You are now a son, an heir, given the gift of the Holy Spirit in holy baptism that promise is true for you. 


His word of promise is true. Here at his table. This is my body, given for you. 


This is my blood shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins. And the Lord speaks a promise. It comes true. 


But even more than that, not just a true promise, But who, in truth, Christ is?

Christ is in fact, God of God.

Paul lets us know that all things have progressed in time as God ordained it, the creation of mankind. that Eve was fashioned from Adam, and now in the completion of all things, man now comes forth from woman. 


So also Mary. Mary came forth according to the word of God. The eternal word of God, Christ himself. He is her creator, and then in the course of time, the word of God, the eternal Son came forth from her womb. Christ is God of God. “The mother of my Lord.” Elizabeth cries out.

Mary is, In fact, the mother of God. She is the god bearer, That in her womb was the eternal God. as the hymn savior of the nations come, puts it. It is that then step forth the Lord of all from his pure and kingly hall. a reference to the womb of the Virgin. Pure and holy, not because she was pure and holy in herself, But because the power of the Most High overshadowed her. The Holy Spirit came upon her. And that was conceived in her womb is then holy the Son of God.

Her title, as mother of our Lord, or mother of God, or the God bearer, is not one of authority. But a confession. of who was actually born for us. That the Son of God, took on human flesh in order to save us. As Paul says to Timothy, great indeed is the mystery of godliness. He was manifest in the flesh. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. He became man. A statement worthy of getting down on one knee indeed.

And this means that the flesh and blood that died for you, the one that lived under the law, to redeem those under the law, was the flesh and blood of God. For you. God shed his blood for you. God gives his body and his blood for you to eat and to drink, that you too might be holy, that you might become one flesh, one body with him, even as we are one body united together in the body of Christ.

And finally, we come to The final point here, which is we defend then the life of the pre-born. 


This would be the 1st article. The last shall be first. We defend the pre-born. We rejoice in children, even children in their mother’s womb. Not only. Because the scriptures reveal that God knits us together in our mother’s womb, as Psalm 139 has it, not only because the 5th commandment says, you shall not murder, regardless of the age of that person. But because of the Son of God. Mary is the mother of our Lord. As Elizabeth cries out. “Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”

Christ is hidden in our neighbor. Whatever you do to the least of these, you did it unto me. Christ says in Matthew chapter 25. And so it is. For the children in the womb. 


In every single ultrasound, we see an echo. of Christ’s own face. Oh, that birth forever blessed, when the virgin full of grace, by the Holy Ghost conceiving bore the savior of our race, and the babe, the world’s redeemer, 1st revealed his sacred face. evermore and evermore. Mary’s day took her giving birth to Christ to see his face. 
But if Christ had come in our day. We could have seen his sacred preborn face. And because of him, because of who he is, because of what he came to do for us and for all people, redeeming all mankind from 2 cells onward. We then rejoice to take care of those who are in the same position that our Lord was for us.

These are the 3 things. That Mary, mother of our Lord, draw together for us, putting before us that Christ himself was pre-born. And so we rejoice to defend them, even as we defend our Lord. Because he is, in fact, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, and was made man. All according to God’s promises. He made them, kept them. Christ conceived, Christ born, Christ died, Christ raised, all for you and for all. You, baptized, you, forgiven, you, his body and blood for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.

So we rejoice this day that we celebrate the blessed Virgin Mary. Not rejoicing, for her, for rejoicing to her, but rejoicing with her, rejoicing over what God has done for her, but most importantly, what God has done through her, the great salvation he worked for you and for all. 


᛭ INI ᛭