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Wednesday, January 1, 2025

The Great Exchange

[This is my Faith Post for January 2025.] 

This post is adapted from my Christmas Eve Sermon from 2024.

The year was 1867.  The Russian Empire was deciding what to do with the great Territory of Alaska.  The land was thought to be mostly barren and uninhabitable.  There was little interest in settling it further and so they looked to sell it off.  Enter US Secretary of State William Seward.  He began negotiations with the Russian diplomat and eventually a treaty was signed for the sale of Alaska to the United States. It was sold for the sum of $7.2 million which amounted to about $0.02 per acre. Many in America thought the purchase to be useless and a fool’s bargain, it was called by some Seward’s Folly.

We know today, what a great trade this turned out to be.  The 1896 Klondike Gold Rush solidified that mindset.  Alaska was found to be full of precious natural resources and an unmatched natural beauty that we enjoy today in the great State of Alaska.  Some trades, some exchanges really do seem foolish at first. And some turn out pretty bad.  But other exchanges turn out to be for the good of all mankind.

If you want to hear an example of the worst kind of exchange possible, undoubtedly the worst in all of history then you would need to turn your attention to the beginning.  You would turn to Genesis 3. Our first parents are there in the Garden of Eden.  They living in literal paradise.  They dwell in perfect harmony with one another and with their Maker and Creator.  They have everything they need.  There is no want, there is no lack, there is no suffering, nor sin, nor death.  The live in the image of God and you could certainly make the case “life couldn’t possibly be better.”  

Then the temptation of the serpent comes to them.  Eve hears the lying words of the serpent at the Tree in the midst of the Garden.  The serpent entices them with the idea “they could be like God if they eat of this tree!”  The serpent begins to convince them that maybe there is something they don’t have.  Maybe they don’t have it all.  Maybe they need to take this for themselves.  And so our first parents exact the worst exchange in history.  They give up perfect joy and peace for a lie.  And the world has not been the same since.

While it is easy to point the finger back at our first parents for all the problems in the world ever since, we would be remiss if we thought we weren't complicit in some of it. In fact, we are willing participants in it.  We daily make the same bad exchange as Adam and Eve.  We daily trade away obedience to God and in its place take on sin and its consequences.  We trade time in the Word for time on a Smartphone.  We trade time with God in His house for worship for time indulging in this world.  We trade away kindness and love for anger and resentment.  We truly do make the worst of trades.  The temptation of unbelief even has many trading away God’s grace and eternal life for eternal condemnation and separation from God.  Its unfathomable.

All of this ought to give God great cause to abandon His people.  We are in so many ways getting precisely what we deserve.  We bring such hardships on ourselves.  We bear the consequences for our actions.  Who would love such disobedience creatures?  

That’s where Jesus comes in.  That’s where the joy of Christmas comes in.  Christmas joy isn’t about all of the decorations we put up in our homes.  Christmas joy isn’t about going through the motions of another season and all the traditions we choose to keep.  Christmas joy starts with Jesus and the moment He began to make the greatest exchange in human history.  We’ve already heard about the worst exchange.  Now lets hear about the greatest.

When the time was right, God remembered the promise He had made to Adam and Eve and to all their children.  He sent forth His Son, born of Mary, born in human flesh.  The Word of God made flesh and now dwelling among us.  The Holy God, our Creator and Maker, now chosen to be born in poverty in a manger, a feeding trough of animals.  

God did all of this out of necessity.  The perfect world He first created was now almost beyond recognition.  Greed and corruption, jealousy and hate, self-centeredness had all taken center stage.  God loves His children too much to not be with them and come to save them. He couldn’t do nothing. Thus, Christmas.  This Child of Mary, this Babe of Bethlehem, God and man together in Christ, in word and deed, through preaching and miracles, this Child, this Christ, this Savior brought the kingdom of God to this fallen earth.

Where Adam and Eve had traded perfect joy for a lie and sin, Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, whose birth we celebrate this night, traded His perfect self, His sinless life for our freedom, for our redemption, for life eternal for us all.  That is the greatest exchange ever.  Jesus trades His life for our life.  Jesus trades the punishment of hell, which we have deserved, for the splendor and majesty of eternal life in heaven.  Jesus, born of Mary, crucified and risen for you means that He has truly restored all that was lost and thrown away with sin.  Jesus has made right all the wrongs.  

It might not seem like it yet, and that’s okay.  So long as we are in this fallen world we will only get glimpses of what the Lord’s kingdom truly looks like.  We’ll see just a bit of all that Jesus has accomplished.  But the day is coming, one day, that great day of the Lord, when we will see it.  We will see the day when all is restored, and it will be beyond our imagination. Indeed, by the grace of God, it will be even better than what Adam and Eve saw in Eden.   Christmas gets that restoration started.  Christmas continues all the fulfillment of God’s promises in Christ.  And soon, soon enough, we’ll get to see all the rest of it with our own two eyes.  To God be the glory, and Merry Christmas. 

To God be the glory.

Mark Witte is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church.
You can contact him at pastorwitte@gmail.com




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