December 30, 2024 

Today’s Reading: Exodus 13:1-3a, 11-15

Daily Lectionary: Isaiah 58:1-59:3, 14-21; Luke 1:26-38

“Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem” (Exodus 13:15).

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

Like any new parents, Mary and Joseph wanted to do everything just right for their newborn son. So, 40 days after Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem to offer the sacrifice demanded by the Law for consecrating a firstborn male to the Lord. Luke records this act of obedience as the Holy Family travels to the Temple to fulfill the requirements of the Law.

In Exodus 13, the LORD said to Moses, “Consecrate to me all the firstborn (and) Remember this day in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 13:1, 3). This command was given by God to remind His people that He had delivered them out of Egypt after the final plague in which the LORD killed all the firstborns in the land of Egypt. But this was more than a simple nod to the past.

In this requirement of consecration, God was also pointing His people forward to the Firstborn Son who would be consecrated for us. Jesus Christ, the Son of the Most High, went to the Temple in accordance with the Law of Moses to begin a journey of obedience that would lead to a cross. There on Calvary, in the ultimate sacrifice, our Lord received what we deserved, and by the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God, we have been consecrated – set apart – for the Lord.

Jesus Christ is the “firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15) and the “firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), and, as Paul reminds us, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:1-6). This firstborn son of Mary is also the Firstborn and only Son of God, who fulfilled the Law in our place and died our death to lead us out of our slavery to sin and our heavenly Promised Land.

In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.

Lord God, thank you for giving your only begotten Son to die for us so that through His obedience, we might live. 

-Rev. Thomas Eggold, pastor of Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, IN.

Audio Reflections Speaker: Pastor Jonathan Lackey is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church, Vine Grove, KY.

What makes a church “good?” Come join the fictional family as they test out eight different churches in their brand-new town and answer this question along the way. Will the Real Church Please Stand Up? by Matthew Richard, now available from Concordia Publishing House.