For the 3rd Sunday in Advent on December 16, 2007, the 3 assigned readings from Year A are Isaiah 35:1-10 (Highway of Holiness); James 5:7-11 (Patience) and Matthew 11:2-15 (Baptist asks Jesus). The selection chosen to preach about is Matthew 11:6, “And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”

There is a knock at the front door. You are given an envelope. When you open it you find a Christmas present of a $500.00 check from your mother. Immediately you go to the phone, call her and say that you were greatly offended by such a gift. Sounds ridiculous, does it not? Yet that is what the world does to God as they are offended at the gift of Jesus Christ. Why?

The answer is clear to those who have eyes to see as the distinctions between Law and Gospel are utilized. While the gift of money from your mother is an analogy that makes those who reject the gifts of Jesus ridiculous, the following analogy helps us to understand why people take offense.

You are out with your best friend, Bob. You tell him that you have a gift for him. He excitedly asks what it is. You take out of your pocket a breath mint and hand it to him. Does he react with, “Thank-you, thank-you. I forget mine and this is a life-saver because I have such bad breath.” I think not.

Instead, Bob will have an attitude somewhere between upset and incensed at such a gift. Why? Because the gift of freshening up your breath is given with the assumption that his breath is so bad that he needs it. Of course, most people can’t smell their own breath, so Bob will not be as happy with the gift as you were in giving it.

God is not giving us a breath mint but a life-giving gift of the forgiveness of sins. Behind the gift, though, is the assumption that we are poor, miserable sinners deserving nothing but temporal and eternal punishment. Some of the Pharisees were so incensed at the message of the carpenter from Nazareth that they crucified Him.

The message from Jesus that “Blessed is he who is not offended because of Me” is misread if one imagines that by not being offended that somehow we are really going to be blessed. No, the point is that the blessing is having received the attitude from the Holy Spirit in not being offended when being told we have bad eternal breath.

The only apologetic (defense) of the faith is the one Jesus gave the disciples of John. “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk” and so forth. By quoting from Isaiah 35:5-6, Jesus affirms that He and He alone fulfills the prophecies of the Old Testament which would point to the One Who has come to take away the bad breath of the world. Only the believer is not offended in recognizing not only the need for salvation but also the precious gifts of salvation given to those who in no way deserve it as they are saved by grace through faith on account of Jesus Christ.