Dennis Tuuri

The legally blind guy is making sure we won’t burn up today. Wow. Oh, what a wonderful season of joy and singing and mirth and contemplation. I kind of agree with Andy Williams. If Elder Wilson can go way back in time to Judy Collins, the night of the Christmas program, I can go back even further to Andy Williams. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Our sermon text today will be on Luke chapter 2.

If these things get a little low, somebody tell me. It’s a picture of us rushing the season. Of course, we went from three candles to five in a week. You’re really supposed to go to four on the fourth Sunday in Advent and then the fifth one on Christmas Eve service. But that’s all right. This is really for most of us the time it will last. Gather together as a church to celebrate the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And the center candle, the Christ candle is the picture of his presence with us. So that’s okay. So we’re going to read from Luke chapter 2 today beginning at verse 1 and I’m going to read the first 20 verses of Luke chapter 2 and I’ll be talking on baby Jesus today. So please stand as we read from Luke chapter 2.

Came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place when Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered.

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them. And they were grievously and greatly afraid.

Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. This will be the sign to you. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” So it was when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said one to the other, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass which the Lord has made known to us.

And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger. Now when they had seen him, they made widely known the saying which was told them concerning this child. And all those who heard it marveled at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told them.

Let’s pray. Father, we do give you thanks once more for your word and we pray, Father, that your spirit would light our hearts aflame with thoughts of the Lord Jesus Christ and his incarnation. Thank you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for revealing yourself in what we celebrate this time of year. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

A frightful, joyous time of year. We’re so familiar with that Christmas story, of course, that it’s hard to read it in the New King James Version without slipping into King James, at least for those of us who are a little older and have been reading that account, that historical account, that wonderful picture of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ year after year after year.

There’s really not much that can be said to bring new knowledge or content to you about this story. I want to make a few emphases though that may be a little bit not quite what you would always think of. I want to think of the off note, the other shoe falling in these accounts. I want to talk, in a little bit after an introduction of some length, about Caesar serving Jesus Christ the baby.

And then I want to talk about the angels proclaiming. And then I want to talk about the shepherds returning. Caesar serving, the angels proclaiming, the shepherds returning. And in each one of those three distinct paragraphs of this account, we’ll sort of go with the not the normal emphasis, although we’ll touch on that as well.

I think that this story is of tremendous importance, this historical account of the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It’s interesting that I thought on the way in this morning and shared with my Sunday school class that, you know, if we had to look at a climactic point for the revelation of God and the turning point of all human history, you know, frequently we would think of that as Easter and that’s appropriate and proper. The death of Christ on the cross, the resurrection and ascension brings to completion the advent of Christ and its purposes for us.

But in the gospel accounts, there are certainly angels that accompany both events. Both events are tied together. You know, the church has told us historically since the second century that Jesus was born in a cave, that this stall or manger, this place for animals, was actually kept in a cave in the side of the hill there in Bethlehem. There’s no reason to doubt that. Every reason to believe it. And so we have Jesus in a cave at the beginning of his life and a cave at the end of his life and we have angels attending his birth and we have angels attending his resurrection as we’ve talked about from the gospel of John.

But you know, if we compare these, certainly these are the two great hinge points of the world. We’ll see in the text today again that these two great feasts of the calendrical year of the church—Christmas and Easter, a fixed feast and a movable feast—are certainly the bookends of the advent of Christ and the turning point of history. But here in this text is the one in which the angels cannot restrain themselves at some point and all of a sudden burst out singing glory to God.

We don’t have that at the resurrection, at least here in terms of an earthly manifestation. So this is kind of a climactic point. The turning point of history, I suppose we could say from this perspective, is this what we’re looking at tonight—today rather—this nighttime scene we see in Bethlehem. The birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a very significant text.

And for reasons that are rather obvious to us and certainly in terms of our lives, the Christmas story has been told over and over and over again and has certainly influenced who we are.

I mentioned that at the Christmas Eve program—or the Christmas program rather—last Friday night which was a joy and a delight and I was reading G.K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man, the section in it called “God in the Cave” and Chesterton talks about you know this scene that we’re looking at in Luke chapter 2 and talks about its endless repetition. Thousands upon thousands of times it’s been played out. It was again last Friday night at this church. It’s read in our homes at this season certainly and other seasons, other times in the year as well. It’s preached on, you know, for 2,000 years. This text has been preached on and played out and enacted probably millions of times, at least hundreds of thousands, millions of times in all likelihood. And the basic themes of it, of course, the advent of Christ, never become platitudes, no matter how often they’re spoken of.

The truths are always truths that bring us wonder and delight. I was thinking at the Christmas program what a wonder and delight it is. I always like those little kids right in the Christmas play. And I think that in our story today from Luke chapter 2 at Jesus coming as a baby. We kind of understand why that is the significance of that. We have this tremendous juxtaposition certainly in our text beginning with Augustus Caesar and then we have he who we know is the true emperor of the world, Jesus, coming and there’s this great contrast with the power authority glory and honor and demands of servitude and taxation that Augustus brings.

And then we’ve got a little infant child. You know, a baby, a baby that, you know, messed his diapers and cried. A baby that had to be washed after he was born. No doubt. Had to be cleaned up. A baby that would, you know, do things that were baby-like. And so we have this tremendous difference, this contrast, but even greater than that, of course, is the things that are brought together in our minds that this is not a little baby only.

This is God incarnate, God in the flesh. This is the second person of the Trinity putting on human flesh. Not laying aside his godhead at all. We believe as Christians that this is God incarnate, the second person of the Trinity has become incarnate in human flesh. And so we have this tremendous juxtaposition of the eternal and omnipresent God now being present in the context of this child in this cave, in a manger.

This impotent child who has all omnipotence, he who created the animals, of course, can’t even reach up his hand to get near to the head of the cattle that may have come into the place where he was to touch them. Even they’re much bigger than him and looming over him. This is a story that’s been told over and over again. It’s a story that kind of marks us out as who we are in a sense.

Chesterton talks about this in this article that I was mentioning before. He talks about the differences that have been brought about as a result of Christians hearing the Christmas story over and over and over in the context of their lives. Let me read a little quote from Chesterton’s work here. He says,

“This is exactly why there really is a difference between being brought up as a Christian and being brought up as a Jew or as a Muslim or as an atheist. The difference is that every Catholic child has learned from pictures and every Protestant child from stories the incredible combination of contrasted ideas as one of the very first impressions on his mind. It is not merely a theological difference. It is a psychological difference which can outlast any theologies. It really is, as that sort of scientist loves to say about anything, incurable—the effect he’s saying that this has on the human psyche being brought up in this context.

Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether he likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other. The idea of a baby and the idea of an unknown strength that sustains the stars themselves. His instincts and imagination can still connect them. Even his reason, even while his reason no longer sees the need of the connection.

For him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby, some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God. His conception of God will have changed simply from this story, his gospel narrative that we read in Luke chapter 2 being told him as he’s growing up over and over again. The two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinese, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It’s no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It’s been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians. Because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones. In other words, the combination of ideas has emphatically—in the much-disputed phrase—altered human nature.”

Well, I think that’s true. I think that’s the power of the word of God. And it is the power of the particular revelation that word of God brings to us in Luke 2, verses 1 to 20. There is something absolutely astonishing and amazing going on in this text that forever changes the human psyche. Even when a person departs from the faith, as Chesterton said, Christmas, as he’s ever known a real Christian Christmas and a celebration of what we’re talking about today, will always evoke certain emotions.

The world has been unalterably changed simply through the retelling of the gospel narrative over and over and over that God, the creator of all things, the creator of the world, now inhabits the world. Chesterton uses the image that says that God who has been thought of at the circumference of the created order now goes to the very center of the created order in this cave in the middle of the earth by way of imagery.

Right now we have a little—you think of this huge God at the circumference of the world and the circumference of creation, but now he becomes incarnate in a very specific small point at the center of the world. The center of the world is where the medievals or the earlier people thought that’s where hell was. But what we have at the center of the world in the cave is heaven. It’s heaven come to earth. It’s the redemption of mankind.

The changing of human history. It is the new creation being effected by that incarnation of Christ at the center of the world. Jesus coming as an infant being born of the Virgin Mary and then living a life in relationship to his humanity and our humanity united to him. This juxtaposition of God and the child, the baby, is absolutely critical to why we love and delight in this text and it’s critical. It’s actually a very much a part of these wonderful Christmas songs that we sing year after year and can’t get enough of them.

We’re going to sing more Christmas Eve for those of you who want to come out for an hour or so. We’ll sing some that we don’t typically sing in worship. “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger,” those sorts of songs, but very much appropriate to the particular text that we’re dealing with today.

Why is this? I think Chesterton is right and I think your heart witnesses to this as well that this is what’s changed humanity—is the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ—is bringing together these two ideas of the omnipotent God and the impotent child, baby.

Why is that? Why does this happen? Why does it resonate so much with the human heart and why do we want to sing and rejoice in it so much? Well, I think it’s because it is directly related to an understanding of who the God that created us is. It resonates because it is truth. And it tells us a very important truth about the purpose and nature of who God is and the purpose rather of what his creation is all about.

There is in addition to this great psychological—in its proper sense the human psyche is affected by this narrative. There is in addition to that a real theological truth that Chesterton sort of you know doesn’t really attend to, but it is really at the heart of this. The psychological reality I think flows from a theological truth that’s given to us in the text that we have before us in Luke chapter 2.

You know, Augustine in his great work on the Trinity at the very beginning says this. No mistake, now thinking about the study of the trinitarian God—no mistake is more dangerous nor the search more laborious. No mistake is more dangerous or the search more laborious than delving into the trinitarian God. What is the nature of the God who created us and as a result what is the purpose of this world in terms of him?

No mistake is a greater mistake. He said no mistake is more dangerous than to get it wrong in terms of who God is. But the search is also more laborious. But Augustine went on to say this. Nor the discovery more advantageous. Yes, it’s hard work. And yes, it is laden with danger. If we make mistakes about the person of God, it emanates out into everything else that we do. But nowhere other than a consideration of who God is in his triune nature is the reward so great as meditating on this thing because this is the nature of reality.

This is the God who made reality. And I think that the particular text before us brings those things together. It tells us a theological truth about God who becomes incarnate in human flesh and a truth that resonates deeply and strongly with our psyche.

You know in many circles Christmas is avoided by reformed people preaching upon it because if we talk about the baby Jesus somehow we’re going to lose the majesty and sovereignty of God. Somehow the nature of God is going to be messed up if we dwell upon this little child lying in a manger whose limbs needed to be washed, whose diapers needed to be changed and who would go through a human life in much the same way as, although without sin, as you and I. It scares some reformed theologians to think about this. Why? Because we’ve probably got it wrong in some ways, right? We probably tend to think of God at the circumference as the sovereign, austere, majestic God.

And yet the scriptures tell us at the climax of the ages, the turning point of history, we have this God come down to earth in the form of a baby, an infant. Jesus Christ has been incarnated in infancy. So I think that this narrative is quite important for us to understand the nature of who God is.

You know, we’ve talked about this same basic idea, the importance of the incarnation. We’ve talked about it in the Gospel of John over the last six months as we looked at the crucifixion narratives. What is God like? What is this God whom we’re serving? And we saw the majesty of Christ portrayed even in his suffering on the cross, right? We saw that even in his arrest, he’s sovereign. We saw that even in the trial, he’s actually putting the Jews and Pilate on trial. He’s not being tried. We saw that from the cross where they’re trying to kill him and make him suffer.

He is suffering. But what he’s doing in John’s gospel is dispensing gifts to everybody. He restores community, right? He does the victory yell of “It’s finished” at the end and he pours forth his Holy Spirit. He births again the church. I mean it’s a victorious account. What is this God like?

And Jesus as he comes—we reminded ourselves over and over again—that John’s gospel says that no one has seen God but Jesus has exegeted the Father to us. He has exegeted the triune God to us. In his coming to earth he declares who God is like. What we see in Jesus is not contrary to God. It is of the nature of the triune God to give sacrificially to one another. At the beginning of all creation, at the beginning of reality, at the center of reality, we don’t have a selfish God. We have a trinitarian God who gives the Father to the Son, the Son to the Spirit, and receives humbly one from the other throughout all eternity.

It’s the nature of God to do what Jesus Christ did on the cross. And I’d say that we want to bring that same thinking into this text. It is of the nature of God to take on human flesh, to come as a man, to effect our redemption, to turn the world inside out from this little point, this place of this infant in the middle of the earth symbolically by reference to the cave. The world has been turned inside out.

Chesterton said from that cave—instead of looking way up to the heavens, the text calls us to look in the middle of the earth where Jesus dwells right to that little point to that impotent child. This tells us something very important. Our instinct, our fallen instinct is to not believe this beautiful warm and fuzzy picture of what Christmas is all about. Our instinct is, oh, he can’t be like that. This is an exception. He had to come to be like a man for a while so he could take upon himself our sin. It was a secondary plan or something. No, this is the nature of God. God is sovereign. We’re Calvinists. We’re not Arminians. We know that God is sovereign. We’ll see in today’s text. He says what he wants to Augustus Caesar. No problem. This is not some kind of different thing going on. This is of the nature of God for the second person rather the Son to become incarnate in human flesh in our fallen state.

We’re like the Jews who didn’t believe it seeing Jesus on the cross oh well let’s see some kind of great miracle that he can do to affect some kind of change here. You know, this is the same way that the disciples were—Jesus had to rebuke them in Mark chapter 8. Jesus is asking his disciples who do they say that he is and Peter says, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter says, “You’re the Christ” and he charged him not to tell anybody about this.

And then the text goes on to say he began to teach him that the Son of Man must suffer many things. So you got the confession of Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, king God incarnate, now to change the place of history and Jesus immediately starts talking about his—that the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, be killed and after three days to rise again.

And Peter then in response to—say, oh no, you can’t do this, you can’t go to the cross because that’s not a God thing to do, right? God does powerful things. He comes and wrecks all his enemies. He tears them in pieces, right? He’s like those two goats who are in the vision of the reindeer in for Santa Claus. Thor, you know, had a chariot with two goats at the four called Cracker and Cruncher. This is what God is like.

All powerful. It comes to crack and to crunch and to break the bones of all his enemies. Don’t tell us that you’re going to suffer on the cross and die. That tends to be our perspective, that particularly in the reformed world are we—we rightfully delight in the understanding that the scriptures give us of the sovereignty of God and his majesty and our need to serve him with fear and trembling. But we have to understand that our perception of God has to be corrected by the text of scripture.

And Jesus rebuked Peter when he sought that kind of God because Peter was thinking of God the way the world thinks of God. We’re not like that. And this story helps to correct in us this improper tendency to get it wrong about the nature and person of God and to get it wrong at a subject as Augustine said that has such horrible consequences if we don’t repent of that.

Well, let’s talk then about this story and first let’s talk about the first few verses in it where we’re going to talk about Caesar a little bit. Verses 1 to 7 we have Caesar and Christ and you know we read that it came to pass in those days that a decree went out to Caesar Augustus. So it brings Caesar into the picture. The reason they’re going to Bethlehem is because of Caesar. He’s doing a registration which was used for taxation purposes.

Now we can and many preachers have frequently preached about the contrast between the Christ of the Caesars. It’s a book about it, an excellent book and that’s a good thing to do. There’s certainly a contrast here. We have Augustus Caesar who at that time at least was said to have been divine, who would bring salvation to the world. The whole idea of you know hills being lowered and valleys being exalted. This is what they would literally do when Caesar approached a town and John the Baptist, you know, says, “That’s what we’re to do in our hearts.”

Caesar is the great picture of what men think God really is supposed to be like. Remember, Pilate didn’t worry about Jesus. That’s not a God. It’s not a king. A king is one who cracks and crunches. This is the mindset. And Caesar Augustus is one of those sort of dudes, right? He’s an all powerful, omnipotent kind of a guy. And he’ll get you. He will crack and crunch your bones. Man, he forces, you know, they had conquered Israel. And it wasn’t like President Bush going over and being emperor in Iraq.

He sort of is. But what a different form a Christian emperor takes, right? We’re over there giving money, rebuilding that country. Caesar’s troops would come in exact tribute in a painful way from those that he conquered. And this is what’s going on here. He’s taxing the people at onerous rates of taxation. By the way, the economy was horrible. Inflation great. They were an oppressed people. They were occupied by a foreign power that was not at all Christian.

Right? And we could draw these contrasts. Right? The great and powerful Caesar and the impotent baby who is really ruling even as he comes to be born. He’s the king. Then we could say that Caesar, you know, forces people to submit to him and Jesus through moral persuasion draws people to himself. You know, Caesar taxes people abruptly. Jesus comes to give gifts. Right now, he does expect us to give him back a portion of what he gives us, but he’s come to distribute gifts to men.

This contrast is properly drawn. But I want to just in passing here and kind of make the point before we move on that there’s a second shoe to all of this. And the second shoe that drops here is that Caesar is serving the Lord Jesus Christ because in the providence of God, Caesar is his puppet to bring Joseph and his espoused wife—what that means is they haven’t consummated the marriage yet in case you’re wondering. That’s what it means. Engaged to be married. Technically, they were not married until the consummation that was going to happen after the birth. So, but that’s what the phrase means—to Bethlehem where they’re supposed to be, right? That’s the prophecy of the Old Testament, Bethlehem of Fraa. This is where the Savior would come. Place of bread and fruitfulness. The reason they’re there is because Caesar is serving Jesus.

Now, this is not the only place where Rome serves God’s purposes. In Daniel, Rome is set up as an empire to take care of God’s people in exile. And while they become pretty pagan and pretty coarse and not at all Christian in any sense of the term, they still are serving God is the point. You know, in the book of Acts, it’s the Jews who are trying to kill Paul and the disciples and it’s the Roman government that’s protecting them, right?

Doing their job. Their job will find its completion in AD 70. But Rome is serving the purposes of God. They’ve been raised up for this very reason. And Caesar Augustus has been raised up to be used by the sovereign God to bring his son in his advent to Bethlehem to fulfill prophecy. Caesar serves God.

Now, this is important for us because it reminds us that at the beginning of this story—sorry that should be our attitude as well—is submission to the higher authorities. Joseph and Mary don’t kick about the taxes. There’s no indication of grumbling. They do what the civil magistrate that God had set up told them to do. And as a result, they’re blessed by God where they end up.

Under the most difficult of circumstances we’re to have submissive hearts, knowing that this infant rules at the right hand of the Father and all things are proceeding according to his purposes and will.

You’re going to get presents this week, right? Most of you’ll get presents if you do that in your family. And you know, they’re always wonderful and they’re pictures of the love of people, but an awful lot of times they’re just a little disappointing, too, aren’t they? If you don’t keep this story in mind, if you don’t recognize that what we’re really rejoicing over is the nature of God who became incarnate in the flesh as a human child, if you don’t keep that at the center, the gifts will always become hollow and empty. And if you do keep the center, there may be disappointment. You didn’t get what you wanted and what you wanted really didn’t make you feel that good.

See, Jesus has to be at the center of your rejoicing. You have to be submissive to the external forms that God has placed around you. Your parents may not have enough money—usually don’t—to get you what they would like to get you. That’s all right. Joseph and Mary had nothing. Basically, they had to stay in a stable. And yet, this is the greatest story of all human history. This is a story that changes all of human history. And it’s one of poor people submissively following the dictates of Caesar Augustus, knowing, trusting in the sovereign God that Yahweh works through those authorities.

May God grant us in our Christian rejoicing a sense of submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the purposes of God when things are disappointing, when we don’t have the boss, the spouse, the child, the parent we want, when the gifts aren’t quite like what they should be. Know that the Lord God’s hand is upon you for good. That’s what the story is going to go on to say is that we delight. Caesar Augustus was used by God to bring delight to the hearts of millions and millions of people for 2,000 years.

And your small circumstances of life, the little things of your life are being used by God to effect his purposes, the manifestation of his kingdom in your world. Delight in them. Don’t buck against the system, so to speak. Train your hearts to be submissive to the rulers and authorities and the circumstances that God has placed in your life. This text tells us that and it tells us that God himself was content to come through the womb of Mary, to go through the birth canal and to have to be cleaned up by human hands and to exist in its first place of rest in a manger—not with you know great soft cushions like we buy each other for Christmas but rough straw as its bed—not a beautiful robe of glory but swaddling clothes—maybe some say Joseph’s trousers which at least in times of the Reformation were on place as a relic.

We don’t know what it was, but it was some rather, you know, some fairly inexpensive cloth. You see, God comes to tell us that in these times of Christmas, sometimes our poorest Christmases and the ones that we don’t get any gifts at all, maybe some of the most blessed ones because they resonate with the story of what God was doing in Christ in that manger.

Let’s go on now and talk about the angels. This is the next part of the text. And again, here there are normal things said about the angels. Caesar served—the angels proclaim. Of course and we want to spend a little bit of time looking at that proclamation. We read in verse 8:

“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields rather, keeping watch over their flock by night. Behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them stood before them on the ground in all probability they were greatly afraid. Angel said to them, do not be afraid.”

That’s interesting isn’t it? You know, we went through the gospel of John, the resurrection appearances in chapter 20 and 21 and Jesus always telling them in his resurrection, “Don’t be afraid,” right? This is the message of God. We had the play the other night. These some of these shepherds were shepherding and they say, “We’re so afraid when the angel comes in their midst.” And you imagine we would be as well. The text tells us that. But the proclamation of the angels is to get rid of fear.

Now, you see, we’re going to relate this to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ as an infant. But instead of a consideration of the majesty of God at the circumference of creation who is ticked off at creation, you know, Jesus is coming back and boy is he angry, that kind of view of things, the angel’s message, what they proclaim is don’t be fearful. Now this removal of fear is based upon faith and what has happened here and in faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Elder Wilson said correctly Friday night and very appropriately. There is no life, you don’t know life at all if you don’t know the truth of this story of Christmas. But if we do, we understand that the proclamation of the angels is one to remove fear.

“Do not be afraid for behold I bring you good tidings of mega joy. The word great joy is mega joy. Which will be to all the people. More joy than this cannot be told. So now we have the mega joy. And for 2,000 years the church of Jesus Christ and many others have been singing forth songs of joy about what happened as we read in our—as we read in our text here. The work of the angel has been effective. The world has moved away from a fear of God that was not proper to having that fear removed to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and then to come to a mega joy.

It’s been effective for 2,000 years. Christians have rejoiced as we think and meditate upon the Lord Jesus Christ in the manger.

“I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”

Now this removal of fears had a twofold effect. Part of this psychological stuff that Chesterton talked about in his book that I quoted earlier. Part of that has produced the absence of the sort of fear of God that produced gross idolatry prior to the coming of Jesus Christ. You’ve heard me talk the last few months how the temples of Diana are empty, right? There’s no, you know, human sacrifice going at least in the open, sanctioned by the state, the way it was for thousands of years. World history has changed. And I would venture to say that at least in Western culture, it’s changed because of this story.

We now see who God is and he’s one who comes to us in the form of an infant and fear is removed. The angels’ work has been effective. But the angels’ work is tied to the proclamation that Jesus Christ will come as Savior for our sins. So we want to trumpet forth that the world should move from fear. But along with that is the trumpeting forth that what they’re to do is to accept and believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has come a Savior.

So in order to be saved, you have to know that there are things you have to be saved from and sin and damnation for sin and judgment are part of what that is all about. And so the text reminds us indeed that the angels proclaim this stuff, but they proclaim it in a distinctively Christian way.

Martin Luther in his Christmas sermons on this particular text talked about the need for preachers that the angels show us that the way God works is—it’s not enough say it that way maybe—not enough for Jesus to become born in the state. He attends a preacher, a proclaimer of what has happened. He appends that to the story. And so gospel preaching is that proclamation of historical facts of what God has done. And the angels show us that pattern here in this text. Right? So preachers are necessary, important because it continues today. You hear the truth of God’s word trumpeted forth by a guy that is no good at speaking or rhetoric or anything else. And it is a comfort to preachers and I hope it’s a comfort to you to know that again God uses the things that have no external glory.

Now at the angels he did. But we see this transition to the shepherds right. The shepherds are the ones who go forth trumpeting forth what’s happened in the world. Angels no longer appear. After this one time appearance to the shepherds as preachers now it’s the—mean shepherds, mean not in the sense of angry but you know lowly common laborers who proclaim this story and that’s a great encouragement to me. I hope it’s an encouragement to you that God works through again humble means. Jesus became a child, a baby.

God works through humble means to effect the proclamation of the good news and to change the course of history and the trumpeting forth of God’s word. God uses water, right, baptism to move you from one creation to the next. God uses bread and wine and that’s pretty nice stuff. Wine is, you know, glorified water and we got that nice raised victorious bread thing going, but it’s a basic meal and under through those things, through the preaching of simple people like myself who don’t know what I’m doing, and through simple things like water and bread, God proclaims to you and effects change in your life and the angels are a picture to us of that in their proclamation of the good news here.

So the angels proclaim forth and that’s a very important point and people have talked about that a lot and it’s a good thing to talk about. But as we said, this proclamation has to be Christ-centered.

And I want to quote from Luther’s—one of Luther’s Christmas sermons here. And this is actually from an article about Luther, but it quotes him.

“As Luther knows of no God apart from the one who sleeps in Mary’s lap and hangs dead on the cross, his understanding of worship is framed by the first commandment and given incarnational content with the flesh of Jesus. Thus, Luther preaches on the Gloria, quoting Luther.

Now, accordingly, this angel anthem proclaims that whatever is outside of or apart from Christ stands condemned before God as blasphemy, idolatry, and abomination. God can only be honored in and through this child who is Christ the Lord. Apart from him, no person can find and worship God, but grossly offends and dishonors him. That means that everything across the world that is called worship and service of God without Christ must end.”

Now, that’s an important part. That’s the other shoe. What I said earlier—fear has been removed but we need to make people understand that absence of fear, the removal of it is tied explicitly to the child Jesus Christ becoming the second person of the Trinity taking on human flesh, the incarnation. And apart from that, the world must still fear the effects of their sin and their damnation and judgment.

“Truly holy and God-pleasing offerings, genuine service of God will bear Christ’s name or in Christ. Otherwise it is no divine service. God has channeled his worship in this child and where he is not worshiped in this way, this way, true worship is not present. So all the worship so-called of Judaism, of the Muslim adherence, other systems of worship, there’s no worship at all and they all must cease. They don’t have—they’re not properly appropriate appropriators of the peace that the angels proclaim made to proclaim to them.”

This mega joy is frequently preached upon as I said. But I want to talk about something else. The other shoe here in this text. The other shoe of Caesar is he serves Christ. The other shoe with the angels’ proclamation of Christ I think interesting is the sign they proclaim. This thing the single angel does and then the angel tells them after the good news says, “This will be the sign to you.”

So, we’ve had great news. Mega joy. Savior has come. God has become incarnate. He’s going to rule now in your lives and throughout the whole world. And now the angel says, “I’m going to give you a sign.” Now, after the sign is declared is when the host rings out. After the sign is declared—reading it, I just read it just a minute. Then we have verse 13.

“Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace toward men with whom he is pleased.’”

So, this sign is a sign of what salvation is all about. It’s a sign of the advent of the Messiah and God. And this sign is of such a nature as to cause the angelic host to burst forth in song. Now, we burst forth in song at Christmas. We join the angelic host as we read about earlier. And it’s—if in a proper one to one sense—that bursting forth of song should follow this sign right now. This sign is not a sign of a so-called power miracle.

This sign is not that you know God has crushed half of the world or laid bare for us or caused a huge meteorite from outside the circumference thing going on. Listen to the sign, to the thing that embodies this salvation, the thing that is supposed to cause us to join the angelic host in glorifying God in heaven and singing forth his praises. Here’s the sign. “This will be the sign to you. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.”

You see, there it is—the theological truth that God takes on human flesh. It’s the nature of the triune God to be giving of himself, to give now and to humble himself before man to affect man’s salvation. This is the great sign, the baby, baby Jesus. That’s the sign that shutters forth or brings forth the angelic choir.

Now, why is that the sign? Well, part of it is that if we’re going to be redeemed in our humanity, our humanity goes from womb to the tomb, right? And so, we certainly know about Jesus’s effect on the tomb. And this is a picture of Jesus’s effect on the womb. Again, to quote Martin Luther in one of his Christmas sermons, he says this:

“Christ has a pure, innocent, and holy birth. Man has an unclean, sinful, condemned birth. As David says in Psalm 51:5, ‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Nothing can help this unholy birth except the pure birth of Christ.’ But Christ’s birth cannot be distributed in a material sense, neither would that avail. It is therefore imparted spiritually through the word as the angel says, ‘Yet is given to all who firmly believe so that no harm will come to them because of their impure birth.’ This is the way and manner in which we are to be cleansed from the miserable birth we have from Adam. For this purpose Christ willed so to be born that through him we might be born again as he says in John 3:3. And that it takes place through faith as also St. James says in 1:18, ‘Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.’”

So part of the reason that we rejoice in this and that we should sing praise is that Jesus has effected our redemption from birth on. Right? So now we can be born again in union with this Christ who from birth on lives a life in perfect submission to the Father and effects human salvation.

But you know what else I think about this text? That the great sign is not so much—that’s part of the mechanism of salvation. We could say that’s how Jesus effects the salvation of mankind. But the great sign is a declaration of who God is. And again I want to quote from another Luther sermon, one of his Christmas sermons specifically talking about the importance of the birth of Christ.

“The Christian’s comfort is only to be found in the word made flesh.”

A Christmas sermon from 1527 makes this point in a most striking way. And now quoting to Luther:

“He has power to cast us into hell. And yet he took soul and body like ours. If he were against us, he would not have clothed himself in our flesh. Here God is not to be feared, but loved. And that love brings the joy of which the angel speaks. Satan on the other hand brings home to me the majesty of my sin and the majesty—my sin rather—and terrifies me so that I despair.”

Remember we spoke about Satan’s moving us away from seeing God as Father, the covenant God who saves us to an understanding of God as Elohim, the strong one only without the connection to God’s fatherly care for us. And that’s what Luther is talking about here. Satan points us to the majesty and to our sin. Terrifies me so that I must despair. But the angel does not declare that he is in heaven. “You shall find,” he points out, “that he has come to us in our flesh and blood.

Our joy is not that we ascend and put on his nature, as is the case when the mass is made a boastful decking of ourselves in divinity. Do not be driven to distraction, but remain down here,” Luther says, “and listen unto you—a Savior. He does not come with horses, but in a stable. Reason and will ascend and seek above, but if you will have joy, bend yourself down to this place. There you will find that boy given for you who is your Creator lying in a manger.

I will stay with that boy as he sucks, is washed and dies and cries rather and then dies. There is no joy but in this boy. Take him away and you face the majesty which terrifies. I know of no God but this one in the manger. Do not let yourself be turned away from his humanity. What wonderful words. He is not only a man and a servant, but that person lying in the manger is born, man and God essentially, not separated one from the other, but is born of a virgin.

If you separate them, the joy is gone. Oh thou boy lying in the manger, thou art truly God who has created me, and thou will not only be wrathful, thou will not be wrathful with me because thou comest to me in this loving way, more loving cannot be imagined.”

Luther understood the importance of the incarnation. This is why our hearts resonate with the joy of Christmas because it is the truth. God’s nature is not to terrify us. God’s nature is not to plunge us into hell. God’s nature is to give of himself to send his only begotten son, Jesus Christ. God lying in a manger for us.

God turns the world inside out from the midst of that cave by becoming it’s very center, the very center of the reality of the world by drawing us with a beautiful story of baby Jesus to cast away our fears, to believe in this Christ child and so to be brought into loving relationship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The reason why the sign is this sign is because this is the revelation of the person of God. It means everything to us in terms of our salvation and it means everything to us in terms of our sanctification. How is it to be godly? If we look for God to be godly in power, miracles, and demonstrations of his wrath and anger, that’s the way we’ll become. But if we see that it’s the nature of God to redeem mankind, to send his Son as baby Jesus, God incarnate in the flesh, then we become those who become God incarnate as it were, working through us to serve others, to bring them to the worship and service of the Lord Jesus Christ, to see ourselves as redemptive people in the world, not judgmental people.

Now, there’s judgment that attends it. We’ve seen that in John’s gospel. But the heart of the gospel is not that God is judging sin and killing and throwing people into hell. The heart of the gospel is he’s come to save the world. And that’s who we are. It is to be godly, to humble ourselves to our neighbors, to our friends, to the world, to serve in the name of Jesus Christ, and to bring people to this scene that we resonate so much with every Christmas season.

This is the nature of God himself that’s portrayed before us. It’s the death knell to Gnosticism, a proper understanding that God has become incarnate in the flesh. Gnosticism says that ideas and theories and speculations are reality and the created order is relatively insignificant. Here the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ shows us that that is a very wrong system of thought and the incarnation of Christ taking on human flesh is the death blow to the sort of Gnosticism that plagues our form of Christianity.

You know, have a merry time this week. Rejoice, eat good things. Enjoy the bodies that God has given you in a respectful Christian way, of course, but enjoy them. Enjoy the created reality because the Lord Jesus Christ did not find it abhorrent to take on human flesh, came to us in that human flesh, drew us to himself. And the angels said, “This is the great glory of God that he takes on human flesh to effect the salvation of mankind.” This is the other shoe that drops with the angels.

What about the shepherds? Well, we could use the shepherds as a moral illustration. You know that when we hear the gospel, we should respond quickly. They talk to each other. They encourage each other to obey the angels, the message of Jesus through the angels. We could use them and they’ve been used that way. You know, Caesar’s been confessing with Christ, but Caesar’s serving Christ child. The angels have been talked about their great declaration, but the sign of that is—this is this strange thing about God being born and being placed in a manger.

The shepherds are a picture of what we should do—to rush to God and to worship him and obey Christ and encourage each other. But what I see—what I wanted to mention here in closing is something the text tells us about the shepherds that is often overlooked and I think is kind of important. You know, we read about the shepherds here and of course it’s important that the gospel message, just like the message of who God is, coming in a stable in difficult circumstances.

You know, the angels don’t go to the high priest and make the declaration. They don’t go to the scholars or to those sort of people. They go to vocational men, men doing their job shepherding the flock. And of course, there’s many associations that we could talk about with Jesus, the Lamb of God, etc. But the shepherds then of course go to the manger and they ponder these—they rather—they make these things widely known.

But then verse 20: “Then the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen as it was told them.”

The shepherds returned. Caesar served. The angels proclaimed, but they proclaimed it with the sign of the infant Lord Jesus Christ. And the shepherds, yes, they rush to the stable and they tell other people about it and all that stuff, but they returned. Where did they return to?

They returned to their jobs. They returned to their vocations. You’re going to return tomorrow. You’re like those shepherds, right? You’ve been given the message of the preached word of God about the great news that God has revealed himself in Christ in a way that does not frighten us, but a way that draws us to him. And in fact, the way that he goes out of his way to tell us, “Don’t be frightened. Be drawn to me.”

We’re those shepherds who are drawn to Christ. And you’re going to go tomorrow. You’re going to return, most of you, to your vocations, taking care of the house, taking care of your children. Husbands are going to go to their work tomorrow. They’re going to go to their, you know, to a factory or to an accounting firm or to whatever it is that men do. They return to their vocation, but they return changed men.

They return matured men. They were already good, godly men. That’s why the angels went to them, right? It’s not that they were total pagans or something. They were caring for the sacrificial flock. They knew about the coming Messiah, but their lives became transformed through this event happening. They returned to their places of work with a renewed sense that they were to glorify God in their vocations.

And as we return from our Christmas gatherings, from this service, from the Christmas Eve service, we’ll go back to our normal lives, but we’ll go back with a story of the Lord Jesus Christ still ringing through our ears, pondering it the way that Mary did perhaps. We’ll go back understanding the importance of things that seem unimportant. We’ll go back recognizing the importance of a little tiny baby sitting unknown to most people in a dark cave where cattle no longer feed.

We’ll go back knowing the small things of life, little acts of submission to Caesar by Joseph and Mary are things that change the course of the world. We’ll go back knowing that we’ll return to our vocations and our lives knowing that it’s the small things of life that God has said are exalted in terms of his perception of reality. We’ll be corrected in our view of what’s important and not important as we meditate upon this story of the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming.

We’ll go back as men and women who go from glory to glory. You know, we sang “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and there are a couple of last verses to it that we normally don’t sing. Well, we will this Christmas Eve. I found them this week through the BCC list. Jim Jordan shared them and they just sort of sum up, I think, in what we’re talking about at Christmas time and the impact that this story has upon us in the world.

The last two stanzas of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” say this:

“Come, Desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home.
Rise the woman’s conquering seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
With the small acts of simple obedience.
Now display thy saving power,
Ruin nature now restore.
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours and ours to thine.
Adam’s likeness, Lord, erase,
Stamp thine image in its place.
What is his image?

The service eternal, giving and humbly receiving of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Stamp thine image in its place.

Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain thee the life the inner man. Oh to all thyself in part, formed in each believing heart.”

Let’s pray. Father, we delight in this season and we pray that we would meditate upon these things and as we return into our vocations and simple tasks of life, help us to see that these things have been given a significance far beyond what can be said or declared. Help us, Father, to believe what we’ve heard about today. We know that we can think of these things and not believe them, and we go away from this place worse than when we came. But help us to believe and in believing to consecrate all that we have and are to the King of Kings, the Lord Jesus Christ, to baby Jesus. In his name we pray. Amen.