[Machine transcription]
And she gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints of God, Merry Christmas, and God be praised for this glorious day, where we hear of and rejoice in the incarnation and birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Christ, it is quite a wonder that the Lord has kept all of His promises for us, especially we heard this first promise in Genesis 3, our first Old Testament lesson. Adam and Eve had the threat, the warning, that on the day that they eat of it, surely they will die. But after they ate and brought death and destruction into the entire universe, the Lord comes and finds them in the garden, hiding in their fig leaves with the devil in the bushes.
And He says to them, it’s true now you have to die, but also I have good news, the news of the seed to be born of the woman who will crush the head of the serpent and restore peace between me and you, the good news of a child to be born who would be Christ, God in the flesh who would die in order to rescue you from death.
Now how stunning, just to consider this, how stunning that not only is it true that on the day that they eat of it they will die, but on the day that they ate of it now God will die for them and in their place.
And God has kept this promise. The seed of the woman has been born of the Virgin Mary. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is begotten of the Father before all worlds, and born of the Virgin Mary, our Lord, God and Man in one person, the Theanthropos, the God-Man.
As John himself says, to confess this great mystery, that the Word, the eternal Logos, became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten Son of God.
But Luke, whose text and account of this we have before us today, seems interested not in introducing us to the marvelous glory and mystery of the Incarnation, but pressing us into the details of it. I remember one time I heard the story of a grandfather trying to explain the wonder of the Incarnation to his grandchildren, and he told them this story.
He said, I want you to imagine two space explorers, a father and a son, and they’re out in a rocket ship wandering around the different galaxies, and they find a planet, and that planet is full of dogs. They start circling that planet and get a little closer to explore what’s going on on the planet, and they realize that not only is the planet full of dogs, it’s full of very ferocious dogs. Huge, big, mean dogs. They all have rabies. They’re all biting each other, scratching each other, fighting with each other.
It’s just a miserable kind of planet. And the father, as they circle the planet, looks over to the son and the space explorer, and he says, you know what? I love those dogs, and I want to rescue those dogs.
Okay, good plan.
He says, to rescue those dogs, here’s the plan. You’re going to have to go down there. The son says, well all right. He looks around to see if he can find some weapons and things like this to keep him safe. He says, well you don’t just have to go down there, you’re going to have to go down there as a dog.
Okay, well maybe I can do that, that sounds all right. He says, in fact not only do you have to go down there as a dog, you’ve got to go down there as a Chihuahua. And they are going to bite at you, and they are going to scratch at you, and they’re going to destroy you, and they’re going to tear you to bits.
But I’ll raise you up, you’ll live again, but you will be a Chihuahua forever.
Now that doesn’t even get close to the condescension of our Lord Jesus Christ to us. It’s not just the gap between a man and an animal, but the gap between God and humanity, the gap between the Creator and the creature, and more than that, Jesus closes the gap between God’s holiness and our sin. He comes all the way down to us.
Now Luke, I mentioned before, wants us to see the details of it. He doesn’t seem, at least Luke doesn’t seem at first interested in these majestic truths, but he wants us to know that we’re talking about a particular event in history, to know that we’re talking about facts. Luke says, in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and they all went to be registered.
Luke pins this down to a certain place and a certain time. It’d be like me saying, in those days, a decree went out from Mayor Steve Adler that we should enter stage five COVID restrictions. This was in the fifth year of Governor Greg Abbott of Texas.
And why so specific? I mean, why is Luke interested in this specific date and specific time and specific place? Well, first, it’s because he wants us to know that this is not mythology. Before anything else, the Bible comes to us as a history book. Even before it presents to us theology, it presents to us history, the things that happened.
That’s why we say every week that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. This is not some sort of abstract story. These are truths. In fact, truths that are historical truths and that stand at the very crux of history itself. Everything before this event, before this birth, is before Christ, and everything afterwards is the year of our Lord after him. This birth changes absolutely everything.
But there’s even more to it, I think. This incarnation of Jesus was a descent all the way down to us, to our real lives, to our real troubles. I think we’re tempted to think of Christmas, the Christmas holiday, sort of a break from the ordinary life, from the drudgery of the day-to-day, that we can, at least at Christmas, forget about our troubles for a while.
But forgetting, we know this, forgetting them doesn’t make them go away, and sometimes we can’t forget. Every year it’s important to remember that there are people this year, this Christmas time, that are mourning, and that mourning and that sadness and that trouble seems to be even more acute at Christmas.
But I think this year especially, Christmas comes to us in the midst of all sorts of trouble. Christmas comes to us and finds us in all sorts of sickness, in all sorts of distress, in all sorts of sorrow, in all sorts of mourning, in all sorts of loss. And it finds each of us full of sin, with a conscience stained by our own failures.
And this is the point. Jesus comes all the way down to you. All the way. He is not ashamed of you and your humility and your weakness and your trouble and your shame and your sin. Jesus has not come to visit like a king riding in a chariot looking out the window or a president or a Pope in a bulletproof limousine or something like that.
He is not born in a golden palace. Look, your God is born with hay stuck to his curly hair, with ox slobber on his blanket. He comes down to be with you in your sin, in your sickness. He even shares a grave, and he comes to be with you now.
This one born of the Virgin laid in a manger says, I will never leave you or forsake you. He’s the one who says, I will be with you always. Here at church, there when you go home, when you go to work, in all of your trouble, in all of your distress, in all of your difficulties, in all of your sadness, He is with you and He is for you.
He carries your sins, He carries your sorrows, He lived and died and suffered all of it for you so that He could rescue you and redeem you and make for you a place in heaven. You know it’s stunning that the angel reminds the shepherds that you’ll find Jesus in the manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
It’s amazing that the Son of God comes and His own did not receive Him. He didn’t even have a place to be born, but He did this so that He could assure you that there is a place for you in heaven. He’s prepared it for you. It’s done.
If it were not so, He wouldn’t have said it. There’s a place for you with Him in His home forever. So we praise the Lord that He has not only become a man, but that He has become the Savior of all of mankind.
God be praised. Amen.
And may the Lord grant to you a Merry Christmas. Amen.
The peace of God which passes all understanding. Guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
And the angel said to them, Fear not, behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Amen.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen. Dear Saints of God, Merry Christmas and God be praised that we celebrate on this day the incarnation and the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.
We’re especially going to consider that sermon from the angels in Luke chapter 2. But on the way there, I want to give a little thought to the second Old Testament lesson from Isaiah chapter 9.
Christmas, in fact, invites us to meditate on this great mystery. The second great mystery of the Christian faith, that God eternal has become a man, our brother, in order to be our Savior. It’s incomprehensible, and it’s captured by Isaiah in these words.
Consider, for example, how Isaiah says, for to us a child is born, and then he calls this child the mighty God. Or he says, to us, a son is given, and this son shall be the everlasting Father.
How can a child be God? How can the Son born be the Father? How can the Creator join Himself to the creation? How can this possibly be? It is simply a wonder for us to confess and to rejoice in, to delight in and to meditate on because we can never understand the fullness of this great mystery.
I think that even in heaven itself will be meditating on this mystery in eternity, in the ages to come. But this truth, that God is in the flesh, is not just supposed to be some sort of riddle or something for us to meditate on and to contemplate. But this truth matters.
And to press that into our own ears and minds and hearts and consciences, I want to especially focus on two words, maybe even one word, preached by the angels.
The angel says, Fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord and this will be a sign for you.
You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. That word, you, makes all the difference. Consider these two sentences.
First sentence, there’s a million dollars in the bank. Well, that’s maybe interesting. Probably not, I would have thought that it was more than that in the bank. Maybe that’s a curiosity, who knows.
Let’s try the second sentence. There’s a million dollars in the bank for you. Now that’s different.
I remember one time when I was a baby pastor, I was teaching Bible class and I was talking about some book. And it was a book that I wanted to read and study. I didn’t have it, and someone in the Bible class brought it the next week, and they were showing it to me. And they said, Pastor, look here.
And they handed me the book, and I thought that they were giving me the book as a gift. And so I grabbed a hold of it, and I said, oh, thank you so much. And I tried to take it, and they didn’t let go.
And I said, I’ve been wanting this book, and they said, I know, that’s why I’m showing it to you. You can borrow it if you want. When I’m done, it’s not for you.
As you see, that’s a big difference. It would have been very easy for the shepherds to think that whatever was happening in Bethlehem or in Jerusalem or Rome or wherever was for those people, not for them.
But the angels come right to the shepherds and say that this baby born in Bethlehem, this one who is the Savior of all people, is for you. And we want to hear that, because Jesus is for you.
Bethlehem might seem like it’s a long ways away. This happened a long time ago. It might seem like it’s very far, and in fact, when you go and visit Bethlehem, it makes it seem even farther away.
There’s this big church that was built over the side of the manger, and to get to the place where they think Jesus was born, you’ve got to go down these little stairs under the altar into this little cave and it’s filled with all these strange lamps and bowls of incense and tapestries, and it’s crowded with people, and the manger is covered in gold.
It’s nothing like you would imagine. It makes it seem even further away, but that’s why the angels are preaching. That’s why I’m preaching to you. That’s why the Holy Spirit has you here this afternoon, so that you would know that this birth that happened so many years ago, that this life that was lived so many years ago, that this death that happened so many years ago, that it’s for you.
In fact, you could take those words for you and put them under every single picture, every single image of Jesus, every image that we have in the bulletin, of the manger, every window that has a picture of the Lamb of God and the rose and the crucifixion and the resurrection, and just right underneath it, for you, because all of it is for you.
Everything that Jesus does is for you. You are gathered here thinking that it’s probably not for me. It’s probably for everyone else. They, after all, have been good. They’ve been coming to church all year. They’ve been praying. They’ve been reading their Bible. All these other people seem so nice. They smell so good and everything else.
Jesus probably came for them, but not for me. That is wrong. Jesus, on the cross, in the grave, at the Father’s right hand, in the arms of the Virgin Mary, Jesus is for you.
He’s your Savior, your Redeemer, and you belong to Him. His life and death belongs to you. Your sins belong to Him. His suffering belongs to you. Your death belongs to Him. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior.
Jesus uses those words himself when he’s about to die. The night before his crucifixion, he took some bread and he broke it and he gave it to his disciples and he says, take and eat, this is my body given for you.
And in the same way, he took the cup when they had supped and when he had finished, he gave it to them saying, drink of it, all of you, this cup is the New Testament shed for you, for the forgiveness of sins.
So this day we rejoice that God, the eternal Son of God, is born of the Virgin Mary, laid in a manger, crucified and raised and at the Father’s right hand for you.
This will be a sign, says the angel, for you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
Amen.
And Merry Christmas.
The peace of God that passes all understanding. Guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
God. 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 and goodwill to men. Amen.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, amen. Dear saints, Merry Christmas, and God be praised for another year of His grace and His goodness.
This hymn of the angels is where we’re going to end, but I want to start tonight in Isaiah chapter 11. That’s all the way back on page 10 of your bulletin, and it might be actually helpful to put your eyes on the words of the text. Page 10, where we heard the third lesson from Isaiah chapter 11 about the root from the stump of Jesse.
The Lord’s Word is always doing spiritual battle, and I think one of the most helpful things that we see in the Lord’s Word, one of the reasons why we have so many Old Testament lessons every Sunday, but especially on Christmas Eve, is that the Lord Jesus Christ came as He was promised.
This is one of the great comforts that we Christians have, especially when the devil attacks us and tempts us to doubt that the things that we read in the Scriptures are true, tempts us to doubt that the Lord Jesus on the cross is for us, tempts us to doubt all the things that the Bible says.
One of the greatest ways that we see the truth of the Scriptures is that we see how many promises were given in the Old Testament and were fulfilled by Christ in the New. So we read in Genesis 3 how the seed would be conceived of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, or Isaiah chapter 7, how the virgin will conceive, or Isaiah chapter 9, how the child will be the everlasting father.
And then we come to Isaiah 11, and we hear about the shoot from the stump of Jesse. Now, what is that about? In fact, it’s a quite a beautiful picture. The Lord had given to Israel the promise that David would have a child who would sit on the throne forever.
Second Samuel chapter 7 is where it happened. In fact, I think we had it last week as our Old Testament lesson, the promise that David’s seed would sit on the throne forever and that was a promise that the Messiah would be from the line of David, that David’s house was like a tree and the Messiah would be one of the branches.
It’s a beautiful promise, but by the time we get to Isaiah, which is something like 350 years later, by the time we get to Isaiah, the house of David had become overconfident in this promise. They were doing whatever they wanted. They were living however they wanted. The prophets were coming and preaching the law to them, promising destruction and devastation, and they would say, how can the Lord cut us down?
We’re David’s tree. The Messiah hasn’t come yet. There’s going to be a branch who will be the Lord’s king, so we’re safe. We can do whatever we want. We don’t have to worry about the Lord’s threats, this preaching of the law. We can live however we want.
They were taking the promise of the Son of David and using it as an excuse for sin. They were misusing the promise of the gospel, and so the Lord sends Isaiah to say, look, the Lord can make that branch grow up from a stump. Do you get the picture? The Lord is saying, I can still cut you down and keep my promise.
So while we hear these words as words of great joy and comfort, they are first words of warning that we don’t take the gospel of God and abuse it. The gospel will never excuse us sin. It only forgives sins.
But for us, this promise comes as a beautiful promise because even though Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians, even though the temple was knocked down, the Lord has caused a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch from his roots to grow and to bear fruit, none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
And look at what it says about him in verse 2, the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
In other words, this one would be anointed by the Holy Spirit in His fullness. And that word anointing is in Hebrew, the word Messiah, or in Greek, the word Christ. So we have the promise of the Christ.
The one who would come to this unique office of bearing the sins of the world, of carrying them and suffering for them to save us, which brings us to the hymn of the angels.
It’s a stunning picture that the shepherds were out at night watching their flocks. That’s a rare thing. Normally in the ancient world, the shepherds would go out in the day, in the morning, and then they’d come back into the city at night and they’d put all the sheep in a pin and hire a college student to watch them at night, you know, and come in the morning and grab them and take them out.
But Bethlehem was a unique place in the world because there were so many caves in the hills around Bethlehem that instead of having to drag all the sheep back into town at night, the shepherds would just put them in these caves and block the mouth of the caves, and then they could stay out there and watch their flocks.
So these shepherds are out in the hills outside of Bethlehem, this tiny little town six miles from Jerusalem in the middle of the night, and all of a sudden an angel appears to them and announces this glorious good news.
And when the angel, the single angel, is finished preaching this sermon, then all of a sudden there was a host of angels, an army, a platoon of angels, all ready for this choir concert.
Now I always thought— I don’t know if you’ve thought this before, but I’ve always thought that there must have been just as much surprise on the face of the shepherds as there was on the face of the angels. You imagine the shepherds sitting there, and there’s like a curtain between them and the angels, and the curtain pulls back, and the shepherds are full of fear and wonder at this angelic choir that’s right there before them.
But how about the angels who are there? And the curtain pulls back, and they see there in front of them not the kings of the world or all of these important people in Jerusalem, but rather a few shepherds. At least that’s what I used to think, but I’m convinced now that the angels are not like us. They know that the Lord loves the lowly, that He’s not ashamed to be born in a manger, that He in fact has a special place for those who are cast out for the shepherds.
You know, the shepherds are the lowliest of people. Remember— I mean to remember how lowly the shepherds were. Remember when Samuel, the Lord’s prophet, came to pick the king and he came to Jesse’s house, and he says, do you have any boys? And he says, I’ve got seven boys right here.
And Samuel says, well, it’s none of those guys. Don’t you have any more boys? And they’re like, well, yeah, the runt who’s out with the sheep, he can’t be the king, David. That’s the lowliest job.
Remember when Joseph, who was treasured by his father, who was protected by his father, and he was kept safe? That meant he didn’t have to go watch the sheep. The shepherds were the lowliest of all the people, but the Lord loves the lowly. He calls the lowly. He delights in the lowly, He delights in you and in me.
So the angels give this most wonderful concert, sing this most wonderful hymn, this Gloria in Excelsis in these dark hills outside of Bethlehem. Now, I want— before we look at the words of the text, I want to consider— I would like you to consider that not only do the angels sing but that the demons also have a song that they sing that sounds very different.
Rather than singing glory to God in the highest, the devil is singing glory to me, or glory to you, or glory to your favorite idol, glory to anything but God. Instead of singing peace on earth, the devil is singing strife on earth, war on earth, conflict on earth.
Instead of singing goodwill to men, the devil is singing ill will to men, spite to men, animosity to men. Glory to himself, strife on earth, animosity towards man, that’s the anti-gloria that the demons sing, and it seems to me that that might be the soundtrack for the year this year.
That the devil’s song has been simply running through the world, running through our own lives, running through our nation, running through the world. It’s trouble out there. It’s been a dark year. It’s been a despairing year in a lot of ways.
There’s been strife. There’s been conflict. There’s been confusion. There’s been distress. There’s been trouble everywhere we look, inside and out, and on top of all of this, we have our own sin. We have our own failures. We have our own breaking of God’s law, which brings darkness and death.
But into the middle of this darkness, this is what tonight is for. Into the middle of this darkness, into the middle of this trouble, into the middle of this distress, into the middle of our sin, into the middle of this conflict, into the middle of all of our troubles comes the angels singing this song, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to men.
It turns everything on its head. Instead of death, we now have in Jesus life. Instead of sin, we have his blood, which is our forgiveness. Instead of despair, we have in his resurrection hope. Instead of trouble, we have His promise that He will be with us always, even to the end of the age.
Instead of strife, we have in Him peace. Instead of fear, we have in Him mercy and grace from God. Instead of the grave, we have in Him the sure hope of the resurrection. And we have in His life and in His death and His cross and His suffering, we have a hope that will never end, a life that will never stop.
We have a God who pursues us and saves us and delivers us. To Him be the glory and to us be the peace. That’s what the angels sing.
Jesus has done it all because the reason He was born in Bethlehem, the reason He took upon Himself flesh and blood in the womb of the Virgin Mary is so that He would have something to be nailed to the cross, so that He would have blood to spill for your sins and mine.
And He has done it. So the angels sing, not just for the shepherds, but also for us, because this child, this man, this God in our flesh, is our Savior, Christ, the Lord. And He is our Merry Christmas.
God be praised. Amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints, Merry Christmas. And in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, God be praised for this past year of His mercy and that He has set us to look forward to another year of His mercy and kindness in the name of our Lord Jesus.
I want to meditate tonight on the journey of the shepherds to Bethlehem to behold this child that was born. But before that, I want to take a little detour through Micah. It’s on page 12, a lot of pages ago, but I want you to— I want to show you a couple things in this Micah text if you want to take a look, because this text from Micah chapter 5 is famous because 700 years before it happened, the prophet promised that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
But there’s a lot more to the promise that’s there. In fact, Micah is one of these places where the Lord sets forth a riddle that can only be understood when we understand that Jesus is begotten of the Father before all worlds, true God, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, that in the single person of Christ there are two natures, the divine nature and the human nature.
Look at what it says. It says, You, O Bethlehem of Aphrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel. In other words, the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. But then look at the next line, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.
The Eternal One is going to have a birthday. Now how does that work out? He will give them up until the time when she who is in labor is given birth. How can the Eternal One, the one ancient of days, have a birthday in Bethlehem?
Well, the answer is the same way he can be David’s son and David’s Lord, the same way he can both be dead and also unable to die, the same way that he can be your brother and also your Savior, that he is God in the flesh, the Theanthropos, the one with these two natures eternally united to be for us the Savior.
And this one is born in Bethlehem. Now, Bethlehem is about the last place that you would expect him to be born. Look what it says there in the text, you who owe Bethlehem a prophet are too little to even be named among the clans of Judah. It’s true that David was born in Bethlehem, and that’s amazing enough, but now the Messiah will also be born in Bethlehem, not in Jerusalem, which is only six miles away, or, even better, in Damascus or in Alexandria or in Babylon or in Ephesus or one of the great cities at least, no, he’s born in the too little Bethlehem.
And if that humility is not enough, it’s not just Bethlehem. He’s born in a manger in Bethlehem, in a cave, in a place where the animals are kept, in Bethlehem. That’s why the shepherds have to be told where to find them. That’s amazing.
We’ll turn to the Gospel text that the angels give specific directions to the shepherds. They don’t have the advantage of the star like the wise men, but they don’t have to go as far, so we understand it.
But the angels give specific instructions about what they are to look for. Three things, all three amazing. You will find a child. That God is a child is amazing enough. He’ll be a newborn. He’ll be wrapped in swaddling clothes.
So if you find a number of babies in Bethlehem, He’s going to be the freshest, the one just born. But if there’s a couple of babies just born this day in Bethlehem, you’ll know you find the one you’re looking for when you find him lying in a manger. A food trough.
We had ASL interpretation for the four o’clock service and the sign for manger is this, where the animals go to eat their food so that God has straw meshed in his curly hair. It’s amazing.
So the angels give these instructions to the shepherds and they follow them. They follow these instructions. In fact, the angels disappear, the choir is finished singing, and the shepherds look at one another almost overwhelmed with joy and say, let us go to Bethlehem and see the thing that has happened, that the Lord God has made known to us, they’re kind of besides themselves, and they went with haste, and they went knocking on the doors of all the mangers, I suppose, until they found at last one with a baby in it.
And there was Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger, and they saw it, and they beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth.
It’s your homework, don’t do it right now, it’s your homework to look at all the faces of all the shepherds and all the paintings in the bulletin. You want to do it, don’t do it now, but it’s an amazing thing to see. The joy, the wonder, the reverence, the comfort, the peace, as the light of this baby, like a little campfire, is radiating on their faces. And almost all of them have fallen on their knees with their hands folded in worship and in reverence to this one who is the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary to be our Savior.
They found Him. And when they found Him, He found them. These shepherds belonged to Jesus. They left the manger and they couldn’t stop talking about it. Look at what it says. They went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger.
When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child, and all who heard it wondered that the shepherds told them. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all that they heard and had seen as it had been told to them.
We, you, will meet these shepherds in the resurrection, and you can ask them how it was that night.” How marvelous to hear the story from their own lips. I imagine they’re still telling the story to anyone who will listen.
They found Jesus. Now it’s to us. If you go to Bethlehem, some of you I know have been to Bethlehem, and you can find the manger. It’s under a church. It’s in the basement of this church, under the altar of the church there.
You’ve got to go through this little door into the church, and then you’ve got to crawl down the stairs under the altar into this room, which is filled with all these really kind of Greeky, Greek Orthodox lamps and incense and tapestries, and there’s the manger covered in gold, and he’s not there anymore.
You can go to Jerusalem. You can find the cathedral that’s built over the tomb, and you can crawl through the tomb and into the second room where the slab where Jesus was buried, and he’s also not there either.
So, we have to ask the question tonight, how do we find Him? Where do we find Him? We confess that Jesus is raised from the dead on the third day, that He has ascended into heaven, that He sits at the right hand of God the Father, that we see Him no more, but we also know that He’s promised that He will never leave us or forsake us, that He will be with us always, even to the end of the age.
So where do we find them? Where do you find this Christ? Martin Luther used to love to preach that the Word of God is the manger that holds the child Christ, that holds the Savior for us.
No longer is it for us to go to Jerusalem or to go to Bethlehem and find Him in a manger or in a tomb, we find Him in His Word, in His promises, in His kindness to us. We find Him in the preaching of the prophets and the apostles. You ought to think of your open Bible as a manger that is holding this baby that we also, like the shepherds, fall on our knees and adore.
We find Him in the baptismal font, there in the water, as He promised, that He will give us new birth. And we find Him on the altar, in the bread and the wine, as He promised, that He will be there for you.
The same Jesus, the same Savior, the same Theanthropos, God the God-man, the same son of David, who sits on his eternal throne. We continue to find him, or maybe it’s better to say it like this, he continues to find us, to forgive us, to release us, to save us, to call us his friends, and to bring us from this life to life eternal.
Now, dear saints, I know that this has been a tough year. For some, tougher than others. It’s a time of darkness, distress, trouble, sickness. For some, a year of death and mourning.
But Jesus has come in the midst of this darkness, in the midst of your trouble, in the middle of everything fallen apart, He has sunk Himself down into the middle of it, so that you would know that He is for you, even as He continues to be with you.
So may God grant us the fellowship, the spiritual fellowship of these shepherds, that we would rejoice in being found by Jesus, being delivered by Jesus, and being now and forever called his friends.
May God make it so for the sake of Christ. Amen.
And Merry Christmas.
The peace of God that passes all understanding. Guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.