[Machine transcription]
Amen.
Dear Saints of God, Merry Christmas. And may the Lord grant you that joy and that peace that comes from the incarnation of Jesus in your flesh and blood, and the peace and the kindness that He gives to us.
These words that we’ve heard from John chapter 1 are some of the most sublime and wonderful words that bring to us this mystery of how it is that God, the Son of God, can come down into our flesh. He was, in the beginning, with God. He was God. All things were made through Him. And yet this Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We’ll spend our lives considering this text and still we’ll get nowhere near the fullness of it. In fact, I think we’ll meditate on this great mystery even into eternity.
Here’s the angle I want to come at it this morning with. I saw a bumper sticker one time and it said simply this, three words, I hate people. And as I was talking to someone about that this last week, they showed me a meme somewhere and it said, I was a people person until, you know, people. I was asking someone a few months back how things were going at work and they said it’s great except for the customers and my co-workers and my boss, you know, the people.
In fact, I was talking to someone else about, and this is, I think, during the elections and especially, you know, the last couple of years of all this kind of chaos surrounding COVID and the pandemic, and they were telling me how it just seems like it’s harder to be anywhere in the world to go grocery shopping or to be out and about. Everybody looks at you suspiciously, and you wonder, especially during the fights on the election. This person was telling me that they wonder if everybody is looking at them and hating them, and they started to wonder if they were looking at other people and hating them back.
I don’t know if it’s gotten worse. It feels like it’s gotten worse. Three or four of you told me that you kind of liked the shutdowns because it meant that you didn’t have to deal with anybody. And I think that there’s something about it. I mean if we’ve been practicing what we call social distancing, then maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that people are making us nervous. Now there’s a word for this, by the way. Misanthropy comes from two Greek words, misos, which means hate, and anthropos, which means man, mankind. The hatred of mankind.
I looked it up, by the way, in my dictionary this morning to make sure that I was pronouncing it right. And my dictionary, like almost all my books are used, and someone had put a little checkmark next to the word misanthrope. And I thought, who had this dictionary before I did? Misanthrope means a hater of humanity. Now, it doesn’t mean, I mean if you have this misanthropy, it doesn’t mean that you don’t have friends, it doesn’t mean that you don’t love your family, I mean there’s specific individuals, certain parts of humanity that are fine, but it’s, you know, people. That’s the problem.
And this is a temptation for all of us. Now I know that the world is full of fools, that the world is full of evil and violent people, that the world is full of self-centered people, that the world is full of sinners like you and like me. We’re part of this mess. How often have you noticed this? How often are the things that we notice and despise in other people precisely the same things that we despise in ourselves? And if you haven’t noticed this, then it’ll be some time to meditate on the Lord’s law, to take that mirror of the Ten Commandments and hold it up in front of yourself for a little bit.
We can recognize all the evil and all the trouble out there, but it is also in ourself. We, after all, are, you know, people. But I’ll tell you, if anybody has reason to be misanthropic, it’s God Himself. Can you imagine talking with God a couple of days after He created the world and the cosmos and just asking Him how things are going and He says, it’s great, I love creation, the problem is, you know, the people. They’re the ones that are giving me so much trouble. They’re the ones that ate, I gave them every tree, every tree filled with fruit. I even gave them a tree that they could eat the fruit from and live forever and instead they go to the one tree I told them not to eat from and they ate it and now everything is dying even creation, which didn’t do anything wrong is subject to corruption, waiting for the redemption of the children of God.
If anybody has reason to hate humanity, it is God. He sees it all. Not only does he see the outward lawlessness and destruction, but the inward corruption and the violence and the lust and the greed and the rebellion and everything else that’s wrong not only with what we do, but with what we think and with what we say and with what we feel. Now, His wrath, make no mistake, His wrath is kindled against lawless deeds of every kind. But God is no hater of humanity. He is no misanthropist.
Now we know this, first of all, because He says it, because He gives His word of promise. Because even after Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit in the garden, the Lord comes along and says, not only does this mean that you have to die, but it means also that I will die. And promise after page after page of the Old Testament, father after patriarch after patriarch, one after another, prophet after prophet, the Lord is coming and promising that He will deliver His people, that He will rescue them. But then He keeps His promise.
And the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. Can you imagine it? God the Father, looking down on this mess of corruption and hopeless humanity, and He loves us so much that He sends His only begotten Son that whoever would believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life. God the Son has such love for humanity that He becomes a man. He becomes a human being. He becomes, you know, a person, your brother, your neighbor, to be your Savior and your friend.
We sing it like this, love caused thy incarnation, love brought thee down to me, thy thirst for my salvation procured my liberty. Jesus does not hate you, He does not hate humanity, He loves you. The Word becomes flesh and dwells among us. And God, the Holy Spirit, so loves you that He is pleased to dwell in you, to call you His temple, to be with you, to give you new life. God, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is no misanthrope. He is a philanthropist, that’s the other word, a lover of humanity.
He is patient. He is long-suffering. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to everlasting life. He, Jesus, is humbled, even to the point of death, even to death on the cross, so that we might be exalted and live with Him forever. That’s what He’s after. Not to escape humanity, not to get away from humanity, certainly not to destroy humanity, but to have for Himself a people that will live with Him forever. That’s what Jesus wants. Can you imagine it? He will never go into isolation. He will never quarantine himself. He will always be with you, even to the end of the age, even past the end of the age, even into eternal life and the resurrection. It’s the point of it all.
This is the point. This is the main point. This is the gospel point. This is the point that you have to take away this morning that Jesus does not hate humanity. He loves humanity. He does not despise people. He loves people, and His incarnation proves it. Can you imagine the honor that Jesus gives to you and to every other person ever born on this planet, ever conceived on this planet, every person ever to exist? Jesus gives you this great honor of joining Himself to your humanity, and being called your brother, because He loves you.
He does not despise you. He is not disgusted with you. He loves you. The Incarnation proves it. Jesus, bumper sticker, would say, I love people. And He proves it not only in His birth, but also in His death, and His resurrection, and His sacrament where He puts His body and blood into your mouth with the promise that your sins are forgiven.
Now, dear saints, this matters for us. If your Jesus loves people, then you are not authorized by Him to hate humanity. Here’s how Luther preached it. This is me cheating by, I was reading the Luther quotes in the bulletin last night, so I’m going to read one for you today. Luther preaches this on Christmas. He says, as if we would rightly consider and take to heart, we men ought to love and esteem each other heartily, even if we had no gain from it. For I do not yet speak of the use and benefit of the gospel of the Christmas when the angel speaks the following words to you as born of Savior, but only of the honor of the incarnation, the birth of Jesus.
Yes, if we would rightly take this to heart, we could never be the enemy of any man. For who would hate or harm that image that has a body and soul like my God and yours? Should we not, for the sake of this honor that God has shown us, love all men and do good to them all? Indeed, because how Jesus thinks of us changes how we think about each other. The fact that Jesus was pleased to be born of the Virgin and to suffer on the cross means that if God is for us, who could we be against?
So the joy of Christmas is, first of all, this, that God looks upon us with joy and peace and love, and then by His Holy Spirit, He starts to give us that same joy and peace and love in one another. So dear saints, let us rejoice this Christmas day. God is a lover of people, and you are a people.
So God the Son, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, loves you with a love that will carry you through all the troubles of this life so that you will be with Him, so that He will be with you forever. May God grant us this peace. Merry Christmas. Amen.
And the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Please stand.
