Luke 2:1-20
The message and meaning of Christmas can be put simply. The very simple message is this: God is for you.
Now God gives His law–His commands, of course, because He wants you to see that you and I fail to keep His law and, because only perfectly righteous people can live in God’s presence, you are in dire straits. You need to turn to Him in repentance.
God also gives His Gospel–the good news–that tells you that because God loves you, He sent Jesus to take your sins onto Himself so that He could give His perfect righteousness to all who believe in Jesus.
In the first sermon delivered by a Christian preacher, the apostle Peter tells the crowd who just have heard the Law and the Gospel: “The promise [of the Gospel] is for you…” (Acts 2:39) There’s an immediacy to the Christmas message and to the message about Jesus Christ, that, despite how hard our secular world tries to ignore it, cannot be avoided.
One reason Christmas has become so meaningless for most people is that the miracle of God becoming human to destroy sin and death for all who believe in Him is lost. We forget that God did not do all of this so we can engage in a frenzy of materialism and self-indulgence once a year.
Instead, God became human at Christmas, then went to the cross and rose from the dead for us: for me, for you.
When you hear Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, you can’t miss the message from God that the promise of Christmas is for you individually, not as members of a numberless, faceless mass of people, but as particular people for whom Jesus came to die and rise.
Let’s look at three different places in Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth where the “for you-ness” of Christmas is underscored..
An angel came to shepherds. Although in the history of God’s people, shepherds were highly regarded, by the first century AD, nobody looked up to shepherds. Shepherds were generally seen as lowlifes. The angel tells the shepherds on Christmas night: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people…” (Luke 2:10) “This news is going to bring joy to all sorts of people,” the angel is saying, “but right now I am bringing it personally to you, the very people the world looks down on!!”
The Lutheran preacher and novelist of the last century, Bo Giertz, said in one Christmas sermon that this message deeply affected the shepherds. The shepherds could see that “God cared about them. God wanted to help them. In the midst of the dark and the cold, during their hard and heavy work, in the midst of all the burdens life had put on them, God came so close to them, so near, and did so much in order for them to understand…It really was good news.”
In Jesus, God is near to you too.
He wants to help you too.
God with us–Immanuel, Jesus–is with you and cares about you every moment.
In all circumstances, there is joy in knowing that in Jesus, God is with you and God is for you!
As I prepare to retire in one week, I wonder how I will do. So much of my identity has been wrapped up in my identity as “pastor” these last 39 years.
But Christmas reminds me that God long ago gave me another identity when I was baptized into Christ and blessing was pronounced over me by Reverend Borton: “Mark James, child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” Long before there was a Pastor Mark, there was a Mark whom God made His child because, as Christ demonstrates, God is the God Who is for sinners like me and you.
The angel then tells the shepherds, “a Savior has been born to you…” (Luke 2:11) We all need this Savior because we are all sinners. And there are days when all of us feel like failures: as parents, grandparents, spouses, friends, children, employees, bosses, and human beings. Jesus comes to save us from all the condemnation meted out against us by the devil, the world, and our sinful selves. He saves us from condemnation for all our sin and our failings.
The apostle Paul, after talking about his weakness in the face of his sin, cries out: “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25)
Friends, Jesus the Savior has been born to you and for you! Even if you were the only person in the universe who needed saving, Jesus would have been born to you, gone to the cross for you, and risen for you. That’s how important you are to God!
In this time of year, when you’ll be encouraged to make new year’s resolutions, I hope you won’t consider me a Debby Downer when I tell you that you are incapable of deciding to be a better person. You are incapable of doing it. You can’t make a decision to not be a sinner. You cannot decide to follow Jesus. You cannot decide to be a good person. None of us can. We are bound to acknowledge our vulnerability and our utter lack of invincibility. But Jesus can save you and make you a new person as you daily follow Him. (Luke 9:23)
God’s Word says, “If anyone is in Christ [that is, if anyone is baptized into Christ and lives with Christ in daily repentance and renewal], the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
The Word also tells us, as we mentioned a few days ago, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1) In Jesus, you have a Savior. There is absolute joy in that!
The angel then tells the shepherds: “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12)
There were likely many babies in Bethlehem that night, their families back in their ancestral town to be counted in the Roman census. But it’s equally likely that none of the others were sleeping in an animal’s feeding trough.
And who would expect the One the angels described as the Messiah, Savior, and Lord to be in such a place?
You’d expect such a King to be in a palace in a crib covered in gold, attended by armies. But that isn’t how the God Who is for you operates. That is not His M.O.
He enters your life not to intimidate you or force you to bow, although when you see Him in His holiness and perfection, you will inevitably feel compelled to bow down to Him.
God enters your life to, in the words of the Christmas hymn, “cast out [your] sin and enter in”--into your life with forgiveness which, when received by faith will make you righteous in God's sight forever! And so, on the first Christmas, the simple sign that pointed the shepherds to the King and Savior of the world was a manger in a barn.
Today, we don’t need signs. Instead, Jesus comes to us directly in God’s Word and the Sacraments: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Through them, we receive the forgiveness of our sins and saving faith in Jesus, the Savior Who is for us. This too is our joy!
In the weeks before Christmas, we may ask the people in our families and circles of friends for their Christmas lists. It turns out, God has a Christmas list too. You, friends, are on God’s Christmas list. You are who Jesus came to seek and save at Christmas.
This Christmas, whatever else is going on in your life or in this world, know that in Christ, you are deeply loved and that, in Him, there is forgiveness and everlasting life with God.
As Jesus says elsewhere: “For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day.” (John 6:40)
In Christ, you can turn to the God Who is for you.
The Savior in the manger shows us that, to paraphrase Mariah Carey, all God wants for Christmas is you!
Merry Christmas, friends.
Amen
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