All God Wants for Christmas

[Below you'll find the text of this year's Christmas Eve message as well as live stream video of both services from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Because our sanctuary is small, we move these services to our Mission Outreach Center.]

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

Christmas Eve: For You!

[This is the message presented during yesterday's Christmas Eve services with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. The structure of this sermon was suggested by one given by the late Bo Giertz.]

Luke 2:1-20

Among the books I’ve read that have had the greatest impact on me is a short one about the central message of the New Testament. That message, it said, is: for you. Actually, that’s the message of the entire Bible. Friends, God is for you.

He gives His law–His commands–because He wants you to see that you fail to keep His law and that You need to turn to Him in repentance. He also gives His Gospel–the good news–that tells us that because God loves you, He sent Jesus to take your sins onto Himself to give His 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 was an immediacy to Peter’s message that couldn’t 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 all this for us: for me, for you. But 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, not as members of a numberless, faceless mass of people, but as individuals for whom Jesus came to die and rise. 

Let’s look at three different places in our Gospel lesson where this 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 shepherd, 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 was saying, “but right now I am bringing it personally to you!”

The Lutheran preacher and novelist of the last century, Bo Giertz, said in one Christmas sermon that this message had a deep effect on 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 He cares about your every moment. 

No matter how high the bills pile up.

No matter how overwhelming the required readings of the syllabus are.

No matter how challenging the 1:00 AM feedings can be. 

No matter what challenges or conflicts or griefs may meet us in this life.

In all circumstances, there is joy in knowing that in Jesus, God is with you. He is for you!

The angel then tells the shepherds, “a Savior has been born to you…” (Luke 2:11) We all need this Savior. 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 condemnation for our sin and our failings. 

A man came to see me. He was single and had been conducting an on-again, off-again, on-again affair with a married woman for years. “I resolve never to see her again,” he told me, “then she’ll call me. I’m weak. I see her again, then I hate myself again and I’m sure that God can never forgive me or change me.” 

Jesus has come to free us from our self-loathing. 

He has come to save us from ourselves. 

He can set us free as we turn to Him daily for the strength to follow Him and to live in the love for God love for others for which we were made. 

The apostle Paul, after talking about his weakness in the face of his own 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, He would have been born to you, gone to the cross for you, and risen for you. 

You can’t decide to be a better person (none of us can), 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, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) 

It also tells us, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus…” (Romans 8:1) In Jesus, you have a Savior. 

There is 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 in an animals’ 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. 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 impelled to bow down to Him. In fact, God enters your life to, in the words of the Christmas hymns, “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 to the shepherds to the King and Savior of the world was a manger in a barn. 

The signs of the now-crucified and risen Savior Who comes to you today are just as simple and easy to overlook or ignore by a world flailing in sin, selfishness, and death: God’s Word and the Sacraments. 

By these signs–these means–Christ comes to us and the Holy Spirit brings faith in and everlasting salvation through Jesus the Savior to us. These are the means by which the Word about Jesus is planted within you, “which can save you.” (James 1:21) 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 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 all God wants for Christmas is you! Amen

[Videos of the two Christmas Eve worship services can be found here.]

Holy Baptism (Back to Basics: Revisiting the Catechism, Part 4)

[This week's online Midweek Lenten worship from Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, focuses was on Holy Baptism, part of our series, Back to the Basics: Revisiting the Catechism. Below is the video and the text of the message.]



In Holy Baptism, God saves us from sin, death, and separation from God. 

This is what God’s Word teaches us in 1 Peter. Recalling the global flood of Noah’s day, Peter says, “only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water [the water of the flood] symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ…” (1 Peter 3:20-21)

Some Christians, confronted by the words of Jesus’ apostle, shake their heads in disbelief. “Wait a minute,” they say. “Baptism saves us? Don’t I have to do something? Don’t I have to decide to follow Jesus? ” 

Listen: Scripture teaches that all human beings are born with sinful natures (Psalm 51:5). 

Ephesians 2:3 tells us that, “we were by nature deserving of wrath.” 

I would have an infinitely greater chance of deciding to look like Matthew McConnaughey than I have of deciding to be saved or deciding to follow Jesus. 

If you were suddenly dumped into the Pacific Ocean, your capacity to yell for help, swim, or even cling to a piece of sinking flotsam could only take you so far. You could not save yourself! 

In Baptism, it’s God Who does the deciding and God has decided through Christ to save the baptized. 

At least that’s what God’s Word teaches.

So, Baptism is life-saving, life-changing stuff! Jesus tells Nicodemus in John, chapter 3: “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again…[and] Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” (John 3:3, 5)

In Holy Baptism, God remakes us as human beings. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 5:17: “... if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” 

When God’s Word and His Holy Spirit assault chaos, including those born into the chaos of sin, new life happens. 

This has always been so! 

In Genesis 1, the Spirit moved over the waters of chaos and brought the universe into being. 

At the beginning of His earthly ministry, Jesus went to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptizer. “When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. [the Bible tells us] And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’” (Luke 3:21-22) 

This is what happens when we are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God opens His kingdom to us and He sends us the Holy Spirit, the One Whose word brings the benefits of Jesus’ death and resurrection to us and we become children of God.

But how, Luther asks in the Catechism, can water do such great things? “It is not the water [the Catechism says] that does these things, but the Word connected with the water and our faith which relies on that Word. For without the Word of God it is simply water and not Baptism. But when connected with the Word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Spirit.” 

Luther then quotes Paul’s New Testament letter to Titus: “[God] saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.” (Titus 3:5-8a)

In Holy Baptism, God’s saving Word about Jesus comes to us and remains with us, tenaciously refusing to leave us or give up on us even when we turn away from Him, when we stop worshiping God with His people, even when we cease to believe in Him. 

God will not force the baptized to believe in Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. 

But, through the indelible commitment that God makes to us when we are baptized, He will keep bringing His saving Word to us so that we might believe in Jesus and be saved. 

This is what happened to me. I spurned God and claimed atheism as my religion for ten years. But God kept pointing me back to Jesus. God refused to give up on the commitment to be my Father and Lord and Savior that He made when I was born from above at the Baptismal font!  

Holy Baptism is the saving Word of God, embodied in the element of water. Just as I had no control over when I was born, I really have no control over when I am born anew in Holy Baptism. If we are baptized as infants, we cannot be unborn even if I walk away from God. And if a person is baptized as an adult, it will still be God Who calls them out of the darkness of sin and death into the light of His loving grace and will cause them to crave Holy Baptism. (In The Large Caetchism, Luther says that if a person comes to faith without having been yet baptized, they will "not despise" the sacrament!)

In the New Testament book of Acts, we read accounts both of individual adults being baptized after coming to faith in Jesus and of whole households, including the children, being baptized. 

In the entire New Testament, nobody says, “Before you can be baptized, you have to understand things.” 

And it doesn't say, “Before you are baptized, you have to reach a certain age.” 

Instead, the apostle Paul compares Holy Baptism to circumcision, the Jewish rite by which boys eight days old, were initiated into the faith. This happened long before they could know Who God is, long before they could understand the faith.

The evidence suggests that because God wants to give us new life and unleash His saving Word in people as soon as possible that the early Church baptized infants and children. They took Jesus’ words seriously, as we do, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” (Matthew 19:24)

In Holy Baptism, God gives all the baptized a share in Jesus’ victory over sin and death. On this point, Luther quotes Romans 6:4: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”

As good Lutherans, we know that we can only be saved by grace through faith in Christ. 

That leaves the question of whether, like the man thrown overboard in the Pacific Ocean, we will stop striving and struggling and trust in Christ. 

And how do we do that? 

We don’t. We don't do anything!

The God Who comes to us in Holy Baptism sends us His Spirit to empower us to believe. “...no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,” except by the Holy Spirit,” 1 Corinthians 12:3 reminds us. 

And the God Who comes to us in Holy Baptism keeps sending the baptized His saving Word: “...faith comes from hearing the message [that is, the Good News of Jesus], and the message is heard through the word about Christ,” Romans 10:17 teaches.

The Small Catechism reminds us that Christ has commissioned His Church to baptize. “...go and make disciples of all nations,” Jesus commands us, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19) 

It also reminds us that Jesus tells us why we need to baptize. In Mark 16:16, Jesus says, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” 

However God creates faith in Christ within us, we are saved. If you've already been baptized, it is Holy Baptism that is the primary engine by which God moves us toward faith. And if you've come to faith without baptism, you will surely want to be baptized, a holy desire God will create within you. (As He did in the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts.)

Jesus commands us to baptize so that people who cannot decide to follow Him by the power of their own wills may be reborn and so that, by the power of the Holy Spirit unleashed in our lives each day, we will come to saving belief in Jesus and we will be sustained in that belief. 

That’s why Holy Baptism is so important. 

Our series ends next week with a look at Holy Communion.