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

God is for You!

[Here are the Christmas Eve worship services of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I will post the text of the sermon later.]

The Promise is for You!

[Here you'll find, first, the video of the 7:00 PM traditional candlelight worship service for Christmas Eve from the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. Below it is posted the message shared that night. Have a blessed Christmas!]

Luke 2:1-20

Three decades after the first Christmas, the day when Jesus was born, and weeks after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension into heaven, on the first Christian Pentecost, Peter, one of Jesus’ followers, told a crowd: “The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” (Acts 2:39) 

Peter was urging that the men and women, boys and girls, and babies who had just heard the Word about Jesus should repent–that is, turn from sin–and be baptized, trusting in Jesus to be righteous enough and sinless enough to cover their sins and make them fit to stand before God and live under His favor, in this world and eternally.

Every year, in many countries across the world, families and friends gather to celebrate Christmas, the feast of Jesus’ birth. They do so in churches and nursing homes, office parties and private homes, in Christmas movies and Christmas specials. 

But only a fraction of these events, even the ones occurring in churches, have anything to do with Christmas, the day when Almighty God the Son, the second person of the Trinity–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, laid aside the glory that has been His for all eternity to also be a human being, one of us, in the Person we know as Jesus.

When people gather for Christmas dinners tomorrow, the subject they will most avoid–more than they'll avoid talking about politics or COVID-19, the causes of inflation or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez–is Jesus, the Christ, or the meaning of Christmas for both today and eternity.

But once again tonight, God’s Christmas Word comes to us in the first Christmas sermon ever preached, this one by an angel. And He tells us that the promise of Christmas is not just about some sweet-by-and-by-time-in-the-sky or about the soppy sentimentality of Hallmark movies. This “promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off.” 

Right now. 

Tonight. 

In fact, this is a message it’s urgent for us to hear and absorb at this very moment.

So, let’s listen to the sermon of the angel again tonight. 

The word angel, you know, comes to us from the Greek in which the authors of the New Testament composed their writings. The Greek word is aggelos and it means messenger. 

Angels, servants of God and humanity, are spiritual beings that God occasionally sends into the world in different guises, in order to bring messages to us. On the night of Jesus’ birth, God sent an angel to shepherds caring for their sheep in fields near Bethlehem.

The first thing the angel said in his sermon to the shepherds was this: “Do not be afraid.” (Luke 2:10) There’s a lot of swagger in our world today. People like to talk about the things they’re not afraid of. Christians do this too, confusing fatalism for faith. 

But do you know what we most fear? It isn’t illness or death or poverty. We are most afraid of God and God’s perfection! 

That’s why we don’t like to talk about God at Christmas or any other time.

When we actually come into the presence of God, we see the distance between God in His righteousness and us in our sin and selfish willfulness. We see that, no matter how good we may try to be or seem to be, we’re not worthy to be with God. We remember all the commands of God we break each day: holding other things, like our families, higher than we hold God; murdering others with our anger, intolerance, indifference, and grudges; committing adultery with our minds and words, if not our bodies; and on and on the sorry list goes.

This is why the angel’s words are important for you and me tonight. “Do not be afraid!” 

“I know your sins,” God is telling us through this angel. “But I love you anyway. I want you anyway.” 

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, God’s Word tells us. (Proverbs 9:10) But when God comes to us, as He does at Christmas, we needn’t and shouldn't run and hide!

The angel says next: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” (Luke 2:10) The Good News of Christmas is that the baby Jesus, born this night in a cave and laid in a phantne, a stone feeding trough, will also one day be laid in a stone tomb, having paid the price for our sin on a cross. 

The Bible tells us that you and I are sinners from the moments of our conceptions (Psalm 51:5), deserving damnation and death. 

But when the sinless Savior Jesus dies on a cross for us, the price for our sin is eternally paid. 

As we trust in Him, He allows us to live free of the fear of God’s condemnation! 

This is what the angel means when he says that Jesus coming at Christmas “will cause great joy.” 

Joy is life lived in the awareness of God’s grace, God’s undeserved favor and forgiveness. When you know that because of Jesus, you are one with God, you have joy no matter the hard experiences of life! 

A pastor asked for prayers for his family and himself this past week. His wife of 51 years had just died. “We grieve,” he said, “but not as those without hope!” 

We have joy through faith in Jesus, knowing that we still live in His grace, whatever our situation!

Then the angel tells the shepherds and us: “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.” (Luke 2:11) Messiah, the word in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, or Christos, Christ, in the Greek of the New Testament, are words that mean God’s Anointed King. 

Jesus isn’t a king all about winning elections, wars, approval, or news cycles. The “Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many,” Jesus will later say of Himself. (Matthew 20:28) This King rules through the love of God. It’s the same love that caused God to create humanity in His own image; that caused God to not give up on you or anybody else. 

This King has been born to you and for you. 

This King is your Savior, saving you from sin, death, and the devil. He saves all who trust in Him to live with Him today and tomorrow when you have your Christmas feast, as you visit loved ones and friends in nursing homes and hospitals, and every day of your life as you make decisions, fail, succeed, laugh, and cry. Jesus comes to be your Savior tonight and always, friends!

Finally, the angel says, “This will be a sign to you…” (Luke 2:12) God recognizes that the shepherds, accustomed to the false promises and harsh judgments of the world around them, may need more than the angel’s sermon to believe the Christmas message. 

So, through the angel, God gives a sign to confirm it. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths [like the cloth in which the body of this baby, grown to be a man, will be wrapped after becoming the sacrificial Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world] and lying in a manger [like the stone tomb in which He will one day lie and from which He will rise for us].” (Luke 2:12)

What sign will God give you so that you can believe in this Christ child? 

Today, He gives you three major signs by which you can know and believe in Christ: Holy Baptism, by which we go through death and resurrection with Jesus, become God’s own, and the Holy Spirit calls us to faith in Jesus; Holy Communion, in which Jesus comes to us, body and blood, and assures us of the forgiveness of our sin; and God’s Word, in which God speaks to us as surely as the angel spoke to the shepherds on the first Christmas!

“The promise [of Christmas and of God in human flesh appearing] is for you and your children and for all who are far off…” 

This Christmas, don’t avoid Jesus Christ amid the celebrating. 

Receive Him. 

Give your sins to Him. 

Believe in Him. 

Tell others about Him.

Rejoice in Him, knowing that in Christ, you are loved deeply and eternally by God. 

Merry Christmas, friends!

Amen

Why Shepherds? Why You? Why Me?

[This is the message prepared for last evening's Christmas Eve services with the people and friends of  Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. But something the nurse practitioner at the doctor's office called viral gastroenterits hit me yesterday, meaning that I shouldn't be around people. Living Water's worship and music director Mark Brennan shared the message while doing all of his other work. Thank you, Mark!]

Luke 2:1-18

The accounts of the first Christmas in Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels are filled with characters. 

Of course, there’s Jesus, God the Son Who comes into the world as a baby Who will one day die and rise to give forgiveness and everlasting life to all who believe in Him. 

There are Mary and Joseph, the couple chosen by God the Father to be Jesus’ earthly parents. 

There’s Caesar Augustus, the most powerful of the Roman emperors, who ordered a census in his conquered territories, meaning that to register, Joseph and Mary, both descendants of David, had to travel to Bethlehem, where the Old Testament prophecies said the Messiah would be born. 

There are the angels and the animals. 

Later, there are King Herod, and scribes, and wise men from the East who, following a portentous star, arrive sometime after Jesus’ birth to bring gifts to the Baby they perceive to be a King. 

In their way, the appearance in the nativity histories of each of these characters makes sense.

But what about the shepherds? When you think about it, the shepherds’ part in this story seems misplaced. 

It’s easy to understand why Mary and Joseph are in the story. 

Easy to understand too the presence of Caesar, who turned the lives of ordinary people upside down when he ordered them to walk distances of eighty miles or more just for the privilege of being taxed by a foreign overlord. That order meant that Jesus would be born in the right place.* 

It’s even easy to understand the presence of the livestock.

Unlike kings, emperors, and wise men though, the shepherds had no earthly power. Shepherds were poor. Shepherds had no influence. They were vulnerable. And they were thought of as among the lowlife of society. No Judean child thought, “When I grow up, I want to be a shepherd.”

And unlike the animals at the manger, the shepherds would not have been physically close to the place where Jesus was born. They had no reason to be in Bethlehem; their place was in the fields.

Yet it was to shepherds keeping watch over their sheep that God sent an angel to announce the birth of the Savior of the world. 

But God must have thought the angels were important on this night. 

And just in case the shepherds thought the angels’ message was really for someone else, just like all the other good news and happy blessings of the world always seemed to be, the angel’s message could not have been clearer. He tells the shepherds: “...I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

The shepherds weren't a Christmas afterthought on God's part. It's significant that the angel didn’t go to the powerful king, priests, or scribes in Jerusalem to let them know. The big shots in Jerusalem were too busy being big shots to rejoice over an angel pronouncing the Messiah’s birth. Besides, as Matthew tells us, it was these elites who regarded Jesus as a threat and determined that any newborn Messiah would need to be exterminated in his crib.

The shepherds have none of what the Jerusalem elites have. 

They have no power, perks, or comfort. 

Like the poor and weak of every age, their daily lives show them how vulnerable and fragile they are. 

And it is precisely to people who see their vulnerability that Christ comes. 

• He comes to those who know that they are sinners in need of the grace and forgiveness He gives to all who believe in Him. 
• He comes to those who are weak and heavy laden and offers them rest. 
• He comes to those who are rejected by the world and gives them God’s eternal acceptance. 
• He comes to the poor and the poor in spirit and gives them the riches of heaven and His presence with them always!

God sent the angel to announce Jesus’ birth to the shepherds and so fulfilled what Mary, the virgin chosen by God to be Jesus’ mother, had said would happen when the Messiah arrived. 

She had told her kinswoman Elizabeth that her soul magnified God because “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty...just as he promised our ancestors.” (Luke 1:52-53, 55)

God comes to those willing to cast aside their delusions of self-sufficiency, self-importance, and self-righteousness. 

The God we know in Jesus comes to those willing to pray, “Hallowed by Your name, Father. Your kingdom. Your will be done, Lord.” 

It is to  just such people that our Savior comes today so that He can raise them with Jesus. 

To many people--if not to most people--this will seem crazy, foolish. “But,” the apostle Paul writes in the New Testament, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things...so that no one may boast before him.” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)

Friends, the angel’s “good news of great joy” is for you. The Savior Jesus will give never give life with God to those who are too busy being busy or pretending to be self-sufficient to hear His call to new and everlasting life. But Jesus does give life to those who, like the shepherds, listen to God’s voice and follow where Jesus leads. 

And Jesus does give life to those who, broken by the knowledge that they are sinners in need of a Savior and made new by the Gospel Word that God so loves the world--God so loves you--that He gave His Son to live, die, and rise for you, replacing your sin and death with His righteousness and His risen life.

To you this day Christ has come. 

To you every day Christ comes. 

Run to Him when He calls you, then tell the good news of the Savior Who, unlike kings or scribes or presidents or emperors, is always and forever and totally for you. 

God knew that that message would mean everything to the shepherds and that because of it, they would run to see the baby and then tell others about the Savior. 

May the angels’ message given on the first Christmas mean everything to you and me too, so that every day, we run to spend time with Jesus and every day, we point others to Jesus. 

Merry Christmas, friends!

*Eighty miles is the approximate walking distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]