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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you, from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. A blessed Merry Christmas to you all. Thank you, family choir members, for giving us the song and the words that put this season in perspective, the birth of God in the flesh.
And for you, brothers and sisters in Christ, welcome home. This has been and always will be your home. It is in the church where you were baptized. It is in the church where you made your good confession of faith. It is in the church where you have supped at Christ’s flesh and blood. And it is in your church, your home, where someday you will give your final confession of faith in a coffin, where the hope will not die, for we believe we shall rise again.
Now all of you got here and came tonight not because of coincidence. God moved things in this world to bring you here. He allowed your health to be what it is in order for you to have arrived safely. He also allowed things to happen out there so that your car would not break down and there would not be a wreck in front of you. He allowed you to breathe, to focus. All of these things just so that you could be here in your home. Amazing how God does that, isn’t it? Think about how you even came about. The reason you’re even here alive. It’s because your mother and father got together. Whether your father remained with you or your mother remained with you or not, you were a miracle and still are. God moved people and lives in order to bring your father and your mother together to produce you. It is no small coincidence. It is not happenstance or perchance. It is God’s divine plan.
Think about the friends whom you love and care deeply about, whom you wish to remember this year with cards and phone calls. They’re in your life not because of some coincidence. God moved people, families, jobs in order to bring them into your life. Think about that. The things in this world do not happen perchance. They are God’s design. You can think of other examples in your own mind. Things that God has done in this world, in other people’s lives, just so that you are benefited and blessed.
But most profoundly of all, most profoundly of all, are all of the things that God did in this world with people, with people’s lives, so that you are a believer in Christ. God allowed you to be given that gift maybe by your mom and dad. God moved heaven and earth in order for your mother and father to be believers in Christ. If you did not come to faith then and you came to faith later, maybe it was a friend. God moved that family and that friend to your life. A Sunday school teacher, a faithful pastor, a parochial school teacher. These people God moved around the world to put you, no, no, they in your life that you may have that faith. It’s an amazing thing. Some, it was your spouse that God brought to you to bring you the faith that wasn’t brought to you any other way. It is an amazing thing indeed. All that God does in other people’s lives, in this world’s events, for you and for your sake alone, for your blessing, for your benefit, for your gift.
Amen. The problem is that our flesh does not want us to see that. It wishes to bemoan all the things that God has allowed to come into our lives. It wishes to accentuate not the positive, but the negative, and not see God’s hand in all the things that He’s done. And the hand that is seen is not an angry backhand, but a loving, nail-pierced hand of a child and an adult at the selfsame time. God and man inviting you, encouraging you, welcoming you.
Satan spurs that flesh of ours on so that the only thing we can focus upon is ourselves. Satan spurs us to be so consumed about ourselves and about things in our life and things that have happened to us and befallen us that he, that is Satan, does not want us to see how God has done other things in our lives. Instead, isn’t that how it is? He does not want us to see the great, holy, triune God’s love for you.
You know those shepherds that stood on that hillside watching their flocks by night? They didn’t ask to have their life burst into, did they? They weren’t looking for a spiritual gift from God. They were just going about their vocation. God burst into their lives. God completely enveloped them with His presence of that angel, speaking those words, those words that went underneath their skin and touched their very soul and created faith. They didn’t ask for it. They weren’t seeking it. God came to them. And then he punctuated that heavenly chorus with the great angels from heaven that sang to them so that those shepherds would know it was no small matter that their lives were inconvenienced, that God burst into their lives, that God took control of them, that God prodded them onward, and their life, mind you, their life would never be the same.
Amen. They would forever have to tell people what people would listen to them and say, you are wacky. You did not see any angel speaking to you. Who are you but an old shepherd? You have no revelation from God. You did not see some infant born in a stable where animals were feeding and the smell of straw and dung was in the air. You are crazy. They didn’t ask for that response, but that’s what they got, because God burst into their life and took control of them.
Mary had to tell people that she was a virgin, and yet everybody could see she was pregnant. You know what they said. She had to, for nine long months, tell the world she was a virgin, and yet it was easily seen that she was pregnant. Joseph had to put up with people talking behind his back that he was a fool, because he was marrying a woman who obviously had fooled around on him, or otherwise she wouldn’t be pregnant. They didn’t ask for that in their lives. God burst into their lives. God chose to take them and use them. God did that. God moved heaven and earth, all of these things, the shepherd and Mary, for no other reason than for you to be here tonight.
To rejoice along with all the Christians of the world who have been rejoicing long before we arrived here this afternoon. Around the world. All of this was done for your sake. It is no small matter. You know that census at the very beginning of that text? Let’s see, how does that go? In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be registered. God moved the entire Roman Empire. All of its citizens, completely disrupting trade and economic turmoil, all for the sake that you would be here tonight to hear about the baby born for you. Not in any place but in Bethlehem in that stable bear. Not by any woman but by a virgin who was prophesied about in that text.
God moved all things in this world just so that you and I would be here tonight and say, Amen. Yea, I believe, O Lord. That is no small matter. It is not a coincidence, not a happenstance, not because you live in the United States, not because you have been given a specific church, but because God chose you. And what does Satan want us to do? Only look at ourselves and what’s been done to us, bemoaning that someone has been taken from us or something has been done to us and God does not see me for me.
And the text that you have heard is full of proof for you that all of heaven and earth were moved, people’s lives impacted, not because they said, oh, you know, I see that person somewhere down the line who will believe because of what’s happening to my life. But God said, I choose them so that you will believe. That is an amazing thing indeed.
And we are the recipients of such a marvelous, all-powerful, holy and righteous God who chooses to say, Welcome home. I’m glad you’re here with me again. This has been and will always be your home. I will move heaven and earth, just as you have heard me do, for you. Because I was born for you. I interrupted other people’s lives so that you would have upon your lips Jesus as Lord. And it would not be for any other reason than for my glory in the name of the one born for you, Jesus himself. Amen.
