[Machine transcription]
The angel said to them, Fear not, behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that
will be for all people.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints of God, Merry Christmas and happy, as far as I can tell, the 2024th anniversary
of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, who has gathered us here so that we
might rekindle in our cold and impatient hearts a joy and a wonder at this thing that the
Lord has done, that He has joined Himself to us, that He has become our brother and
our friend and our Savior.
And to do that we’ll consider, at least in the service here, the preaching of the angels,
It’s the preaching of the angel to the shepherds in the field.
I was looking at it earlier today, trying to⦠just counting it up, and it’s an amazing
thing to me that Luke spends two verses telling us about the birth of Jesus, and ten verses
telling us about what happened afterwards in the fields with the shepherds.
And I think that there’s reason for this, in fact, wonderful reason and comfort for us,
Because the birth of Jesus must be preached, and the benefit is in the preaching.
The benefit is in the hearing of it.
It’s like a treasure buried in your backyard.
If you don’t know it’s there, it does you no good until someone says, hey, you should
try digging a hole over there underneath the tree.
So the angel comes to the shepherds and says, you should go look in the manger and you’ll
find Christ there.
Now, this means for us that the same benefit also comes to us because we, like the shepherds,
get to hear this preaching.
Now these shepherds, they were out in the fields.
It was a strange thing for the shepherds to be out in the fields.
Normally, in most places the shepherds would bring their sheep back to the town at night
and put them in a big pen, and then in the morning take them out.
But the sheep around Bethlehem were pretty unique,
partly because there was all these caves around Bethlehem,
and so the shepherds could kind of stuff the sheep
in the caves at night,
then they wouldn’t have to go all the way back into town,
and they’d just block them and have a fire there,
and they’d be on the lookout.
In ancient days, they would have to be on the lookout
for lions and bears.
I mean, remember King David was a shepherd
in those same hills,
And he had to have his sling ready to fight off the lions and the bears.
But by the time we get to the birth of Jesus, the lions and bears aren’t really around
too much anymore.
They are worrying about wolves or sheep thieves, I suppose, is the things they had to worry
about.
I’ll tell you what they probably weren’t thinking about.
What they probably weren’t worried about that night was that the clouds in the sky
would peel back and there would be an angel preaching to them.
In fact, it’s missed in the English, when the angel stands there before the shepherds,
it says that they feared with a very great fear.
You couldn’t get more scared than they were.
And Luther, preaching about that, says that their fear indicates that they didn’t know
what had happened, because if they knew what the angels were about to say, they wouldn’t
be afraid at all.
they’d be leaping for joy because the angels are going to preach that God is now in their
flesh.
Now, there’s three things I want to walk into, three steps I want to take in the angel
sermon, and this is the first one, that the angels are going to preach to the shepherds
and also to us that the second person of the Holy Trinity, the eternal Son of God, that
this one has now become a man.
Hebrews 2 says it like this, that just as the children have flesh and blood, that is
we have our mortal bodies, our flesh and our blood, He too partook of the same.
Jesus has become a human being.
God has become a man.
This is a wonder, a marvel.
Again Luther, I was reading a lot of this week, I mean Luther is a great preacher, but
especially at Christmas.
And he says, if we could just capture a little bit of the joy and the wonder of the Incarnation,
that the Son of God has become a man, that there would be no room in our heart for any
worry, for any fear, for any distress, for any trouble, our hearts would be so full of
joy and wonder that they could never be sad again.
In fact, Luther says that as soon as the angels see that God has become a man, that they themselves
wish that they could also become men so that they could have the same glory that God is
now their brother.
The same humanity shared with us.
But there is more than just the sharing of the humanity because even now Jesus is a man
like we are, and yet exalted in glory, sitting at the right hand of God, ruling and reigning
all things, and he could have just done that.
When it was time for the incarnation, Jesus just could have gone, I don’t know, into
the closet in heaven and found a man suit or something and just put it on and sat back
down at the right hand of the Father so that all heaven and earth would all go and worship
Him and bring Him gifts and laud and praise Him.
In other words, he could have taken on our human flesh in glory, but he didn’t.
And this is what the angels say, for unto you is born this day in the city of David.
He becomes not just a man, but he becomes a baby, a child, conceived in the womb of
Mary, born and laid in a feeding trough, in a small, small out-of-the-way town in Israel.
Dear friends, if you ever doubt the love of God for you, if you ever doubt that Jesus
cares for you, if you ever doubt that heaven smiles upon you, would you just remember this?
That Jesus, for you, was born.
That He humbled Himself to be a child.
That the One who created the world is now held in the arms of His mother.
That the One who provides food for all of the animals is now nursing.
That the One who holds the mountain and the seas in His hands is now adored by the shepherds
lifted up by Zechariah in the temple, that the Almighty One has become weak.
This is His love for you, and it doesn’t stop there.
There’s one more part of this angel sermon that I want to make sure that we think of
tonight.
The angel says, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is
Christ the Lord.
Jesus has not come into your flesh and blood and come in the humility of this birth and
grown up as the man that we read about in the Gospels.
He has not done all of this stuff just to be our friend, just to be God with us, just
to be our brother, but most especially to be our Savior.
He needed those hands and those little feet so that there would be something to nail to
the cross.
He needed that forehead so that there would be something to press the crown of
thorns onto. He needed that back for the whip. He needed flesh and blood so that
he could be the sacrifice for you, for your sins and for mine. So that Jesus has
not only assumed your humanity, he’s also assumed your sin, your guilt, your shame,
your sickness, your death, and all your fears. All this Christ has done for you.
Now, there was a risk that the shepherds would think that this good news was probably for
more important people, you know, for Herod living in Jerusalem or whatever, for the priests
and the fancy people, not for the lowly shepherds.
And so the angel presses this in to their hearts and to your hearts with this word for
you.
Listen, for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be a sign for you.
you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
God be praised, dear saints, that Jesus is born, lives, dies, is raised and ascended
for you. May this give you joy and peace that lasts to eternal life. In the name
of Jesus. Amen. And the peace of God, which surpasses all that our mind can do, strengthen
and keep you in the true faith unto life everlasting. Amen.
