[Machine transcription]
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Dear Saints, Merry Christmas.
And God be praised that He has gathered us together for this joyful occasion of meditating
on our Lord’s incarnation.
And especially tonight, we want to fix our minds and our hearts on this sermon of the
angel to the shepherds.
Consider how wonderful it is that God the Holy Spirit has preserved this sermon preached
so long ago on that lonely hill in Bethlehem or outside of Bethlehem for us, for our comfort,
for our wisdom, for our life and our salvation, so that we can sit here tonight as if we were
right next to the shepherds, we can imagine the coldness of the night and the dampness
fighting against the little glowing campfire that we have set on the hill, and we can see
almost in our imagination the lights of Bethlehem in the distance and the stars in the sky,
and then all of a sudden the glory of the Lord fills the sky, and shaking, the shepherds
hear the angel preach.
Now, this little three-line sermon from the angel is full of unlimited comfort and joy
for us.
There’s all these wonderful words and phrases, good news, the angel preaches, great joy,
a Savior in the city of David, Christ the Lord.
But I would like to suggest to you this tonight, the two of the most wonderful and perhaps
In fact, the two most important words in the Sermon of the Angel are the words that you
would not expect, and they are these two simple words, for you.
For you.
I’m not sure if I asked you to circle the most popular or the most important words in
that sermon, that those are the two words that you would circle, but I want to explain
it.
And let me start like this.
I remember one time, oh, a few years ago, when I was teaching a Bible class and a book
came up that I was thinking about and I wanted to get and read, and I mentioned the book
in Bible class, and then that next week, someone that was in the Bible class came into my office
afterwards and they said, they said, pastor, look, and they handed me that book that I
had mentioned in Bible class.
And I took that book in my hand and I said, oh, this is fantastic.
This is the book I was talking about.
I’ve been wanting to read this book.
This is so great.
saying, thank you so much.
You see, I thought that they were giving it to me.
They were just showing it to me.
And so as I was holding it in my hands like this, they sort of sheepishly reached over
and they said, oh pastor, you can borrow it when I’m done if you want.
It’s not, you see, it’s not for you.
Or okay, imagine these two sentences, okay?
Okay?
Sentence number one, there’s a million dollars in the bank.
Okay.
Sentence two, there’s a million dollars in the bank for you.
Now that, that is quite a different sentence.
That is a kind of life-changing sentence.
Those little words for you make all the difference, and that is how the angels preached to the
shepherds and to us. Listen to it again. The angel said to them, fear not, for behold,
I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 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
And for you, you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.
Now God in a manger is pretty incredible already, but even that we might dismiss as an interesting
fact, something that happened a long time ago, a long ways away, but that is not the
preaching of the angels. The angels do not preach that God is in the manger, that God
is in the flesh, that God is incarnate. The angels preach that God is in the manger for
you, for you.
Now it’s kind of amazing, in some ways it’s sort of overwhelming for me to imagine this,
that all of us have taken a lot of different paths in life. We’re in a lot of different
places. All of us, some of us are young, some of us are old, some of us are in the midst
of a growing family, some of us are watching our great-grandchildren be born, some of us
are on the start of life, some of us are children just learning how to talk and walk.
We’re all in different places in life, but amazing to see that the Lord has wound all
of our paths together tonight, so that we are all here in one place, under one roof.
And as we’ve walked all these different paths, we have now carried a lot of different stuff
with us into this place tonight.
Now there’s a lot of good stuff, I mean, it’s wonderful if our families are able to
be together this night, that we’re able to be here in the Lord’s house to sing His
praises and rejoice in His mercy and hear His Word, but there’s also a lot of tough
stuff that we bring with us tonight.
There are a lot of regrets. There is a lot of shame. There’s a lot of sorrow,
especially at this time of year. You know you’re supposed to be happy, that’s
what the Hallmark movies tell us, and that kind of throws into contrast the
sadness that we carry with us. It happens a lot at Christmastime as we reflect on
the last year and we mourn those who have died. We miss the joys of our
childhood and all this kind of stuff. All of our own difficulties are put into
sharp relief, and we realize, maybe with more clarity this time of year than any other time,
that this life is a veil of tears, and that we are walking through the valley of the shadow
of death.
And under all of this, and under all of the trouble, and under all of the sorrow, and
under all of the sickness, and under all of the dying is one particular problem that we
all have.
The Bible calls this sin, in fact, the Bible is more pointed than that.
The Bible calls you and me sinners.
Now some of us know that, I mean some of us feel it all the time, but it’s easy, this
is easy to forget, surprisingly, it’s easy to forget that we’re sinners.
We think that at least we’re trying hard, or we’re pretty good, or that we’re doing
our best, and so it’s good for us to remember what the angel preached.
For us is born a Savior.
And if we work that backwards, it means that we need saving, that we are dying, that we
are guilty, that we carry with us shame, and that we deserve God’s anger.
And to us sinners who are dying, tonight comes good news.
Do you know the devil, the devil is busy trying to tempt us to think that maybe the birth
of Jesus is for someone else.
Maybe the birth of Jesus, maybe the birth of Jesus is for my grandparents who went to
church all the time.
Or maybe the birth of Jesus is for those people who are so much more pious than I am.
Or, maybe the birth of Jesus is for people who haven’t done what I’ve done, or thought
what I have thought, or said what I have said.
Maybe the birth of Jesus is for those who are not carrying around such a burden.
But the angel presses this birth all the way to you.
God is a man for you.
God is in the manger for you, and it doesn’t stop there.
Everything that Jesus does is for you.
He’s the boy in the temple for you.
He walks on water for you.
He feeds the 5,000 for you.
He rides into Jerusalem on a donkey for you.
He’s arrested and beaten and whipped and has His beard ripped out and spit on His face
and He’s nailed to the cross, all of it, for you, for you.
And He’s in the tomb, and He’s raised from the dead, and He’s ascended into heaven, and
He sits at the right hand of the Father, and now, even tonight, He is praying for you.
And if you doubt that, and if you have any room between this Lord Jesus and your own
heart and conscience, if the devil has weaseled his way in there to separate somehow this
promise from you, listen to this, because there’s one more for you.
On the night when he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread.
And when he had given thanks, he broke it and he gave it to his disciples saying, take
and eat, this is my body given for you.
And when they had finished, he took the cup.
And when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying,
Drink of it, all of you.
This is the New Testament in my blood,
which is shed for you,
for the forgiveness of all of your sins.
It is stunning, dear saints,
and especially as we look at these pictures
in the bulletin of all of the shepherds and angels
gathered around Jesus
Jesus, and the glowing light of the manger reflecting on their face, and we marvel how
it must have been to be there on that night.
We marvel that the same Jesus who was laid in the manger, the same body and blood that
was nailed and spilt on the cross, the same is here on the altar.
And just like then, so now it’s for you.
This preaching of the angel should leave no room for doubt of God’s love and God’s
mercy, for unto you is born this day in the city of David the Savior, who is
Christ the Lord. Amen. Merry Christmas in the name of the
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
