Bible Text: Luke 2:1-20 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard | Series: Christmas 2020 | “It will be said on that day, ‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation’” (Is. 25:9). Thus Isaiah prophesied about the day of the Lord, the coming of the Son of God. “This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” Let us be glad and rejoice.
And how could we not rejoice at the Nativity of Our Lord? Today is a day of joy. “For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given,” as we heard from Isaiah 9. The Lord has fulfilled his promises of old. Thousands of years before the birth of Christ God had promised the birth of Christ. And just because mankind had to wait thousands of years to see the fulfillment of this promise does not mean God was slow to keep his promise. Rather, the many prophecies that accumulated over the centuries offer us certainty that the Savior has indeed come. Moreover, nothing could hinder God’s prophecies and promise. During those thousands of years God’s people suffered war and exile, heard threats from enemies and threats from their own countrymen, saw whole nations rise and fall and new nations rise and those nations fall. The world is fickle and changeable and inconstant, largely because man is fickle and changeable and inconstant. And yet through all of the world’s tumult, what could stand in the way of God keeping his promise and sending the Savior? Nothing!
I’ll give you one very clear example from the readings we’ve heard tonight. You heard in Micah 5, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.” In Matthew 2, the scribes rightly understand from this passage that the Christ was to be born in Bethlehem. Except, Mary and Joseph were in Nazareth, 70 miles away from Bethlehem. Would God’s Word fail? Would the prophecy prove untrue?
Of course not! “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed… And all went to be taxed, each to his own town.” Why did this taxing take place when it did? We can guess why Caesar issued the decree: he wanted money. But is that ultimately why this taxation took place? No. This decree went out because the Lord was remaining true to his Word. That taxation got Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and God’s Word was fulfilled that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem.
To this day the Lord governs the affairs of this world. And though the world may have its greedy or perverse or malicious reasons for doing what it does, we dare not think those are the only reasons at play. The Lord has his own reasons as he governs the affairs of earth. And he is the one who rules, as it says in Psalm 22, “For kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.” And in Psalm 103, “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” So cast aside gloom and don’t take the world so seriously. Rather, sing with the psalmist, “The Lord reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!” (Ps. 97:1).
Let us be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has remained true to his Word and the Christ has come. And how he has come gives us even greater joy. The Christ has not come as we deserved. He has not come in almighty splendor to mete out justice and make sins fall back on the heads of those who committed them. If the Son of God had appeared that way, there would be no joy that God’s Word remained true. There would simply be a juggernaut of justice, obliterating every obstacle and running roughshod over us wretched sinners, who have merited nothing more from God than to be trampled back into the dust whence we sprung.
Yes, there can only be joy at Christmas when we mourn over ourselves, when we lament our iniquities, when we beat our breasts and say, “God, atone for me, a sinner.” If someone wants to be optimistic about the human race, Christmas is not the time to do it. We were so far gone that the Son of God himself had to become a man in order to save us, heaven had to stoop to earth, the Lord had to rend the heavens and come down. That says a great deal about our need. There was no new set of commandments that would reconcile God to man, there was no man or beast on earth whose sacrifice and death could cover sin, no remedy among us to cure the corruption of our sin or prevent our eternal death. The eternal Word of God, the Son of the Father, became flesh, and what was lacking among men appeared in this man, and what was not in man’s power was suddenly in the power of the man Jesus, even as he lay in the manger as a newborn.
And that’s a cause for joy. That’s a cause for “great joy,” as the angel proclaimed to the shepherds, “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.” “Shout for joy in the Lord, O you righteous! Praise befits the upright” (Ps. 33:1). “Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name!” (Ps. 97:11-12).
How dearly God loves us to give his sinless and righteous Son for unrighteous sinners, to make them sinless and righteous in his sight! How dearly the Son of God loves us to leave the light of heaven for the night of earth, to get up from his lofty throne and enter a poor virgin’s womb, to come forth covered in blood and crying out. And to do so as the Lamb of God who bears the sin of the world! That was a weight too great for us. The load of our sin was crushing us. Yet this infant, Jesus, not only bears one person’s sin, which would have immediately killed any other infant, or any strong man for that matter, but he bears the sin of every person who ever lived or would live, and Jesus does it as a baby, while simultaneously sustaining all life on earth and ruling the whole world. His are the broadest shoulders in existence, and on Christmas night those shoulders were narrow enough to fit in a manger. How dearly the Son of God loves us!
And hear what the angels sing: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace―” peace! For what can trouble us now that the Son of God has appeared in the flesh? Sin is already being carried away to the grave, death is as good as dead, and the devil flees from before the little human face of God. And Christ would fully establish that Christmas peace on the cross on Good Friday. Once more covered in blood and crying out, Jesus shed his own divine blood to reconcile us to God, “making peace by the blood of his cross,” as it says in Colossians 1. And our Lord has risen from the dead in human flesh, forever remaining our brother, forever man and forever God. This is indeed a great joy, just as the angel proclaimed.
It is the nature of joy not to be silent. Indeed, joy isn’t even content merely to speak. Speaking is not enough for joy. Joy must sing. So we hear in Psalm 92, “For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work; at the works of your hands I sing for joy.” And Psalm 5, “But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy.” Thus we sang in Luther’s Christmas hymn, “My heart for very joy must leap; / My lips no more can silence keep. / I, too, must sing with joyful tongue / That sweetest ancient cradle song” (LSB 358:14).
I’m not sure why so many Christmas hymns talk about how quiet Christmas was. Perhaps it’s because the birth of Christ did not come with the earthly fanfare that usually accompanies the birth of a king. The world would have let the birth of the Savior come and go unnoticed. In part that’s because the Son of God came so humbly. He is great, but he appeared low. He came as our frail nature could receive him, and that also means it would have been easy to miss him. But God would not have it so. The Father in heaven would not tolerate silence on the night of his Son’s birth. And so, since no earthly choir would hail his Son’s birth, or would have even known to do so, for the first time in history the angelic choir burst forth from heaven, as if even heaven were not large enough to contain their strains of joy, and their song resounded on earth, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men!”
We have learned this song from the angels, and we cherish it. We sing the Gloria in Excelsis frequently and only omit it during the seasons of Advent and Lent. And even then we never stop singing. The angels taught us to meet Christ with joy and song, and so we do every time we gather to hear his Word and receive his body and blood. And to spur on our joy as we delight musically in what our Lord has done, we most often include other instruments, as it says in the psalms, “Raise a song; sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp” (Ps. 81:2).
It has been wonderful this evening having musicians to aid our devotion and joy. The Church needs good musicians and singers. The world is a dreary and dreadful place until Christ comes from heaven and his praises resound on earth. Christ continues to come to us today, in the flesh, to rescue us from sin and death and the devil. We no longer see the angels accompany him, nor do we hear their song. And this makes sense. The Son of God did not come as a spirit like an angel, but in flesh as a man. Jesus did not give his life to redeem angels, but to redeem us. And thus the angels did not come to sing for us, instead of us, but to teach us to sing, that the praises of Christ might be on our lips, whom he has saved. And so at the end of the reading from Luke 2, the angels have ascended into heaven, and the ones glorifying and praising God on earth are men.
And thus as Jesus continues to come to us in the flesh to forgive us our trespasses and give us peace and joy, we continue to sing and make melody to him, until the day of our Lord’s appearing, when we will hear the voices of the angels once more. Then we will join our voices with theirs and our instruments with theirs, and we will sing praises to the Son of God who became man to save man, whose nativity we will always celebrate, to whom be glory in the highest and in his Church, forever and ever. Amen.