Bible Text: Luke 2:1-20 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Christmas 2020 | Heaven was opened that first Christmas. Everything that belonged in heaven was suddenly on earth. The glory of God shone round about them, the angels filled the air, music meant for immortals struck their ears, and God himself was found among them. Heaven had been opened before. Jacob saw it, with a ladder coming down from the Lord and angels ascending and descending. And God had visited earth before. Abraham saw it, talked with God under the oak tree at Mamre. Angels appeared to countless men before this. But never was it like this. It’s not that heaven was opened for some brief time on Christmas, as it was for Jacob. It was opened forever. And it wasn’t a vision the shepherds saw. They saw heaven, everything of heaven, on earth, and they saw it awake, with their own eyes. And God didn’t merely appear in human form and talk for a time and then leave. He became human, became a man, a little baby in a manger, to remain a man, one with us forever, our Brother. And heaven wasn’t opened simply to a few people two thousand years ago. It was opened to all people of all times. This is what the angels preached: “Good tidings of great joy which will be to all people.”
The angels are intent on making this point, on consoling troubled minds, on removing doubt: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. The Lord. Do we understand the inexpressible joy and wonder of this statement? The Lord, YHWH, the Creator of all things. He is a baby. He is born of the virgin. He lies swaddled in a manger. And the angels sing glory to God and peace to men, because this Christ, the Lord, opens heaven to you. The song they sing they’ve held in for ages till the fulness of time had come. Now they sing it. Because God shows His face and man sees His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And now, even as the angels sing, the baby begins bearing the sin of the world, even as they sing joy to the world, the baby’s road to the cross is marked well by His eternal Father. And no one looks down in more pleasure upon this scene than the Father Himself, who sees His Son fulfilling their eternal love, already beginning to win children of God by His perfect obedience. And so He spurs on the angels and the angels sing with fervor and heaven is opened to all.
We should reflect for a minute on how great a gift this is – that heaven is opened. Because it’s opened to us, to sinners. It’s announced by angels. You know the first appearance of angels in the Bible. It’s precisely the opposite, it’s to bar the way to heaven, bar the way to paradise. Adam’s fall, with which we have agreed by every sin we’ve ever committed, joined in his disobedience from our mother’s breast, Adam’s fall was met immediately with curse and pain and regret and shame and death, all of which we too have felt and done and suffered. God wasn’t unjust or severe when He cast humanity away from His presence, out of paradise. He was God. He did what God does. Holiness is repulsed by the unholy, just as water cannot help but wet and fire cannot help but burn. God cannot help pushing evil away. And we wouldn’t want a God who could. And so the angel blocked the way from paradise with a flaming sword. This is the Bible’s introduction of angels to us. They block us from heaven and from God.
So to see here angels announcing heaven opened, beckoning us to enter right in, to look God in the face without fear, to possess peace and joy and the goodwill of God, is to see what sinners should never have hoped to see or expect. But it’s what pleased our God in the highest. This is the Son in whom He is well pleased, who will pay to the very last for every sin of every sinner, the full satisfaction for all, for everything that has ever offended our God, to pay it all on the cross, and wipe away the wrath of God that stands against us. This is why the angels sing peace. Because even then, when Jesus was just a little baby, it was as good as done. The fulness of time had come. God was man, man to deliver.
And now there is no sinner for whom heaven is not open. And that means you. Though you share in Adam’s corruption, were born in sin, Immanuel has now been born for you, and his perfect birth covers all that is lacking in yours. If your eyes have obsessed over the things of this world and your heart has idolized mammon, see God in the flesh, poor, in a manger, He who was rich lying there in poverty, rejecting all earthly comfort to bring you the true riches of his grace. If your sinful heart has lusted after filth, see here the pure Christ-child, born of the virgin, whose purity shines brighter and dispels all the darkness of your sin. If you have nursed your pride and wallowed in your own self-worth, behold the Lamb of God, who humbles himself, empties himself, and comes as a servant to do all things for His Father and for you. And even if you are the worst of all sinners, rejoice now to see this child, because there is no sin He has not come to wash away and no sinner He has not come to save. Heaven is open.
There are many who say, “Heaven is open,” but end up closing it in the next breath. Heaven is opened, they say, because Christ has taught you the way, and if you follow his teaching and do enough good, then you will see heaven finally open to you. Or heaven is opened, because Christ has given you grace, so that if you choose him and give your life to him and live according to his word, then in the end you’ll find heaven open.
But that would mean heaven is really closed, until you do something to open it. This is not what the angels preach. Take this to heart! The Christmas history presents us with heaven opened. Literally. Wide open. There is nothing you need do to make it open wider. The gates are flung wide and God puts no barrier in your way. This is why heaven is so often pictured as a feast and the servants are sent out to welcome people in, “Come, the wedding feast is ready;” and the master of the feast even commands, “Compel them to come in.” There is nothing to do but happily enter in through wide-open gates, to receive what the angels preach in faith, and, with the shepherds, come and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to you.
And where are these gates of heaven? They’re right here. Here God meets you. Here the angels sing. Here where Baptism makes children of God, where the glad tidings of great joy are preached, where the Savior dwells with His body and blood, this is the gate of heaven. Right here! Jacob heard God talk to him from heaven and then named that place Bethel, the house of God, and the gate of heaven. How much more should we realize what we have here, that here is the gate of heaven, when here God not only talks to us, not only appears to us for a time, but has joined our human race, has borne all our sins, has given us His Holy Spirit, and now comes to us here, feeds us with His own body and blood, and stays with us always to the end of the age?
Heaven is not just open, we have already entered in. Just as heaven came down to earth that first Christmas, so it comes down to us now. All that is left is for this mortal to put on immortality and for this corruptible to put on incorruption. The eyes of the flesh can’t see it. But faith knows what our eyes will soon see. Nothing is lacking. We sing heavenly music. We are surrounded by angels, a heavenly host. The Lord Jesus Himself is with us. Saints, who look like sinners but are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, stand beside us. The joy of heaven is already in our hearts, the peace the angels sing, the goodwill of our God smiling on us.
And though this peace and joy is but as a drop now, it is more than enough to refresh us in this desert until it flows as a river in paradise. And though we still do not know how we will appear in heaven, we know that we will be like our Lord. And though our flesh still weighs us down, and though God’s peace and goodwill seem sometimes hard to see through the sorrows and cares of this world, and though our own good works and virtues are still so sadly incomplete, yet Christ our dear Lord shines the brighter in the darkness, and His righteousness is perfect and it is ours now, and the angels’ song has been commissioned by God Himself for you to hear, to ponder in your heart as did the virgin, peace, goodwill to men, for unto you this day in the city of David is born a Savior which is Christ the Lord. This peace is yours, God is reconciled, He is for you, He has opened heaven to you, and everlasting rest without toil awaits you, everlasting fulfillment without boredom, everlasting peace without a troubled conscience, everlasting righteousness without a speck of sin. These await you even as you need not wait to experience heaven on earth. Look around in faith and see what God sees, the angels and saints around you, the Lord Jesus in your midst; and join with the heavenly hosts to sing the songs of angels, and dine with your Lord in his heavenly feast.
Heaven is open. Merry Christmas. Amen.