Bible Passage: Luke 2:8 – 14
Pastor: Michael Willitz
Sermon Date: December 24, 2021

Bulletin Christmas Eve 2021

Luke 2:8-14

⁸There were in the same country shepherds staying out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock at night. ⁹An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified! ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people: ¹¹Today in the town of David, a Savior was born for you. He is Christ the Lord. ¹²And this will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” ¹³Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude from the heavenly army, praising God and saying, ¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind.”

Good News from Heaven

1. A Savior is born.
2. God is for you.

Dear fellow redeemed, loved by our God, and favored by him, and gathered by him in this holy place on this holy night,

Once again, our thoughts turn back to that first Christmas night, and to the starlit fields outside Bethlehem, and to those shepherds vigilantly watching over their sheep. If we could stand with those shepherds out in the Judean hill country under the moon and under the stars that night, what sort of conversations do you think we would hear? Perhaps we would hear a few thoughts about that edict from faraway Rome, an edict requiring all people throughout the empire to go to their hometowns and register. Perhaps we would hear discussion about the Bethlehem economy and about the impact that this massive movement of people was going to make. Perhaps we would hear reports of Herod’s latest executions, and maybe we would hear some guesses about who would be the next to fall victim to the wicked king’s paranoid rage.

It wasn’t a fairytale land that these shepherds inhabited. They lived at a real time, and they lived in a real place, a place with problems, a place with politics, a place with news from every direction. But it’s the news from one direction in particular that concerns us as we gather year after year on this holy night. The news from above is the reason why our thoughts turn back to those fields outside Bethlehem. When the sky burst open, and the glory of God poured down, and the angel spoke a message from on high, his words were for us just as much as they were for those shepherds. In a world that is buzzing with news from absolutely every direction, news about CoVid, news about inflation, news about geopolitical threats, we are gathered in this place on this night to hear the news from above. And, dear friends, we are gathered with great joy on this night, because it is Good News that we hear from Heaven.

“Do not be afraid,” [10] the angel said to the shepherds. Whatever conversation they may have had earlier that evening, all of it went silent when the angel appeared and when the glory of the Lord began to shine all around them. They were stunned. They were stupefied, but the angel quickly put all their terrors to rest. “Do not be afraid,” he commanded to those scared and speechless shepherds. “For behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people: Today in the town of David, a Savior was born for you,” [10,11].  

A Savior was born in the town of David, a Savior for the shepherds, but not a Savior merely for them alone. A Savior was born for you, yes for you, precisely for you. You heard what the angel said, he said this good news of great joy is for all people. Whoever you are, if you are included in all people, then heaven wants you to know that a Savior has been born for you.

But what kind of Savior is he? What did he come to save us from? He has not come clad in shiny armor to battle tyrants like King Herod. He has not come decked out in a white lab coat to eradicate Coronavirus. He has come, instead, as a humble newborn baby, born in poverty, then wrapped in cloths, and laid to rest in a manger. Throughout his earthly life, this theme of humility will persist. It will continue until he is placed on a cross, then wrapped in cloths and laid to rest in a tomb. He is not at all the Savior you or I would have expected, because the trouble he came to save us from goes far deeper than we had imagined.

We have a far bigger problem than any disease or any tyrant or any storm or any army or any of the thousand and one varieties of bad news in this world. All of these terrible things are rotten branches, and they all spring out of the same rotten root. At the heart of it all is our culpability before God. This world was not always the dark and terror-filled world that we see. But we chose death over life. We chose evil over good. We chose alienation from God over fellowship with him, and the fallout around us and in us has come as a result of our choice.

Yet, when the heavens opened, and God’s glory streamed down, and his messenger appeared with tidings from on high, he did not come to pronounce the eternal doom we deserve. “A Savior was born for you,” [11] he said. “You will find him wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger,” [12]. “He is Christ the Lord,” [11]. Both of those names tell us something about this child. Christ is the title for God’s chosen and anointed Servant, the one who glorifies God and brings salvation to the ends of the earth. Lord is the way that the Jews referred to the name of God, the I AM. So this baby born in Bethlehem is the Servant of the Lord, promised and prophesied throughout all the Old Testament. And this baby born in Bethlehem is, in fact, the Lord himself, Almighty God housed within the tender form of an infant.

We rejected our God, we chose to sever ourselves from him, and he responded not by abandoning us and sending us to our destruction. He responded by giving us the gift of his Son. He sent his Son to be born of a virgin and to be placed in a lowly manger. He sent his Son to live among us, to suffer our sorrows, and to overcome our temptations. He sent his Son to suffer on the cross for our rebellion and to lie in a tomb, having died the death that we deserve. He sent his Son to rise from the dead providing invincible evidence the God and man are reconciled forever.

What a gift from our God! What a good and merciful gift! What Good News from Heaven for the shepherds to receive and for you and me to hear once more tonight! In fact, at the sounding of this news, as soon as the angel had finished speaking, the heavenly host could not keep silent. Instead, it erupted in a magnificent song of praise. They sang, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward mankind,” [13].

Have you ever pondered those powerful words, “peace, good will toward mankind”? This song of the angel army answers an important question. It answers the question  “What are God’s thoughts toward me?” His thoughts toward you are thoughts of peace and thoughts of good will. In other words, God desires good for you. He is favorable toward you. He is for you. And that is a revelation that changes absolutely everything. It is good news that allows poor men to rejoice over their riches! It is good news that allows peasants and slaves rejoice over their nobility. It is good news that allows martyrs to rejoice over the life that lies ahead. It is good news allows sinners to rejoice over the righteousness that is credited to them. If Almighty God is for us, then who or what will be able to stand against us?

And Almighty God is for you. He proved it by placing his Son in the manger for you. In this baby born in Bethlehem we see the very heart of our God. A heart that beats with mercy for sinners. A heart that throbs with love for fallen mankind. It is the heart of a God who would not have us parted from him, who would not have us lost in misery forever, so he gave us his Son. He gave us Jesus. He placed his dearly beloved Son into a manger and onto a cross to accomplish our salvation. And in this, we have comfort, comfort that absolutely no amount of earthly trouble will ever take away.

This is how the Apostle Paul put it when he wrote to the Christians living in the city of Rome,

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor rulers, neither things present nor things to come, nor powerful forces, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, [8:38,39].

I don’t know exactly what news those shepherds were swapping before the angel appeared to them on that first Christmas night, but I do know the news that they were sharing afterward. “A Savior is born! God is for us!”

Ten years from tonight, I do not know what reports and what rumors and what rumblings will be making the rounds in our nation and in our world. But if the world is still hear, and if we are still in it, I know what news we will be gathering to hear and to speak and to sing once more with joyful voices. A Savior is born! God is for us! Good News has Come from Heaven to earth. God’s Light is shining in our earthly darkness. And no amount of darkness will ever overcome that Light.

Amen.

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