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December 23, 2018
Jason Meyer | Luke 2:8-12
And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And 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 for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”—Luke 2:8–12
Advent Sermon #4, 2018
Introduction: Angels and Angelic Worship
One of the most distinctive parts of the Christmas story is the presence of angels. Some of our songs even name them “the Christmas angels.” It is a reference to the angels that sang to a small gathering of shepherds when Jesus was born.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”—Luke 2:13–14
Therefore, is it any surprise that we sing about the singing of the angels? Have you ever noticed how many Christmas songs talk about angels?
A lot of art in popular culture also features angels. I had an extended family member who went through a phase where they were really fascinated with angels, and they fixated on them. They collected art—mostly fat little cherubs— paintings and pillows and blankets and coffee mugs.
I remember staying at this person’s house, surrounded by these angels. I remember thinking: Some of these are cute (think kittens or puppies), but many of them just look small and bloated and weird. Either way, they are hard to take seriously. They didn’t seem to fit with what I was reading in the Bible when it came to angels.
Then I read something C.S. Lewis said (in his preface to The Screwtape Letters) that gave words to what I was feeling:
In the plastic arts these symbols have steadily degenerated. Fra Angelico’s angels carry in their face and gesture the peace and authority of heaven. Later come the chubby infantile nudes of Raphael; finally the soft, slim, girlish and consolatory angels of nineteenth-century art. … They are a pernicious symbol. In Scripture the visitation of an angel is always alarming; it has to begin by saying, “Fear not.” The Victorian angel looks as if it were going to say, “There, there.”
That comment clicked for me. Every time an angel appears it is alarming. Verse 9 in our text focuses on this great fear:
And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
Verse 10 says that the very first thing the angel of the Lord has to say is “Fear not.” People won’t even be able to hear the message because they are so scared. We domesticate the Bible. It is like taking ferocious grizzly bears and making them into the Yogi and Boo Boo Bear. A ferocious creature that strikes fear in your heart that makes you say, “Don’t maul me and eat me,” has become an annoying creature that makes us say, “Don’t take my picnic basket.” This is not the Boo-Boo-bear version of an angel, but the grizzly bear version of an angel—standing over eight feet tall and staring you down (while your life flashes before you as you wonder if he is going to charge you).
The angel says, “Fear not.” We are going to focus this morning on why we should not fear. All of the attention shifts to the message that this heavenly messenger brings. I want to unpack the phrase after the fear not: “For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10).
Outline
“Good News” is the word for gospel. Why is this message “good news”? You have to keep reading in verse 11 because the nature of the message is spelled out there: “For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
This gospel is the good news of salvation. It is the announcement here that salvation is available because a Savior has come to earth. The gospel is fundamentally and essentially good news, not good advice. It is not advice for what must be accomplished by you, but the news of what has already been accomplished for you.
That great salvation comes to us as a promise kept. To know the story of who this child is and where he is born and why he is born, one must trace the golden thread of God’s promises running through the story of Scripture. The Bible promised that the King that would come and save his people would be in the line of King David. Listen to 2 Samuel 7:12–13.
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
This King is the Messiah—the Person God would send as a ruler and Savior. We learn in Matthew’s Gospel that the very name Jesus (“the Lord saves”) is given because “he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 2:11).
The Son of David must be born in the city of David. God made that promise in another place. Listen to Micah 5:2.
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.
How does this promise of his birth connect to the promise of the gospel (i.e., something for us and our salvation)? This birth is part of the gift of the gospel. You can see this emphasis on the gift given for us in Luke 2:11, “For unto you.” This is the language of a promise kept from Isaiah 9:6.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
The gospel is a message of what God has done for us—the Gift he has given us. That is why Christianity is in a different category than all the religions of the world.
All religions have one thing in common: They offer prescriptions for getting to God. If you obey certain rules and do these practices, then you will get to God. Religion is what man does to reach God. Christianity is what God has done to reach man. Religion: Man moves up from earth to heaven. Christianity: God came down from heaven to earth. We could not reach heaven, so God had to bring heaven down to us. That is why it so appropriate that heaven’s messengers are there to tell about it. Angels from the realms of glory tell the news and sing the song: Heaven’s Lord has come down to become earth’s Savior. The Lord from the realms of light has stepped down into a world of darkness.
What is “joy?” Most people instinctively define joy as “feelings of happiness or delight.” Obviously, joy can have a range of feeling or emotion—from intense and powerful to mid-level to mild or low-level. The word here is “great joy.” The elevated nature of this joy stands out.
I recently read an author talk about an article that he read in the New York Times Magazine (Jan 7, 2007). The article was entitled “Happiness 101.” The following is his summary of the article that overturns popular perception:
It described positive psychology, a branch of psychology that seeks to take a scientific, empirical approach to what makes people happy. Researchers in this field have found that if you focus on doing and getting things that give you pleasure, it does not lead to happiness but produces what one researcher has dubbed “the hedonic treadmill.” You become addicted to pleasure, and your need for the pleasure keeps growing: You have to do more and more. You’re never satisfied, never really happy.
The Bible actually talks about that kind of joy, and the Bible’s analysis actually fits with the above assessment. The pleasures of the world are real joys, but they are never enough. They are passing pleasures. The world can offer pleasure that is like a jolt of joy, but it’s like a car battery that can’t hold a charge, so it needs to constantly be jump-started each time. In other words, in order to get the same sensation, you cannot just have the identical situation. We grow bored with “the same ol’, same ol’.” To keep getting the same sensation, we need to keep getting a greater jolt—buy something new, get more of that pleasurable thing. The analogy of a treadmill is appropriate. You never really go anywhere. You never reach a destination or a place where you arrive, you just stay on the treadmill.
It reminds me of the torture that the Nazis used to inflict. People would have to roll a large stone up a hill. And then they would roll it down the hill. And then they would roll it up the hill. Up and down. Every day. There was no purpose. No sense of satisfaction or higher purpose or point to life.
Does the quest for earthly pleasure ever feel that way? Our poets sing songs saying, “But I still haven’t found what I am looking for” or “I can’t get no satisfaction.” One book in the Bible even calls that “chasing the wind.”
It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.—Ecclesiastes 1:13–14
The Bible concludes that our search for joy under the sun is a vain or empty search. The Bible is the most realistic book in the world about the hopelessness of finding satisfaction and joy under the sun, but it is not a hopeless book because there is another way.
The search for satisfaction and joy under the sun will ultimately fail, but what if there was a joy that could come into this fallen world—something not “under the sun,” but “above the sun.”
That is the “great joy” in our text.
What is the relationship between the “good news” of the gospel and this “great joy”? Good news of great joy means, “the good news that is designed to bring us great joy.” This joy is great because it is full and everlasting as opposed to partial and passing. It is the greatest, most momentous news possible, so it should be impossible to be bored with it or unaffected by it. If the Good News does not bring great joy, then it has not been properly embraced or properly understood.
It makes perfect sense that nothing on earth could give joy that is full and lasts forever. Everything on earth is fallen. It is part of the darkness. The light has to come and shine upon the darkness, which means it had to come from outside the darkness. And the joy that comes from heaven is greater by far than any earthly joy.
For example, a 100-watt light bulb produces 2 watts of light and 98 watts of heat. One might be impressed that a 100-watt light bulb has a filament temperature of approximately 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The surface temperature of the light bulb (how hot it feels to the touch) varies from 150 to more than 250 degrees.
A lightning bolt can heat the air it passes through to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5 times hotter than the surface of the sun).
Or think about the difference between many lakes in Minnesota and the Great Lake in Minnesota (Lake Superior—consider the entire area that is the North Shore). If you have never seen a lake, then a puddle may seem impressive. In the same way, if all you have seen is a lake, you may be impressed that a body of water like Langton Lake is 25 acres with a maximum depth of six feet. But consider Lake Superior, which is 20,287,963 acres. There is enough water in Lake Superior to cover all of North and South America with water one foot deep.
But here is something even more mind-blowing. Imagine for a moment if someone could take all the water in Lake Superior and somehow fit it inside a Styrofoam coffee cup. That would be even more incredible and impressive. But it would still be a lesser miracle than the incarnation. Colossians 2:9 says, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” The whole fullness of deity (whom heaven and earth cannot contain) was pleased to dwell in a body without one drop of deity missing.
The miracle is that the extraordinary looks so ordinary at Christmas. The baby in the manger looks ordinary (not born 10 feet tall for example), but he created the womb that carried him, the arms that held him, the angels that sang to him, and the ground that supported him. All things were made by him and for him.
Is there any way that these things can be discussed without awe or wonder? Can we lecture on them in a cold, detached, clinical, monotone way? This is a great treasure! So many people are looking for the “good life,” but this is the gospel that brings eternal life and everlasting, ever-increasing joy. This is the kind of news that leads to dancing and singing and shouting. That is why the angels have to sing. The gospel is not just a newscast—it is a musical. I don’t think the angels sounded like a Gregorian chant either. They were more like a black gospel choir.
How far can this good news go? What is the extent of this good news that brings great rejoicing? It is meant for all the people. The nature of the message means that no one is excluded. All means all. Do you see why the nature of the message makes it available to all?
It is good news of what God has done, not good advice for us to do. If it was good advice, then receiving the blessing would depend upon whether it gets done or not. It is not a beauty pageant (out-perform others in appearance), merit scholarship (out-perform others academically), job promotion (out-achieve in the workplace), sports championship (out-perform athletically), or religious achievement (out-perform others morally or religiously). It is not limited to a nation or a region or an ethnicity.
It is the achievement of another. It is a finished work that anyone could receive.
No one has to earn it. No one has to do enough to unlock it. No one needs to amass enough merit before it becomes available. You don’t have to perform well enough to become eligible. It truly can be for all the people because it does not have to be earned, it just needs to be received. It is not a matter of success or failure, but receiving or rejecting.
1. Christmas and the Curse
Why did God have to be born as a baby? Why did he enter the womb? We would be confused if we started reading a story in the middle. In order to understand any story, you need to go back to the beginning.
God created the world with perfect beauty and harmony and with no sin or sorrow or death. A fallen angel named Satan tempted Adam & Eve with the thought that God is not really good and generous and loving, because he withheld one thing from them: the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of God and evil. After Adam & Eve rebelled against God, their eyes were opened, and they saw themselves as wicked. They were ashamed and hid from God. God called to them. And he decreed judgment—the curse entered into God’s good world of blessing: sin and death and thorns and thistles and sweat on our brow as we work, and pain suffered in childbirth as we bring babies into the world.
We see a world that is filled with sin and death and bloodshed. “Nature is red in tooth and claw,” our poets say. But the Bible promises that it will not be that way forever. The promise was that Someone would be born who would take down the devil and put an end to the curse.
Jesus is born as a baby in Luke 2 because of the promise in Genesis 3:15.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
Jesus had to be born. He had to be the offspring of the woman. The Bible promised later in Isaiah that the virgin would give birth to a son, and they would call him “Immanuel—“God with us” (Isaiah 7:14). So the Son of God came to earth, took on flesh, and was born as a child.
2. The Curse and the Cross
God entered into this fallen world, and Mary experienced the painful effects of the curse in bringing him into the world. In fact, the only way that the curse can be removed from this world is if the Son of God came into this world to remove it. How did he remove it? By receiving it in full. That is what Jesus does on the cross. He took our curse, and received the wrath and death we deserved. Galatians 13:3 says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’” Nature is red in tooth and claw, and to overcome that a Savior had to come who was red in nail and spear. That is why the Christmas song says, “He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.”
We were cut off from the tree of life and were cursed because we ate from the forbidden tree. In the middle of the story, there is another tree: The cursed tree, and Jesus dies upon it. He became a curse for us, bearing the curse of sin, so that we could receive the blessing of God.
The Son of God took on flesh so that he could be killable. He could not die a sacrificial, substitutionary death for humanity unless he became a human who could die. This fallen, cursed world threw everything it had at Jesus. It was a collision course on that tree (the Lord’s blessing met the world’s curse, the Lord’s light met the world’s darkness, the Lord’s love met the world’s hate, the Lord’s justice met the world’s injustice. Jesus even says that the darkness had its day and it looks like the darkness is unleashed on the light: spitting; slapping; pulling out the beard; pressing a crown of thorns upon the brow; mocking, “Hail king of the Jews”; tearing his back into ribbons with a scourging whip; nailing his wrists and ankles to the cursed tree—the cross.
Adam & Eve ate from the forbidden tree and realized that they were naked, and they were ashamed. Jesus was naked on the cursed tree and was put to shame. They tried to shame him and mock him as they gloat and shout, “He saved others; he cannot save himself” (Matthew 27:42).
But O the irony! They are right. He could save himself by calling down “legions of angels” (Matthew 26:53). The angels that terrified the shepherds could have wiped out the soldiers. Or … Jesus could save others by staying on the cross and bearing the shame, the nail, the spear, and the disgrace.
Have you ever thought about the atrocity of it all? God was subjected to more hate and pain than we can put into words. It looked like hate won over love, injustice triumphed over justice, wickedness ruled over righteousness. The darkness snuffed out the light.
But Jesus’ death and resurrection belong together. Jesus put death to death. Love defeated hate. Righteousness conquered sin. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it. Therefore, Jesus died for us, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Now he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Whoever receives Jesus, receives all that he purchased. Justice now switches sides. When the penalty has not been paid, justice needs to be served. When justice has already been served, it would be unjust to punish. God is just in forgiving us because Jesus paid the price for our sins.
The Second Coming – Blessing (Everlasting Joy) or Curse (Everlasting Misery)
The angels show up at the end of the story again. Jesus is coming again, and he is going to send his angels to the four winds to gather the people for final judgment. When Jesus comes again it will not be as a baby. Everyone will be forced to acknowledge that he is Lord. Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And every person will be gathered and separated into two groups: One headed for everlasting joy, and one headed for everlasting suffering and misery. The sheep will be separated from the goats; the wheat will be separated from the chaff. What group will you join on that day? You can know now! If you receive what Jesus has done, you will be with him forever and have everlasting joy. If you reject what Jesus has done, you will be banished from his presence forever and have eternal misery. Why is separation from Jesus the worst news possible?
One of the images that Jesus uses for hell is that of outer darkness. What does that symbolism communicate about hell? Darkness refers to an isolation—departing from something that is good like light. It is a vivid way to talk about losing the presence of God—just like heaven does not need the sun because God is the sun and the light of the Lamb.
Jesus’ words of condemnation are forceful and clear: “Depart from me” (Matthew 7:23). In other words, the worse thing that could happen to us is being away from God. Humanity was created to walk with God—to be in his immediate, direct presence. The Bible affirms that his nearness is our good. All goodness, life, joy, and love that we find here point to God’s presence as the place where all the goodness, life, joy, and love come from.
The sinful path of rebellion against God would take us away from what ultimately gives us life. It would be like removing a fish from water and removing the hydrating effect upon the gills. You watch as the gills slowly dry up and no longer function properly as it the fish slowly suffocates.
Conclusion: The Difference Between Angelic Worship and Redeemed Worship
But Christ suffered to save us from eternal suffering and give us everlasting joy in his presence. Receive him! Run to him! And praise him! We should be able to sing with even more fervent, heart-felt joy than even the angels. Why? Imagine someone swimming in the ocean and getting pulled out in a rip tide. The person tries to swim against the tide but don’t make any progress and wear themselves out. The person can’t get back to the shore. He knows that there is no hope.
Perhaps you feel despair. You are shouting and yelling for help. As you shout, a wave crashes over you and you swallow water. As you blackout and begin to sink, a strong hand grabs hold of you. The lifeguard has grabbed you and put you on his board. You make it to shore and have one of those CPR sessions. He is pumping your chest—you need to breathe. A crowd has gathered. Suddenly you start coughing up water and breathing. The crowd goes crazy, cheering!
But here is the question: Who is more thankful for the lifeguard, you or the crowd? The worship of the redeemed should be even more joyful than the worship of the angels. Jesus did not die for them. Angels are longing to look into what Christ did. They worship the Lamb who was slain. But we do it in a different way: Not as onlookers of salvation, but as recipients!
Outline
Main Point: The message of Christmas is a message of “good news of great joy for all the people.”
Discussion Questions
Application Questions
Prayer Focus
Pray for a grace to worship Christ as the redeemed who have received the gospel and rejoice with great joy!