I preached this on Sunday, December 27, two days after Christmas 2020.
My
text for today comes from Matthew 1:20-21 “But when he had considered this, behold, an
angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do
not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived
in her is of the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a Son; and you shall call
His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”
As
we embrace this Christmas season of 2020, I ask God again to remind us
Christmas is not about the parties and the presents and the meals – and COVID
has certainly put a damper on all those things hasn’t it?
But
what COVD cannot do is overcome the reason for the season, and that is about Christ
Himself.
December
25 is the time many Christians celebrate Holy Communion – or as some call it –
the Eucharistic Mass. The word Eucharist means ‘Thanksgiving’. We do this
because of what Jesus said to His disciples during their Last Supper together.
Here is how Luke records it:
Luke
22:19-20 “And when He
had taken some bread and given thanks, He broke it and
gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way He took the cup after they had eaten,
saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new
covenant in My blood.”
Over
the centuries, the celebration of the Mass of Christ became abbreviated
to Christ’s Mass. Now, it is simply ‘Christmas.’ But as happens so often when we abbreviate
truth, the meaning of Christ’s Mass has devolved into what Christmas is today
in many places: Santa Clause and reindeer, and so forth. And because of the
misplaced focus, so many of us – even churched folk – have lost the meaning of
the birth of the one we celebrate.
And
that then is one of the reasons I have chosen to do something a little
different for this Christmas message two days after the Holy Day.
I
want to focus attention on that manger in Bethlehem – and then fast forward to
Good Friday. Why Good Friday? Because Good Friday IS THE REASON Jesus was laid
in that manger in the first place. As that text in Matthew declares to us,
Jesus was born to die so He could save His people from the punishment our
sins deserve.
Many
of you are familiar with the prophecy about Messiah Jesus found in the 53rd
chapter of Isaiah. That Jewish prophet penned the prophecy 700 years before
Jesus was laid in the Bethlehem manger. For the sake of time, I read only a
portion of the chapter and make a few comments relevant to the reason for
Christmas.
The
context of chapter 53 begins in the last section of chapter 52:
“Behold, My Servant
shall deal prudently; He shall be exalted and extolled and be very
high. 14 Just as many were astonished at you, so
His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form more than the
sons of men; 15 So shall He sprinkle many nations. Kings
shall shut their mouths at Him; For what had not been told them they shall
see, and what they had not heard they shall consider.”
And then Isaiah writes: “Who has believed our report?”
Now, we should ask ourselves, “Why did the Holy
Spirit move upon Isaiah to ask that question?” It was because sin-sickened and
corrupted men and women will typically and as a majority, CHOOSE to NOT believe
what God says about sin, righteousness, judgment. It’s been a problem endemic
to humanity since God warned Adam about eating the forbidden fruit. I won’t
turn there now, but you might later look at what St. Paul wrote to Timothy
about humanity’s typical choices in 2 Timothy chapter 4.
Isaiah continues: 4 Surely [Messiah]
has borne our griefs [pains that sin brings us in mind and body, in
relationships, in spirit, in death for eternity] and carried our sorrows; Yet
we considered Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted “(In other
words, many thought then, as there are those who think the same thing today,
Jesus got what He deserved).
Ahh, but how wrong they were, and how wrong are
so many today. Isaiah goes on:
But He was wounded [Hebrew:
pierced, to wound fatally) for our transgressions, He was bruised for our
iniquities; The punishment for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we
are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone,
to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him
the iniquity of us all . . . Yet it pleased the Lord to crush
Him; He has put Him to grief . . . 11 [And] by
His knowledge [e.g by our knowing Him. See Jn 17:3, Phil 3:10) My
righteous Servant shall justify many [e.g. make them guiltless,
righteous in God’s eyes] for He shall bear their iniquities.
Christmas
is when Immanuel – ‘God with us’, as Isaiah told us – Christmas is the time
when God Almighty laid aside His glory and took the form of a slave to save all
who WANT to be saved from eternal agony in the Lake of Fire.
The
phrase, ‘who want to be saved’ is the crucial part of the incarnation we
celebrate at Christmas. Not everyone is willing to do what absolutely must be done to be saved from that Lake
of Fire; And that is to trust in Jesus’ death alone that saves them from the punishment for their sins; And
obedience to Christ gives evidence of the faith that saves us.
Scripture
tells us Jesus became the substitutionary sacrifice for us and, thereby and
utterly satisfied God’s justice – His unbreakable rule – that sin must be
punished.
Listen!
Sin doesn’t just separate us from friendship with God! I don’t know why some
people – even pastors and theologians – why would they ignore the abundantly
clear evidence of God’s word to say all sin does is to separate us from God’s
friendship.
On
the contrary, sin makes us enemies of God. Scripture says it so often, I
don’t know why some people miss it. For
example, James 4:4 You adulteresses, do you not know that
friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to
be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Romans
5:6-10 6 For
while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For one will hardly die for a
righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.
8 But God demonstrates His own love toward
us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified
by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. 10 For
if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His
Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
That’s
why the manger is much more than what many relegate to children’s picture
books. It’s much more than the silent night, the holy night when shepherd’s
quaked at the sight.
The message of the manger and that First Advent is about me.
And it’s about you. It’s the message of God’s personal intervention into
history to rescue all of us from eternal torment in the Lake of Fire because of
our sins. The Christmas manger is about Golgotha’s cross looming above the
manger where the little Lord Jesus lay asleep on the hay.
The cross.
I hope you still love that old cross, where the dearest and
best, for a world of lost sinners, was slain.
Many people don’t often
think about it this way, but Christianity is a bloody, gruesome religion.
But it had to be bloody, for only blood – in this case, the blood of the
Innocent Son of God – only blood could atone for, or wash away, the sins
of the guilty.
Jews of Jesus’ day fully understood ‘Blood Atonement.’ The
ritual dates back to the books of Moses. For example, Leviticus 17:11 11 For
the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you on the altar
to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood by reason of the life
that makes atonement.’
That’s also why we read
in Hebrews 9:22 “Without the shedding
of blood there is no forgiveness [of sins].”
And that is why the Lord Jesus, during that Last Supper, took a cup and said to
His disciples, “Drink
from it, all of you; for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured
out for many for forgiveness of sins. (Matthew 26:27, 28)
Yes, Christianity is a
bloody faith. And Christ’s cross was as ugly as it was gruesome. Before
hammering spikes into His flesh, Roman soldiers tied Him the whipping post and
stripped off His clothes. Then they swung rock-embedded whips against Jesus’
back, buttocks and legs. Again, and again, until strips of skin hung from His
body. Small capillaries and arteries oozed and spurted blood with each beat of
His heart. The warm fluid tracked down His back, His thighs, His legs until the
pavement at His feet was moist with dirt and clotted blood.
Yes, it was a hideous
scene. But it was a God-ordained and utterly necessary scene. Without the shed
blood of Jesus, there could be no forgiveness of sins to the penitent. Not my
sins. Not your sins. Not anyone’s sins. As the Holy Spirit told us through
that passage in Isaiah: All humanity
has gone astray. We have each turned to our own way. But God, being
rich in mercy, laid all those on Jesus
(see Isaiah 53:6).
Our sins did not at all
break our friendship with an utterly holy God. Our sins placed us under the wrath
of God. Turn later to john 3:36; Romans 1:18, 2:5, 5:9, Ephesians 2:3, 5:6, and
dozens of other texts demonstrating our sin would have brought down on our
heads God’s eternal wrath – were it not for the sacrificial and bloody death of
Jesus the Savior.
If the Christmas Baby in that manger had not grown into the Man whose bloody
death would be our atonement for our own sins, there would be no hope for God’s
forgiveness.
Did you catch that?
Without the Cradle and also the
Cross and the subsequent empty tomb, there would be no hope for God’s
forgiveness. No hope for eternal life, but instead only an inescapable
judgment and eternal damnation facing us after the grave.
Which is why St. Paul wrote: In [Christ] we have redemption by his
blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his
grace (Ephesians 1:7).
God paid an enormous
price to save us. He paid all He could pay. His gift to you and me as described
in John 3:16 began on Christmas day,
but payment occurred on Good Friday.
Christian, listen! Be
reminded! We’ve been bought with a precious price. And so, what are we going to
do with His unspeakably expensive and precious gift?
The apostle Paul wrote these words
to the Christians at Corinth (1 Corinthians 13:11) When I
was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a
child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
Unless and until we mature from the
manger to the cross, we will never become the men and women of God that He
designed us to be, because the manger and
the old rugged cross is the true message of Christmas.
How
then ought we live, knowing the cost God paid to redeem us back to Himself? Reverently,
yes. Obedient to His Word. Of course. And many would also add, “By falling more
deeply in love with Jesus.”
I’ve
quoted this before, and it is good to quote it again in closing. It was written
by Fr. Pedro Arrupe, a former Superior General of the Society of Jesus, wrote:
Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, falling in love
[with Him] in a quite absolute, final way. What you are in love with seizes
your imagination; it will affect everything. It will decide what gets you out
of bed in the morning, what you will do in the evenings, how you spend your
weekends, what you read, what you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes
you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love [with God], stay in love, and it will
decide everything."
Falling deeper in love with Jesus is NOT something we are able to do of our own
will, strength, desire, talent, or wishful thinking. It is something possible
ONLY by the supernatural work and favor of our supernatural God.
We
are now only 48 hours beyond Christmas day 2020. Let us implore the Holy
Spirit to help us grow deeper in love with God – and that He (the Holy Spirit)
will train our hearts to reverence and obedience.
