Luke 2
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Hey church, it's always a joy and privilege to speak at third. Let me add my prayers to Alex's for Greg and Mariah. Lord, we thank you for Greg and Mariah and how important they are to this church. church and how much they've served us. Help us love and surround them, Lord, with prayers and concerns. We pray for Mariah's mom. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. And Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight. Oh God, our rock and our redeemer.
In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I know it seems like we're celebrating Christmas in June. But that's the thing about preaching through a text, right? I love that. I love that we're going through the book of Luke, that the Bible drives the message rather than the calendar or merely just what the preacher wants to preach or the day. Say, I don't know, like Father's Day. I love that.
Now, it can get you in trouble at times. I had a friend, a pastor who was preaching through Corinthians and came to the passages in Corinthians on divorce. It happened to be on Mother's Day. He might want to change that one around. But by and large, we like to go through the text and preach about it. And so, I want to preach this morning from Luke 2. I'm going to select a small passage out of Luke 2, which is the passage for today.
Greg will fill in more from Luke 2 later. And in keeping with the theme of Luke, of course, we're singing hymns and songs about Christmas that we normally sing with Christmas. There is one hymn that we really only sing at Christmas time. The others are worthwhile to sing throughout the year, like the ones we've sung already. But it's Silent Night, Holy Night. Are you familiar with this hymn? Now, we preach here at 3rd expositionally.
That means we preach through a passage of Scripture and explain what it means. And I'm going to exposit this hymn, Silent Night, Holy Night, a little bit before we get to our text. We will get to a text. But let me read it for you. Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin, mother and child, holy infant, so tender and mild. Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace. Pretty good.
Silent night, holy night, shepherds quake at the sight. Glories stream from heaven afar. Heavenly hosts spring, alleluia. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born. That's a good stanza. Silent night, holy night, Son of God loves pure light. Radiant beams stream from thy holy face. With the dawn of redeeming grace, yes.
Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Jesus, Lord at thy birth. Silent night, holy night, Wondrous straw, lend thy light. With the angels let us sing Alleluia to our King. Christ the Savior is born. Christ the Savior is born. Not long after arriving in Iraq, our new home, Leanne, my wife, and I saw fireworks from our 15th story apartment.
We popped some popcorn and pulled out lawn chairs to watch from our dusty balcony. It was an amazing display. I've never seen such powerful explosions and so low to the ground. Oddly, the blasts were all one color, orange. While enjoying the display, we received a phone call. Mac, this is Betsy. Hi, Betsy, I said brightly. Betsy was a member of our small local expat church, which I pastored.
She directed an aid and relief organization in Iraq and regularly navigated war zones. Mac, I'm calling to tell you that an ammo depot near your home has taken a hit. Oh, I said, with sudden realization. We were watching it from the balcony. I didn't mention that we thought it was fireworks. Mac, Betsy said, with a firm and serious tone, those ordinances can travel for miles. I want you to get off the balcony now.
Oh, right, I said. I grabbed Leanne's elbow to guide her to safer quarters. Oh, and Mac, Merry Christmas. Yeah, Merry Christmas. Not exactly a silent night. You know, the words from this well-known German carol, Silent Night, Holy Night, gets at least half of it right. In our case, it was certainly bright. Silent, not so much. Yet in some ways, in some ways, I wonder if that night on the balcony was more like the arrival of Jesus than the hymn.
Loud, more powerful than we knew, a bit dangerous, and unprecedented, unexpected. Silent night, holy night shapes many people's perspectives about the birth of Jesus and the land to which he came. It's a hymn we sing at Christmas only, perhaps. You have fond feelings for this hymn. I do. It's a global favorite. I remember walking through the malls of Dubai and hearing it on the loudspeakers and the dish dashes and burkas.
The lyrics and the melody are memorable and soothing. They linger in your mind. And as a child, I have those memories of passing the candle from one to the next. The hymns and the words have endured over time and they have significantly influenced Christmas. So it's good to sort of exposit these words. Many of us would find the words of this hymn overly sentimental and slightly odd, kind of mixing speculation with truth.
And I understand, I hate to be a wet blanket, but the speculation that the birth was calm is a stretch. I mean, after all, the arrival of Jesus came in the same way. All babies are born. Cries of anguish. Jesus was a real baby. He cried too, like any newborn. The idea that radiant beams stream from his face certainly contradicts biblical record, which emphasizes Jesus' plain and ordinary appearance. Jesus did not attract us to him by his looks, even as a baby.
You guys have seen newborn babies. Most of them look like Winston Churchill. Behind the scenes in Bethlehem, King Herod nurtured his murderous heart, plotted death for any kingly threat to his reign. It's hard to imagine the animal stall where Jesus was born as being well-lit. I've been in the tent homes of refugees in Iraq who were torn from their homes and crammed together with their animals after fleeing brutal wars waged by cruel dictatorships it's dark, it's dirty it's not much different from the conditions of the Christ child which is all to say the night that Jesus came and that night on our balcony we're more typical of the Middle East than sweet hymns And you don't have to look further than this morning newscast to see that that is true.
The two composers of Silent Night, Gruber and Moore, were not sentimental people. Gruber was a simple school teacher. He wrote the melody, Moore, who ministered to the poor as a young assistant priest in a parish, wrote the lyrics. We can forgive a young celibate priest for not knowing much about newborn babies. On the other hand, Gruber and Moore did know hardship.
As citizens of Austria, they had lived through the wars and devastation that started with the French Revolution in 1792, and then the Napoleonic Wars that followed and didn't end until 1815. Can you imagine? 25 years of brutal war that claimed millions of lives, half of which were due to sickness. It's hard to blame Gruber and Moore for yearning for peace and calm. So we should not be surprised that their hymn, as in many Christmas traditions, don't quite square with the biblical record from the Bible.
And what's maybe surprising is how much the hymn gets right. So let's look at the passage of Scripture that they drew from in the book of Luke in chapter 2 that shaped Moore's and Gruber's understanding of Jesus' arrival. You might turn there. It's on page 857 in the Red Pew Bible. We're going to look at Luke starting in verse 8 here in just a minute. Luke tells us, just for background, that the parents of Jesus, Joseph and Mary, we've been looking at, traveled to Bethlehem, to their ancestral town, to be counted in a census.
It was not a joyful visit. They were forced to go by Caesar Augustus in faraway Rome. He was levying taxes on them. Joseph and Mary, who were humble and of modest means, but descendants of the great King David, both of them, traveled to Bethlehem. Little did Caesar know he was but a pawn in the divine global plan to bring a young couple to that very city that was prophesied to be the birthplace of the Messiah. Travel was difficult for Mary since she was in the late stages of her pregnancy, and to make matters worse upon the arrival of the town, they had no place to stay. I'm sure Joseph is a good father, tried to do his very best, but they ended up staying in an animal shed and it was there that Mary gave birth to her firstborn son you all know this story she wrapped him in simple strips of cloth called swaddling clothes laid him in a manger a feeding
trough for animals you know we love rags to riches stories but inexplicably to the human mind this is a riches to rag story more about that later the subject of the hymn of course revolves around jesus nearly half of the silent night hymn though is about the encounter with angels and the shepherds and that's that's what i want to look at let's look at this biblical text starting in verse eight 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 the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of hosts heavenly hosts praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased when the angels went away from them into heaven the shepherds said to one another let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us and they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger this of course is where the hymn sparkles because it aligns with the biblical text They tell the same story.
I have two points, two sections about this passage. The first is the shape of faith. And the second is the shape of holiness. The shape of faith, number one. And two, the shape of holiness. so point one shape of faith the angel's message was one of comfort and joy fear not the angel said for behold i give you good news of great joy that will be for all people now we need to forget the chubby cherubic figures with tiny wings this powerful being is more like god's warriors and he's not flapping about in the air but directly in the fields with the shepherds just one angel his presence is awe-inspiring and it's terrifying and then the angels reveal
this astonishing news for unto you is born this day in the city of david a savior who is christ the lord if this statement is true this marks the pivotal point in human history the long-awaited Savior the Messiah has arrived to reconcile God and humankind the birth of Jesus was filled with meaning some might say coincidences but when you start adding them up there's just too many coincidences to be random for instance consider the place Bethlehem as the angels say it's the city of David the location foretold in the Old Testament as the birthplace of the Messiah that we read about in his book in the Old Testament the prophet Micah predicted that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem
hundreds of years before this event in Micah 2 furthermore Jesus' birth fulfilled ancient prophecy directly concerning him to the promise God made with King David that the Messiah would be one of his descendants. Both Mary and Joseph came from the line of King David. Greg has outlined that for us in previous sermons. And we see prophecies of both place and lineage perfectly fulfilled.
The Messiah from the line of David was born in Bethlehem. Or consider the shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem. No author of that error would have ever tried to concoct, who was trying to concoct a story, trying to make up a story about Jesus, would have ever selected shepherds as the initial recipients of the news. People of the day viewed shepherds as rough individuals on the fringes of society. They were often dirty. They smelled like sheep.
Frequently, people perceived them as thieves. Nevertheless, these men embodied the role that Jesus was destined to play. The Bible states Jesus would be the shepherd of his people just as King David had been centuries earlier. And David had been a shepherd boy who would and could lead his people as their ruler. It foreshadowed, all of that foreshadowed Jesus and his arrival, who would be called the shepherd of his people by John in chapter 10, verse 11.
What better way to showcase God's love, brothers and sisters, than for the humble and the marginalized and God's disregard for social standing than his son's rough beginnings in life on earth. The common birth, of course, is not common in heaven. The significance of the event makes the universe come alive. New stars shone, otherworldly beings praised the newborn son.
The shepherds, despite their initial fear, received the message of immense joy from the angel of the Lord who pierced an ordinary night with extraordinary light. An especially shocking part of the angel's proclamation is that this message, the message of salvation was intended for all people not just the Jews and in many ways the arrival of Jesus was a statement that God calls all people to himself regardless of their ethnic or religious background and as a sign to confirm this incredible news the angels tell them you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger this humble sign confirmed the angel's message to the shepherds because we don't know how long the shepherds looked for the baby in Bethlehem
but when they found them the sign was obvious because we expect nobody in that town had put a baby in a feeding trough for animals then this one angel this one angel in the field is joined by a vast multitude of heavenly hosts with him in the field. Great army of angels all praising God. The brilliant glory of the Lord shone down on them.
The song echoed through the night, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. Today I think all of us yearn for peace in the world. The most crucial peace that Jesus brings, though, is peace with God. Humanity's separation from God due to our sin is our greatest problem. When the angels speak of peace, they don't merely refer to peaceful inner feelings, although that may follow.
They proclaim an offer for a relationship between God and us. It has the potential to end the strife between us and God. This peace with God becomes the foundation for all other forms of peace. Perhaps you've seen the ironic Christmas cards depicting the shepherds, tending the flocks, the angels in the sky, above them blowing horns. The caption usually reads, peace on earth, goodwill to men.
Yet somehow these Christmas cards omit the thought Luke clearly expresses peace among those with whom he is pleased. This conveys really a significant different message than the Christmas card. So upon reflection, we're confronted with these and really three essential questions. First, what does it mean to be among those with whom he is pleased?
The Bible gives us one perfect answer. The writer of the book of Hebrews states that we can't please God without faith. In Hebrews 11, verse 6. So those who please God are the ones who respond to him in faith. Which leads us to the second question, faith in what? You know, faith is only as good as the object in which you place it.
The faith we're required to have for peace with God involves knowing and believing that from the moment of his birth, lying in a simple manger to his death on a cross, this child was already king and savior and lord the bringer of redemption a convergence of all the images that had gone before him in the centuries previously the images of who the son of god was meant to be a suffering servant and as the hymn says this is the dawn of redeeming grace then a third question really that must confront us finally more personally are you willing to respond to jesus in faith like the shepherds who heard the message they went to find the savior in jesus god has come to us and met us where we are could there not be a more beautiful image of
the incarnation. Peace with God has been offered throughout the ages, even to this very day as you hear it in this sermon, through Christ's work to come, to live, to die, and to be raised again. That's the shape of faith. For you to respond to this Savior. Second point, the shape of holiness.
As we see bombs blowing up Israel and Iran, you must understand that I have Christian friends in both places. Both places. Christians who love Jesus, it's a horrible thing, it's unholy. I've seen it, I've known it personally. Our world is broken.
Our world is unholy. Today you're going to see something miraculous, the baptism of a woman from Iran. We rejoice, too, with Robinson's family and their baptisms. But you should know that when a citizen of Iran is baptized, not when they proclaim Christ, but when they're baptized, it's a sign of treason. Treason. And people are put to death in Iran for baptism.
So you, church, have a great privilege this morning. Traveling in the Middle East is difficult. And on occasion, I needed to travel from the United Arab Emirates, where we lived for 16 years, to Israel for conferences or meetings. And though the distance is not very far, it seems short, it required more than just getting out a good copy of Google Maps.
Let me tell you how difficult that is. So on one particular trip, going to Jordan before the UAE had diplomatic relationships with Israel, I had to travel to a country that did have relationships, which was Jordan, and then I had to catch a bus from Amman and cross the King Hussein Bridge. It's a very short but diplomatically important three-mile trip across a bridge to a taxi station in Israel and then hailed a taxi crammed with Palestinian men to finally reach Jerusalem.
This complicated route, of course, reflects the region's political complexities. And during one trip, to make matters more interesting, I traveled during the second intifada, the second uprising in Palestine, in that area. that sort of dawned on me when I realized I was the only person on the bus across King Hussein Bridge, when normally it's packed with tourists and pilgrims. Now, being in Israel during the Intifada, you'll have to understand, having lived there, was a great opportunity to see the sights without the crowds of tourists.
So I was not there. I was there on ministry business. But typically, Israel's most iconic sites are filled with visitors from around the world. So if you visit during a normal tourist season, you'll encounter long lines of pilgrims at places like the Western Wall or the Church of the Holy Septicur or my favorite, the synagogue at Capernaum. Not so during the Intifada. The sites were deserted and so empty, in fact, that when I visited the legendary tomb of Jesus, the keepers of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher offered me the opportunity to spend the night there in the legendary place of his burial.
Imagine that. But the tomb was cold and creepy. and the warmth of the hotel bed beckoned and I wondered at times if I hadn't missed a golden opportunity but yet to risk being a wet blanket again there's no guarantee the actual tomb of Jesus was really there you don't really know and besides there's nothing special about the tomb anyhow aside from remembering Jesus and the astonishing historical and archaeological significance but the physical tomb itself has no magical significance and it imparts no holiness.
There's no pilgrimage that you can make physically that imparts any sort of holiness. The third and fourth words of Silent Night, Holy Night are about Jesus' arrival on a holy night. And that's because the core meaning of holy is to be set apart. So when God sets apart a place, a land or a day, it's holy. The temple is holy because God set it apart. They're separate from other places, lands or days.
That's what makes them holy. And what makes Christmas holy on the arrival of Jesus thousands of years ago is that it's the most remarkable occurrence in history. The Messiah, Jesus Christ, God's son, was born as a baby. That day was set apart by God with his complete foreknowledge. And thus, the hymn writers write of a holy night, and they're correct to call it a holy night. However, the word holiness encompasses far more than simply being set apart.
We might know the song, we might sing the song, we might read this passage, but most people are hard-pressed to understand the meaning of the word holy. Holy cow, how could we? I mean, it's such an important word, right? That's because it also means to be pure or perfect. Holiness is the state of being perfect, as in holy is the Lord. And that by definition, the holy land is not holy.
Much evil has been done in those lands. But more to us personally, much like the holy land, we humans are far from holy. Deep down, we know this. We don't have to stare very long at our hearts to see how much holiness we lack. We even devise sayings that dismiss holiness. Boys will be boys. Well, nobody's perfect.
She's holier than thou. We even make fun of holy with exclamations like the one I just used, holy cow. But don't dismiss holiness. It's critical to our understanding of the true meaning of Christmas, the true meaning of this passage. Perhaps the best way to understand holy is to understand the opposite of holy, which is sin. Now, unfortunately, we don't understand the word sin very well either.
In today's world, sin is often linked to fun and parties and pleasure. Las Vegas is nicknamed Sin City thanks to the anything-goes attitude towards sex and gambling and fountains of alcohol. But that doesn't really get at the meaning of sin. It may come as a surprise, but the greatest root and the greatest sin is unbelief. That unbelief, that unbelief is a condition of the heart.
And there's two overarching ways in which unbelief is the root of sin and our unholiness. First, we don't believe that God has our best interests at heart. We don't believe He loves us. Brothers and sisters, He loves you in the morning sun and the evening rain. He loves you without limit or breaking point. He will always love you.
We fear that God's ways harm what we consider to be best for our lives rather than believing that God's ways will lead us to an abundant life. That's the story of Adam and Eve in the garden, isn't it? The evil one Satan convinced our ancient parents that God did not want what was good for them. Satan fostered unbelief in God. For instance, when God says not to commit adultery, it's not because he's a prude or a spoiled sport.
It's not because he's withholding something from us. It's because God understands that adultery is a soul-sucking, life-crushing thief. He knows that about you and me. The second and more critical understanding is that the greatest unholiness, the greatest unholiness is the rejection of Jesus as Lord. Not believing in Jesus condemns us before a holy, pure God.
The Bible identifies this as the main concern for humanity. The Christian faith teaches that belief in Jesus is the only way to God. Jesus himself says that I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes unto the Father except through me in John 14, 6. This is why the hymn calls Jesus the Savior. This is why the Bible calls Jesus the Savior. And, you know, the most astonishing thing about Christianity is that through simple belief in Christ, we gain God's friendship, His forgiveness, His affection, eternal life and as astonishing as it may sound his holiness through simple belief in Jesus he will impart
he will clothe us in his righteousness his holiness that's why the Christian message is to turn from unbelief to trust in the person and life of Jesus so how are we as sinful people going to have fellowship with the Holy God first we have faith right faith in Jesus as Savior and Lord you don't have to take a trip to the Holy Land on pilgrimage you don't have to claw your way back to God's favor through good works you don't need an angel to tell you you can trust that Jesus is the Lord where you sit by simply turning from disbelief to faith and you know we need a repenting lifestyle as well over time in the Christian life we're constantly going back to God because we're sinners and we will be
for the Christian sinners till we die when they put you in the grave which will come right the ultimate statistic one out of one die we will meet in face to face and we will see in full his love and his grace and his mercy when he says well done good and faithful servant as far as the east is from the west I will separate you from your sins we will know the grace and love of God we trust him in that enough to give him our lives that's the great message of salvation the angels announced to all people on that glorious day when Jesus was born you know many deny Jesus many avoid him many dismiss him
but I implore you believe in him take hold of the holy son of God that you might know his holiness by being found in him before a righteous and holy God Jesus Lord at thy birth Jesus Lord at thy birth let's pray together Lord God we've already sung to each other to behold the wondrous mystery Christ the Lord upon a tree in the stead of ruined sinners hangs the lamb in victory oh God thank you for that we see the price of our redemption which was your suffering and death on the cross, but we also see your plan unfold, bringing many to glory, grace unmeasured,
love untold, so that we might see that no grave could hold you. Oh, what a foretaste of deliverance. We thank you for that, that through simple faith, we are granted your holiness. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen.