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Sermon for Christmas Eve
Luke 2:1-20
We’ve come together again this year to hear the Christmas story, the true one, the wonderful one. The story of Christmas begins with a census. Oh, of course, it actually begins way back in the Garden of Eden, 4,000 years or so before Christ was born, when God first promised to send the Offspring of the woman to crush the serpent’s head. But Luke, having already set the stage by reporting on the angelic birth announcements made to Zacharias and then to Mary, picks up the story, as you heard it this evening, with a census, which sounds kind of boring, until you realize just how important that particular census was.
Mary and Joseph knew that Mary’s Son was the promised Son of David, because the angel Gabriel had already told her: The Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end. That was the fulfillment of the first lesson you heard this evening, from 2 Samuel 7, when God first made that promise to King David a thousand years before Jesus was born, that a special Son would be born to him, from his own body, who would never be abandoned by God (as many of David’s other sons were because of their stubborn rebellion against God), but whose kingdom would endure forever. Now, it’s possible that Mary and Joseph knew the prophecy from Micah that you heard a little while ago, saying that the Christ would be born in Bethlehem. But it’s also possible they didn’t know it; it’s not as if everyone had a Bible in their homes to study such things. Either way, it never came to a decision on their part whether they should travel down to Bethlehem. They were ordered there, by Caesar Augustus himself, because Joseph was of the house and lineage of David, whose hometown was Bethlehem, meaning that all those who could reliably trace their Jewish lineage back to David had to show up in Bethlehem to be registered.
But do you see how important that is? It means that Joseph could reliably trace his lineage back to David, and that his lineage, and that of his legal Son, Jesus, were actually documented, publicly, in the records of Israel. It was public knowledge. Now, all of the official records of Israel were destroyed about 70 years later when the Romans invaded Jerusalem. But during those 70 years, anyone who wanted to verify that Jesus was a legitimate descendant and legal heir of David could have done so. And, just as importantly, since no Israelite has been able to reliably trace his ancestry back to David since the destruction of those records in 70 AD, it puts a final nail in the coffin of anyone else ever claiming to be the Christ, the Son of David. That’s the importance of a census, in that God wanted His prophecies about His Son, not only to be fulfilled, but to be verifiable, because our God, and the story of His interactions with mankind, including Christmas, are not myths or legends, like Santa Claus or the toy shop at the North Pole. Our God is the God of history, truth, and wonder.
And so it’s as a historical event that we approach the story of Christmas, when God, the Son of God, actually stepped into human history, clothed Himself in human flesh, and allowed Himself to be born of a virgin, and wrapped in strips of cloth, and placed in a manger, where animals feed. It’s a story filled with wonder, when you accept that it really happened.
Isn’t it a wonderful thing, to know that heavenly beings known as angels appeared in the sky to a group of lowly shepherds, who were out in the fields, tending their flocks by night? They had to come, not just to let the shepherds know the good news, but because they had to worship God for this wonderful thing He had done, as the writer to the Hebrews confirms: When God brings His firstborn into the world, He says: Let all the angels of God worship Him!
But what was the good news that the angels brought? Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Those two sentences convey so many wonderful things! Let’s take a moment and break it down again, as we do every year.
I bring you good tidings. Literally, I preach the Gospel to you! It’s a Gospel that brings with it great joy, and that joy is intended for all the people. By extension, it’s intended for “all people everywhere,” but specifically the angel was talking about all the people of Israel, because it was to them and only them that God had been promising for 2,000 years that He would fulfill His promise to Abraham, to send the promised Savior, not just into the world somewhere, but into and among the people of Israel, in the land that He had given them for this very purpose, that His Son should be born there, grow up there, carry out His ministry there, be crucified there, conquer death there, and have this Gospel preached first to the Jews, to bring joy to all the people of Israel. Not that they all rejoiced in it, but they all could have and should have, because this birth announcement was for all the people to embrace and believe, even as it’s now for all people everywhere to embrace and believe.
For there is born to you. To you—to you shepherds and to all the people, and, ultimately, to the entire human race. A human Child was born to stand in for the rest of humanity, to live and to die as the great Substitute for our whole human race. This day. Imagine a nation waiting for 2,000 years for a promise to be fulfilled. In a way, we can imagine it, because it’s been almost 2,000 years since Jesus promised to return, and believers have been waiting, waiting, waiting for that day, never knowing how much longer it will be. Imagine how it will be when the trumpet finally sounds, and the cry again rings out from the angels, “This day your Lord returns to you!” That’s kind of how it must have been for the shepherds. “This day” had finally come.
In the city of David, in Bethlehem, just as Micah had foretold, just down the road from Jerusalem, in order to make it clear to the world that this Child truly was the special Son of David whom God Himself would anoint, not as an earthly King, but as the divine King over all creation.
A Savior. This baby would be many things: Teacher, Healer, Example, and, in the end, also Judge. But how wonderful—that the angel identified His primary purpose as Savior, to save us first from sin, death, and the power of the devil, and finally, from all the corruption and evil of this world. Who is Christ. The angel of the Lord was the first to proclaim this wonderful truth, that the Child born of Mary is the Christ, the Anointed One, sent to suffer, die, and rise again to reconcile sinners to God.
And wonder of wonders, the most wonderful part of this true story, the Child who was born as we are born, the Child who was placed in a manger as His very first bed, was, as the angel said, the Lord. The Lord Yahweh, or Jehovah, the only true God, the Ruler and Creator of all. The Lord was born as one of us to bring us to the Lord.
And then the song rang out into the night, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to men. On this wonderful, wonderful night, heaven and earth unite to sing praise to God for the goodwill He has shown to mankind by giving us His Son, to make peace between God and men, through the One whose name is Wonderful, and Prince of Peace. Glory to God, for this true and wonderful story of Christmas! Amen.
