SPEAKER_00: You know, we really don't know what Jesus looked like.
SPEAKER_00: Our story book Bibles don't do us much help, don't offer much much help painting a pic picture of Jesus as meek and mild, particularly because the only time the Bible really talks about what Jesus looks like is in Revelation when the Apostle John, in isolation on the island of Patmos, writes about this person that he sees, the second member of the Trinity, Jesus himself.
SPEAKER_00: His hair is as white as wool, his eyes are like flames of fire, his face is as radiant as the sun, his feet are like burnished bronze, and out of his mouth comes his tongue a double-edged sword.
SPEAKER_00: And he is filled with fear.
SPEAKER_00: So how can we, as sinful as we are, have any interaction whatsoever with such a being, with such a God?
SPEAKER_00: That's the question that each of us needs to answer tonight, and the question that our passage answers for us in Luke chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Let's turn our attention now to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 2, familiar words, verses 8 through 20.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
SPEAKER_00: And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.
SPEAKER_00: And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people.
SPEAKER_00: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And this will be a sign for you.
SPEAKER_00: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger, and when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child, and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
SPEAKER_00: But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.
SPEAKER_00: And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen as it had been told them.
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: An ancient account, Lord, of the turning point in all of human history.
SPEAKER_00: Many here have read it many, many times.
SPEAKER_00: So open our hearts by the power of your Holy Spirit and show us Jesus one more time.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray it in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: A mythological account, one that we love to hear, and one that we loathe to hear.
SPEAKER_00: The Cyclops, three orb-eyed immortal giants, are imprisoned in the pit of Tartarus.
SPEAKER_00: And Zeus, together with his brothers, rescues the Cyclops, and they, in return for the rescue, give him the clap of thunder, the flash of lightning, and the smoldering bolt with which he uses to oppress all immortal and mortals alike.
SPEAKER_00: It's a story that we love to hear in the sense that we love to hear of the great, powerful rescue of a helpless one that couldn't help themselves, but at the same time, a story that we loathe to hear because it describes one who has such power used to oppress those underneath him.
SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, it's a story.
SPEAKER_00: And we are too sophisticated to believe those things.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We're too sophisticated to believe that God's like Zeus, meaning that he's just this great ogre in the sky ready to blast us when we step out of line.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if we're too sophisticated to believe that, then why do we consistently live our lives as if we're trying to measure up to a God who behaves that way?
SPEAKER_00: How do we relate to God?
SPEAKER_00: How do we have any interaction with this great being holy and mighty and powerful?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us that He's done something on our behalf that we couldn't do for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us that we have peace with God through the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't want to be really complicated tonight.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, just to say two things very simply, that in light of the fact that we have peace with God, the first is that we can rejoice because he's entered into our situation so that he can be with us.
SPEAKER_00: And the second, like it, to rejoice, not only because he enters into our situation so that he can be with us, but that he comes so that he can unite us to himself.
SPEAKER_00: So let's just consider those two things real briefly.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean that we can rejoice because we have peace with God because he's entered into our situation to be with us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the entire scripture up until this point has been growing in the pains of childbirth, as it were, as if to get ready for this one monumental moment in all of human history.
SPEAKER_00: Since the very first word in the book of Genesis, we're told that this person will come to deliver those who were oppressed, God's people.
SPEAKER_00: And when the fullness of time comes and Jesus is born, all we really get is this little short sentence that says, You'll find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: And we want to say, What?
SPEAKER_00: He is the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and He comes for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the mighty God, and he comes for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the bright morning star, the second member of the Trinity, the one who could robe himself in galaxies, clothes himself instead in humanity and strips of cloth and is laid low in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: So that he could be with you, so that he could be like you.
SPEAKER_00: And so that he would know your pains and your joys and your struggles, your temptations.
SPEAKER_00: We first learn of what this message of peace would be as the angels appear to the shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've said this before, but but we we read about angels in the Bible and we think they're just as common as pennies.
SPEAKER_00: But it's been 500 years since the last time we saw an angel.
SPEAKER_00: Up until this point, God's been in some ways silent.
SPEAKER_00: And in some ways, not only do our storybook Bibles not do us any service about what Jesus looks like, but neither do our ornaments do us any service about what these angels look like.
SPEAKER_00: They paint them as sweet.
SPEAKER_00: They are not.
SPEAKER_00: And one appears.
SPEAKER_00: And these cowboys that have lived outside all their lives fighting off wild beasts, they're terrified.
SPEAKER_00: The actual word says that they're filled with fear.
SPEAKER_00: But in the original language, it has more of a, they're shaking in their skin.
SPEAKER_00: They're terrified.
SPEAKER_00: They're undone.
SPEAKER_00: And to make matters worse, it's not just one that appears, but then a multitude, a whole sky is full of these warriors from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: What would their news be?
SPEAKER_00: Don't be afraid.
SPEAKER_00: For behold, we bring you good tidings, good news that you who are once far off from God can be brought near.
SPEAKER_00: I know it doesn't say all that right here.
SPEAKER_00: By the blood of Christ, God come down from heaven so that he might be with you.
SPEAKER_00: I told the story eleven years ago that when I was very little and afraid of the dark, my parents taught me a very important thing that I could remember.
SPEAKER_00: All I had to do when I was afraid I could take out my hand and I could just simply say, God is always with me.
SPEAKER_00: Those five words.
SPEAKER_00: God is always with me.
SPEAKER_00: A year and a half after I shared that story, I learned that it meant a great deal to another, but this time it wasn't a child, but rather an elderly woman on her deathbed.
SPEAKER_00: She had come to worship because she was visiting there for baptism here, and I told the story there, and she heard it.
SPEAKER_00: And she found that in the dark and in the twilight moments of her life, when she was afraid about what was to come, she would stretch out her hand and her fingers almost now at the end of their earthly use, and say again, God is always with me.
SPEAKER_00: It's a message not just for children, friends, it's a message for the most mature theological professor.
SPEAKER_00: And some are here tonight saying, it can't possibly be true.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want to be with me.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know who I am, you don't know what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: He came for you.
SPEAKER_00: We get a taste of that not only because we can praise him, because he's entered in to be with us, but because he's entered in to unite us with him.
SPEAKER_00: We get a sense of what that uniting might look like when we compare and contrast the shepherd's response to the angels when they see the angels to when they see the baby child Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: These cowboys that live out on the range are terrified when they see these warriors from heaven, and rightly they would be.
SPEAKER_00: Any one of us would be as well.
SPEAKER_00: And why are they so afraid?
SPEAKER_00: Because the text tells us the glory of the Lord shone around them.
SPEAKER_00: It is the very glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: It is not light that they possess, not glory of their own.
SPEAKER_00: Like the moon, it reflects the glory of another.
SPEAKER_00: And when they see the glory of the Lord, they're filled with fear.
SPEAKER_00: But do you notice when they go and visit the child Jesus, they're not afraid.
SPEAKER_00: It's the glory of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's his glory that they're afraid of.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know, don't tell me after the service, now his glory was temporarily veiled, and maybe later on, you know, I know all that to be true.
SPEAKER_00: But I wonder if the text is intentionally telling us something.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if it's intentionally contrasting the shepherd's reaction because of how Christ would use his glory.
SPEAKER_00: That the moment of his greatest glory isn't in the way that John describes it in the book of Revelation with all this fire and swords, but in a manger and on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if that tells us something about with whom he would like to unite.
SPEAKER_00: Now you just got to think about who these shepherds were.
SPEAKER_00: They're nobodies.
SPEAKER_00: They're despised by society, unreliable witnesses, and not allowed to testify in court, and not permitted to worship in the temple because they are unclean.
SPEAKER_00: And God came to them first.
SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if he's wanting to say to you and to me too, do you see that you're just like them?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that at one time you too were nobody?
SPEAKER_00: And that you're not worthy before me.
SPEAKER_00: And that if I were to unveil all of my glory and all of my majesty, you would be undone.
SPEAKER_00: But if we were to really see how God uses his glory, we were to see that it's not to cause fear and dread.
SPEAKER_00: But to unite us with himself.
SPEAKER_00: Through his life, death, and resurrection and second coming.
SPEAKER_00: What would be the response?
SPEAKER_00: What would be our response?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the shepherds tell us, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: They returned, rejoicing and glorifying, giving praise to God.
SPEAKER_00: The response, of course, is to give praise to God for Him making peace with us, but it's also to go back.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't go on some book tour, they didn't start some blog, they didn't become instantly popular.
SPEAKER_00: They were still shepherds, with backbreaking, arthritic making, sleeping on the ground jobs.
SPEAKER_00: What enabled them to thrive?
SPEAKER_00: What enabled them to keep going?
SPEAKER_00: The glory of God revealed to them in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the message of peace.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's the same for us.
SPEAKER_00: The glory of God doesn't deliver us out of our life circumstances, but rather roots us in it.
SPEAKER_00: How can we thrive?
SPEAKER_00: How can we continue on in the muck and the mire of this world by knowing that the Lamb of God has taken away the sins of the world, and you can have peace with him.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we bow before your throne.
SPEAKER_00: Knowing, Heavenly Father, that there's nothing that we bring.
SPEAKER_00: Even our best works are like filthy rags.
SPEAKER_00: But you, O Lord, have made a way, so that we can have peace with you.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, tune our affections afresh for you, so that we might sing and know joy in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And we pray it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.