24 December 2020
Text: Isa 7:10-14, Micah 5:2-4,
Isa 9:2-7, Matt 1:18-25, Matt 2:1-12, John 1:1-14
In the name of + Jesus. Amen.
Satan has been able to harm the body of Christ through our schools, as young people are increasingly illiterate and not very well read. Moreover, history is no longer taught in most grade schools. It has been replaced by “Social Studies.” History at the university level is no longer history, but political radicalism. This has been harmful to the Church, for she, like her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is birthed from the matrix of history. For God took real flesh in real space and real time – and real authors, inspired by the Holy Spirit, recorded this real history for our knowledge. And the history of Jesus doesn’t begin at the stable in Bethlehem, but goes back before time and matter existed at all.
For the story of Christmas is the story of our final reading, the pinnacle of all history, as God, the eternal Word by whom all things were made, “became flesh and dwelt among us.” But this same Word has no beginning and no end. This Word that was born on Christmas existed “In the beginning.” Indeed, “He was in the beginning with God” and yet, He “was God.”
Jesus existed before the world that He created, and yet He entered history as a baby in order to rescue us. And if this history isn’t far more interesting than the most exciting accounts of World War II, the American Revolution, the Odyssey, the stories of Greece and Rome, and the histories of all inventers and great thinkers of all time – then we truly are a lost people.
And of course, we are. We are lost, and so the Word must come and find us, to enlighten our way, to lead us out of darkness. For as John the apostle confesses, “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
As one of my friends said in a lecture many years ago: “History is simply what happened.” And so it is! And it is a normal thing for people to be curious and to want to know “What happened?” If you doubt that, think about what happens when there are sirens in your neighborhood. Think about a bad accident on the other side of the highway that causes this side to jam up while drivers engage in the ritual known as “rubbernecking.” It is a normal human response to want to know “What happened?” History tells us what happened.
The Scripture is filled with history: thousands of years of interconnected narratives that all point to the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus. And without understanding this, the Bible will make no sense to you.
The prophet Isaiah lived seven hundred years before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh. He preached the Word of God to the Israelites. And God revealed some future history to Isaiah, which he told the king and wrote down in his scroll – which we have today as the Book of Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”
This word “Immanuel” is Hebrew for “God with us.” So in 700 BC we have the prophet Isaiah predicting that a virgin would give birth to a Son whose nickname is “God with us.” And lest you think that the book we have is a forgery that was changed to match the Jesus story, we have the dead sea scrolls copy of Isaiah, which predates the birth of Jesus by two hundred years.
There is no history like this history, dear friends!
The last of the prophets, Micah, prophesied around 400 BC, that the coming Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, a tiny village not considered important by anyone. And He would be of the tribe of Judah, and will “shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord.” And again, we see this history happen the way the prophets said that it would.
And flipping back to Isaiah, we read his powerful prediction that the Messiah would indeed be light shining on a people stuck in darkness. “For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given.” He is the Son of David, and “of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end.” And Isaiah promises: “The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
The Lord of hosts governs the ebb and flow of history according to His will. And when the time was just right, God With Us was born, dwelt among us, illuminated our way, and rescues us.
St. Matthew, the former tax collector turned apostle and author of the Gospel that bears His name, wrote a few years after our Lord’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. He begins his Christmas account like a serious historian: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.” Matthew reports that His mother Mary was a virgin, but was impregnated by the Holy Spirit. An angel revealed this to Joseph, her betrothed husband. And Matthew himself notes that the birth of Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy. The God With Us child was named “Jesus” – meaning “God saves.” For this is the history of the Bible, dear friends, century after century of God saving His people – reaching the pinnacle of all history in Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh.
Matthew also records the history of King Herod, his fear of the news that the wise men from the east brought with them, that the signs in the sky pointed to the birth of a great king. King Herod “was troubled,” as history teaches us that kings generally don’t like competition. Herod tried to trick the wise men into revealing the location of the Christ child. And for once in his miserable life, wicked King Herod actually looked up something in the Scriptures. He learned about Micah’s prophecy regarding Bethlehem. And we also know from Matthew that Herod slaughtered the baby boys in the village of Bethlehem, in a vain attempt to kill the Messiah, for His mother and stepfather had already taken Him away to safety.
How can anyone find this history uninteresting, or dull, dear friends?
And finally, we end where we started, with the last of the apostles left on earth, John, who wrote, “In the beginning was the Word,” and revealed to us just who Jesus is: the Word of God who was with God and yet who is God at the same time.
John teaches us this unique history concerning Jesus: “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him.” Indeed, “His own people did not receive Him.”
This is only the first chapter of John’s Gospel, a history that takes us from the Beginning of space and time itself, and brings us to His baptism and ministry, to the cross, to the tomb, and to the glorious resurrection of our Lord: the pinnacle of history. And John will close out the Bible with a history of the future, the Book of Revelation, in which Jesus is revealed as Alpha and Omega, who conquers the devil, who redeems His people, and who creates a new heaven and a new earth. John takes us through the history from its beginning to its eternal end.
And here is where we are in this glorious history, dear brothers and sisters. Listen to how this history relates to you: “To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
Because of this long history, revealed in the Scriptures, a history that we reflect on this evening, you are a child of God, and this, dear friends, is God’s will. And so we revel in this history. For we do receive Him. We do believe in His name: Immanuel: “God with us.” Jesus: “God saves.”
History is not just the past, dear friends. For Christ is with us now. And He is the light of the world, and so we have a glorious eternal future as well. That history is now, and extends even unto eternity. Satan has been conquered by this history. Death has been defeated. Sin has been crushed. Nobody can take that history away from anyone who wants it and claims it. It is finished! Merry Christmas! Thanks be to God! Amen.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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