December 25, 2001 Luke 2:11
Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.
Dear friends in Christ,
When I was in high school, my English professor told me a very important rule when it comes to reporting. There are five basic questions that you can ask that will usually cover the whole story. And these five questions are very easy to remember: who, what, when, where, and why. We don’t get a whole lot of details when Luke reports the sermon of the angel to the shepherds on Christmas night. He doesn’t say what time of year it was, what time of night it was, or whether it was cold or hot out. But he does give us the basics, and that’s all we need.
The Angel Gives us the When, What, Where, Who and Why of Christmas
WHEN
Our text for today starts out with the word, “today”. Today is different from tomorrow, isn’t it? Today stands for things that are happening here and now, where as tomorrow means there is time to prepare. For instance, did today creep up on you? Or do you still have presents left to buy? Even though we all know what Christmas is, we still have a hard time preparing for it, don’t we? For the last month we’ve been talking about it during our advent services. And yet how many of us said, “I’ll have to prepare for it later”. The term for it is called “procrastination”.
Some things are more important to prepare for than others. For instance, if you didn’t get all your cookies baked for Christmas, it would have been as important as getting all of your gifts purchased. In the same way, some things are more difficult to prepare for than others. In our world, Christmas is more difficult to prepare for than Easter. Preparing for a quiz is easier than preparing for a test. One of the more interesting and difficult things to prepare for in life is the birth of a child. Many women may not like having to wait through nine months of pregnancy, and I don’t blame them, yet this time helps us to prepare for the baby as well. And sometimes when the baby comes we still aren’t prepared.
Isn’t it a good thing then, that God didn’t leave the preparing of the original Christmas up to us? We would have wanted to make sure that Jesus had matching borders around his birth room, a specially stitched baby outfit, with a nice bed and a heated room. But what did God do? For over 4000 years he meticulously and carefully made sure that every last detail was put in place. He made sure that the line of David would be cut down to a stump, that a foreigner would be ruling over the Jews, that the Roman government would want to tax the Jews, and many other details that we aren’t even aware of. His preparations were on a spiritual level, whereas ours would’ve been on a physical level. And so with no warning at all, the angel said to the shepherds, “today”. They had nothing to prepare for, nothing to do. God was in charge of the preparation. The baby was already born, and they didn’t even know it.
Its kind of similar today, isn’t it? People have had months to prepare for Christmas, and what have they done? They might have bought new outfits or baked cookies, but they haven’t prepare themselves at all spiritually for what today is all about. Regardless of the fact, today is here.
WHERE
When I was vicaring in South Carolina, I was called to the hospital to minister to a family that had just lost their 32 year old daughter in a motorcycle accident. They needed some spiritual guidance. But there was only problem. I was in such a hurry to get to the hospital, that I forgot to get directions. As I was in the car then, couldn’t find the hospital.
The angel had told the shepherds that something had happened today. But they didn’t leave them in the dark as to where this something had happened. They said it happened, “in the town of David.” If I were to do a poll of the people of Topeka and ask them, “where is the town of David,” I would be surprised if half of the people would know where it was. But to these shepherds, this would be no mystery. For they were living right outside of the town of David - called Bethlehem. It was called his town, because that was where Boaz and Jesse - his grandpa and father were from - and David also was from. With the location of what had happened, they should have had a sense as to what this announcement was going to be, for in Micah 5:2 God had predicted, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” They wouldn’t have far at all to go and see what had happened!
Isn’t this a wonderful aspect of God? He is not an altogether mysterious God who lives in shadows and leaves us guessing as to what he is or what he is like. He revealed to the shepherds exactly where to go for this news flash! Go to Bethlehem to see! And so God also reveals to us where to go! He says, “faith comes from hearing the message.” That means, “go to your shelf, and pick up your Bible and read it! Go to your church, and listen to your pastor preach it! Go to the Lord’s Supper and eat it! Go to the waters of Baptism, and let them pour over you!” And what will you see?
WHAT
About five or six years ago my brother in law called me in the middle of the night. I was sound asleep, and I was out of it. Usually when I get a call at this time of night, I except something bad to have happened. But on this night, he was announcing the birth of my niece Katie. It was quite a way to announce it, but I was glad to hear the news.
In a much more magnificent way, the angel had a much more glorious message to tell the shepherds what had happened. In the Greek, what the angel literally starts out by saying, “he was born.” With glory blazing around him and appearing in the middle of a dark field, the angel was making a birth announcement! Wow! Usually when you announce a birth, you may put an announcement in the paper or send a picture of the child with the size, time, and weight.
And how do people often react to this? Oh, that’s nice. They might be somewhat interested if they know you, or if they had been planning it. Or they might take an interest in the actual announcement and how it was put together. But really, even though every birth is a miracle of God, they are so common that we often treat births as if they were no big deal. Some even think, “why bring someone else into this world?”
God wanted to show that this birth was special. So by sending an angel in the middle of a field, God was announcing to the shepherds, “this is important! Someone special was born!” He didn’t want the shepherds to be impressed with who was making the announcement - but he wanted to draw attention to the message itself!
WHO
When Logan was born, we made little computer generated cards with three pictures of him. We included his name, height, weight, and the time of birth. Notice that the angel didn’t say, “a seven pound baby boy was born at 7:53.” All he was interested was in the meat of the message - and that was who was being born. The first word he uses to describe this baby is “Savior!”
That word for “savior” was commonly applied in different ways during this time. Any statesman who delivered someone from something might have been referred to as a “savior”, with a hint at divination. The Jews at this time were looking for a savior to give them freedom from the Roman rule. So notice who the angel appeared to, a bunch of shepherds. These common day Jewish Joes wouldn’t have been caught up in the politics of religion or the common expectation of the every day people. They lived out in the fields. And their hopes and expectations were not for a political Messiah, but for a spiritual one to come and save them from their sins - to crush Satan’s head as predicted in Genesis 3:15. And so the angel announced, “a Savior” has been born to you.
In order to be a Savior from sin, this Messiah would have to defeat sin, death and the devil. And so the angel told the shepherds, that he would be born in the town of David, but he would also be Christ the Lord. That word for Lord was used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament term Yahweh - referring to God. So the angel told these shepherds the Christmas message, that God had become man! Why was this so important? Because only God’s death could pay for the sins of the world! Only a man could suffer! So God had to become man to save them from their sins! This little baby born in Bethlehem would be the Messiah - the Anointed One - just like the prophets, priests and kings of the Old Testament - he would be anointed to suffer and die!
This is the miracle message of Christmas. God became man! Wouldn’t it be enough of a miracle if I asked you to climb into the body of a baby and act like an infant again? Impossible? But for God to climb inside of a womb? Really impossible! That’s what the angel told the shepherds had happened!
WHY
These are all important details! But the most important detail is found in the little to words, “to you.” When adoptive parents are waiting for a birth mother to give birth, they can’t wait to hear from the mother to hear how the birth went and what the mother had. The shepherds were told, “a Savior has been born TO YOU.” This child was not born for Mary and Joseph alone. He was not their child to enjoy alone. He was for the shepherds - for everyone addressed as “you” - for the world!
I have some good friends who adopted a boy and a girl. They told me that this adoption was no easy process. While they were in Germany, they had to fly back to America to adopt an American baby who was born in Germany. It took a lot of planning, a lot of money, and a lot of time. But here God just told the shepherds, your child has been born TO YOU. They had no preparations to make. No adoptions. Instead, God adopted the shepherds and gave them the child with no work of theirs to make at all!
What a wonderful picture of what grace is all about. With no work at all, God announces to us, “a son has been born to you.” And with that wonderful gospel announcement, the Holy Spirit crawls into our souls - puts Jesus in our wombs - and makes Him our child and we his - through faith in the Savior. What a glorious and gracious message this is! What an important detail. MY Savior has been born. Luther once said,: Of what benefit would it be to me if Christ had been born a thousand times, and it would be daily sung into my ears in a most lovely manner, if I were never to hear that he was born for me and was to be my very own? During Christmas time people are often actually stressed out because of all of the preparations that they have to make! This is what makes Christmas so Merry for us! God prepared and fulfilled our salvation - giving us a baby to live, die, and raise from the dead for our sins!
When solving a mystery - you need to know all of the details. If you know when a crime occurred, how it occurred, where it occurred, but don’t have the who - it does you no good. If we know how the Savior was born, but didn’t know who it was, it would do us no good. Thank God that he gives us more than enough details about the birth of Christ. And most importantly, he tells us that a Savior has been born to YOU. The Angel Gives us the When, What, Where, Who and Why of Christmas. Through that, we know and believe that Christmas is about Christ. And that’s what makes it so Merry. Amen.
