Jesus is Coming: To Bring Good News.
Sunday, December 25th, 2005
Intro:
Well, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news, which do you want to hear first? Don’t you love being greeted with that line? News can change our day, it can change our lives. Most people when asked which news they want first prefer the bad news first. Then they have something good to look forward to, the good news, that can put that bad news in perspective and brighten our day just a little bit.
Do you remember all of the old good news/bad news jokes? I can remember one my dad would tell every time we had company.
Doctor: The Good News is, You’ve got 24 hours to live.
Patient says: If that’s Good news, what’s the bad news.
Doctor: I was supposed to call you yesterday!
Bad News: You fell out of the plane
Good News: You had a parachute
Bad News: The parachute Broke
Good News: You’re heading for a soft Haystack
Bad News: There’s a pitchfork in the haystack
Good News: You missed the pitchfork
Bad News: You missed the Haystack
Bad news is no fun but on the opposite end, there’s nothing quite like getting good news. Isn’t it wonderful to get good news? You’ve just come home from a long day of work and your child comes up and shows you a report card with all A’s or your wife tells you she found an extra $500 stashed in her sock drawer. Good news is fun to get. We got a phone call this week that our good friends had a little baby girl and for the next few hours, my day was better. I was happy for them and the good news had changed my outlook on everything. Good News can change our day, it can change our lives.
That’s what the Angels came to proclaim that first Christmas Morning. Good News! The Savior was born! That’s what Jesus came to bring, Good News to a people who longed for it and to a world that was in desperate need of it. We’ve talked the last few weeks about what this baby came to bring. He brought fulfillment of the prophecies, He came to shake things up and change the world, He came to bring Blessing, and on that morning of His birth He brought with Him good news. It was this good news that had the angels sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting for the word from God, for just the right moment to proclaim that news to the world.
Read Luke 2:8-20
Good News! Life Changing, World Changing, Earth Shattering News. And look at who God chose to share it with. Not the kings and the rulers, he didn’t shout it from the towers of castles, He didn’t proclaim it the halls of the rich and powerful, He shouted it from the heavens in the dark hillsides of Jerusalem to those who were thought to be the least. To shepherds! In those days, shepherding was a lowly occupation and shepherds were considered outcasts. They were thought of as untrustworthy and were, according to the law, ceremoniously unclean. This means that they were not allowed to participate in the spiritual life and fellowship of the Jewish people and were unable to participate in temple worship, effectively cutting them off from God, according to the Jewish religious and sacrificial system. These were the lowest of the low on the Jewish social ladder and had no place in the religious hierarchy of the day and these are the ones to whom God chooses to trumpet the news to.
Do you see the significance? Those who according to the law were furthest from God are the ones to whom God announces the coming of the Savior. He says that it is goods news that will be a joy for all the people, shepherds and other outcasts included, not just for the religious elite! God had made a way for them and instead of announcing Christ to the religious leaders, He announces it to the ones he came to save, those on the outside looking in. And this theme we see repeated over and over again in the life of Christ as he consistently chooses the least and the sinful, and the outcast to spend His time with and to share His power and message with.
So God announces the Good News to the Shepherds and sets the tone of the last being first that Christ will carry on throughout His ministry.
What makes this such Good News? I want to look at a few things that the angels reveal to these shepherds that explain why this news is the best news the world has ever received.
First,
I. It’s Good News Because of What it is.
The Good News that the angels proclaimed was summed up in verse 11:
Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you
A Savior. The term literally means a deliverer, one who would deliver His people. This savior had been talked about and read about and prophesied about for centuries and now the angels are declaring that He has finally come. The good news was that Salvation had finally come.
The Jews were waiting for this day. They were beaten and oppressed and depressed and they believed that the Savior would deliver them from all of the political and social issues that they found themselves in. But the Savior had come to deliver the hearts of his people. He had come to turn their hearts back to God and offer them forgiveness and a relationship with a God that none of them really knew. It was for the salvation of the soul that this deliverer had come. That was the Good News! Salvation had come.
Today, many of us find ourselves in the same position as the Jews of that day. There are circumstances and issues that we are praying for God to deliver us from and we’re waiting and all the while, God is concerned with what’s on the inside. He’s concerned with the condition of our heart. While we dwell on what’s going on around us, it’s easy
to forget that our salvation has already come, our deliverer has already accomplished for us what he came to do.
The Good News is that the Savior has come. Not to restore men to where they feel they ought to be before other men, but to restore men to where they ought to be before God! Only Jesus could do that. God sent His son and He sent the angels before him to trumpet this Good News that the Savior was born and the salvation of mankind was at hand. It was Good News because of what that news was.
II. It’s Good News Because of Who it is.
The angels move on and tell us just who this Savior is at the end of verse 11. Not only is the Savior here, but guess who He is: he is Christ the Lord. Christ literally means the anointed or chosen one. But the angel also attaches the title, the Lord, He wanted there to be no mistake that this was the one God had chosen to send to His people but he also wanted to be very clear who it was that God was sending.. The Jews were waiting for their Messiah and they figured that this would be God’s representative to lead them. But when God sent the chosen one, He chose Himself. The Jews were not getting an ambassador from God, they were getting God himself. Wrapped up in those blankets and lying on the hay in the primitive and dirty stable was the God of the Universe. There is no more amazing and mind boggling truth that exists. God had chosen to send Himself, god became man.
God had lead through representation before. He had lead the Israelites in the desert as a pillar of fire, he had lead them into battle with the Ark of the Covenant but now He had chosen to lead them in the form of a flesh and blood man, the person Jesus Christ. The Good News is that God has come.
Hospital Visitation Illustration – Oh, you sent the youth pastor.
The thought was nice, but the people wanted the real thing. Well, when it came to the Messiah, that’s what they got. John 14:8-9
Philip said, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us."
Jesus answered: "Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?
John 10:30: I and the Father are one."
The news is good because of what it is: A Savior. It gets even better because of who that Savior is: God’s son Jesus who Philippians 2 tells is in every way God Himself, who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant being made in human likeness.
III. It’s Good News Because of What it Brings.
Jesus’ coming brought many things, but I want to focus specifically on the two that the angels mention in this passage. One theologian calls these two words “the spiritual twins.”
The angels tell us that this good news will bring joy and peace to the people. These are two things that people long for. We’re created with a need for them and we fill our lives with all sorts of things in an effort to find joy and peace but the angels knew that the baby Jesus was the only one that could truly fill our desire for these things.
1) Joy
His coming will bring great joy. Not joy in the way that many think of the word, it is not a worse that is tied to the emotion of happiness. The joy that Christ came to bring goes beyond any emotion, it is the deep seeded knowledge that your life is in Christ and that nothing man can do can separate you from his love.
The joy Christ brings has three dimensions:
a. The assurance that we are acceptable to God
b. The assurance that God’s providences are working on our behalf
c. The indescribable ecstasy of being loved unconditionally
d.
It’s not about happiness. We’re not always going to be happy and that’s where many Christians get tripped up thinking that the joy of the Lord is a recipe for Earthly happiness. The joy Christ brings is a relationship that allows us to “rejoice in the Lord always.” This joy allows us to rise above our circumstances and our lot in life and see the big picture of what this baby came to do.
The second thing the angels proclaimed was:
2) Peace
LK 2:14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."
This wasn’t the political peace that the Jews were waiting for, a temporary end to their suffering and to their oppression; it had much more significance than that. His Coming brought perfect and lasting peace for us in two ways.
First, it brought peace between us and God.
a. Between God and I
He gave us peace with God!
RO 5:1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
The Jews may not have realized it but their sins had separated them from God and the Bible literally says that they were God’s enemies. The same is true for our sins and Jesus came and stepped in between us and God waving a flag of peace and it was in the shape of a cross.
So, the angels proclaimed this peace that would forever span the chasm between man and God. They also proclaimed another kind of peace that this child would bring. A peace
b. Within my Soul
He not only gave us peace with God, He gave us the peace of God. Phil 4:6-7
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
It’s that peace that passes all human understanding. It’s this peace that allows us to experience joy in the midst of trials. It’s that quiet assurance that God is in control and that in any circumstance He’ll work things out for good. That’s the peace he came to bring. That’s why this new was like nothing that had been heard before, that’s why it was Good news!
IV. It’s Good News Because of Who it’s For.
The angel gave the shepherds and us who this good news was intended for and they gave this part of the good news in two parts. There are two different levels. The First is:
A. Generally
Verse 10 says:
I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
We have already talked about the fact that Christ did not come only for a few. He did not come only for the rich and the religious and the overachievers. He came for all of his creation and God underscores that point in the appearance of the angels to the shepherds. The Christ child came to save all men.
This good news is for all the people. It’s for anyone who will receive it and accept God’s gift of forgiveness, salvation, and mercy. We’ve already looked at what that meant for the shepherds but think of what that means for us! We don’t have to be perfect, we don’t have to be this or that before God will accept us, we simply have to accept His gift and bow our hearts before Him.
If this new is good because it is for everyone, then we also have an obligation to share it with others. Look at verse 17 of this passage.
17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
The shepherds heard the news and immediately began to share it with others, understanding that it was to be for all the people. They understood the privilege they had to be the ambassador and the bearer of good news. Sometimes we try to analyze things too much and we try and decide ourselves who should have this gift or not or who is the most likely to receive it if we share it with them. And we let opportunities to share pass by because we’re sure that someone won’t be interested. Friends, this Good News is to be for all the people! We sing about it, we talk about it, we thank God for it, and then we go into a world that desperately needs Good News and we keep it to ourselves. Learn from these shepherds this morning and boldly proclaim this Good News that God sent for all men.
But just as this was a general proclamation that all men would hear, the other level at which this news was intended was a personal one.
B. Personal.
v. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.
While this call goes out to all, it is ultimately a personal invitation and it is a personal decision that you must make on your own. This has nothing to do with what family you were born into, it has nothing to do with if you were baptized as an infant, it has nothing to do with if you are a good person, a good spouse or mother or father. It is not something that you can get credit for if your parents believe. It is a personal decision. While the Good news was to be for all the people, everyone will hear, the Savior was born for you. Personally, and you have to decide what you’re going to do with that Christ child. Have you made that decision? See, that Christ child came to be the Savior. To do that He had to grow up and he had to die on the cross for our sins. And when He rose again to Life and ascended to heaven to take his place next to the Father, He won access to God for us and the opportunity to spend eternity with Him.
Too many people try to leave the baby in the manger and avoid having to decide what to do with Him, what place to give Him in our lives. But this Good News is personal, the babe was born for you and the choice is yours. To receive this gift God asks three things of us.
1) Ask for forgiveness of Sins
2) Invite God in to your life
3) Follow Him
If you have never done that, I’m going to give you an opportunity to do that in a moment.
This Christmas morning, this day of Celebration, know that Jesus came to Bring Good News! The news was good because of what it was, A Savior is born. It was good because of who it was, God Himself had come to save us. It was good in what it brought to us, joy and peace that nothing else can offer. And it was good because of who it was for, all people would have the opportunity to hear and accept this personal invitation from the Creator of all to enter into a relationship with Him.
Heaven couldn’t contain the news. The angels waited with excitement and expectancy for that moment when they could proclaim the news, the heavens tore open and the Good News of Jesus burst forth from the angels lips to the ears of man. A proclamation of Salvation. This Christmas and each one to come, join with those angels, proclaim it with joy, Salvation has come, God has come to Earth!
