The One-Liner of Christmas

There's a story of a typical Aussie bloke, you can call him Baza or Daza or Demo, who had left his Christmas gift buying till the very end, really, really late. And on Christmas Eve rather, he decided to rush to the shops to go and do his Christmas buying. When he got to the shops, he found it absolutely packed with people, which is always what happens, isn't it? And being annoyed with the crowds, he instead decided to buy all his mates a Christmas card instead. He thought to himself, I'll make it something very pretty, something worthwhile looking, something that looks like I've put some thought into this, a card that'll be as expensive as a gift on its own.

He went into the local post office, picked over the cards, and to his delight, found a box of 50 on special. And it looked perfect. Beautiful gold trimming with beautiful white flowers on the front, very peaceful looking. With all the last minute shopping commotion, he couldn't be bothered to go over the cards too closely. He quickly signed them all with a simple scribble of his name at the bottom, put them in the envelopes, and mailed them to his friends.

As New Year's Eve came, he sat down with a coffee. Lying next to the coffee table were one or two cards that had been left over from his box of 50. With the rush of Christmas out of the way, he decided to have a closer look at these pretty cards. As he opened it, his face went pale. When he read the printed message inside, which read, "This Christmas card is just to say a little gift is on its way."

So he's gonna have to go back to the shops, I guess. And now he has to buy 50 gifts for all his mates. Christians wake up this morning, professing that we have received the greatest gift that anyone can ever receive, the gift of Jesus Christ. At Christmas time, we remember and celebrate that there was a dawn, that there was a day where it all began, a birth in a town named Bethlehem. And it was ushered in, as we read this morning through Kyla, it was ushered in by an angelic choir saying, "Glory to God in the highest and peace to all mankind."

We read that story again from Luke's account this time in chapter two. And if you do have your Bibles with you, we would like you to open that with us because we're going to be working our way through one verse in particular. And perhaps by the end of this message, you'll remember it. It's the one verse we find in verse 11 of our passage. And it reads this way: "For unto us is born this day in the city of David, a saviour, who is Christ the Lord."

Why are we gonna focus on this one verse out of the whole story of the swaddling cloths and the shepherds in the field and the angels breaking through the night sky? Why do we focus on this one verse this morning? Well, because there is a number of incredibly important details shared in this one sentence. It's an incredible hope of the arrival of Jesus, the saviour. So let's pick over this one verse and see what it says.

In that one verse, the first thing we see is that the arrival of a saviour, the arrival of God, happened on a real day. "For unto you is born this day," the angel says. The angel explains this to the shepherds, and the shepherds, through them, to the rest of the world, anyone who was willing to hear their testimony, that the arrival of Jesus was not a vague future event, "until you will be born," "until you is born today." It's a done deal. There's no contingencies here.

There's no conditions to this. To you has been born a saviour. It is a fate accomplished, mission accomplished. It's really important, therefore, for us to know that Christmas celebrates a real moment in history. Jesus was born in a moment in time, a day in history.

And it is not some mythical event. It is not some concept that is meant to make us think about human existence in some sort of abstract super spiritual way. It is a real birth with a real hour on a real day. My brother is here with little Freddie. I think they might be in the crash.

He is one and a little bit old. There was a real hour and a real day for his birth. It was an eventful birth, as some of you will know. But as real as that birth was last year, so real was the birth of Jesus Christ. A real day.

In fact, it is so clear and it is so historical that the gospel writer Luke makes this point in chapter two, in the first verse that we read this morning, where he says, "It happened when Caesar Augustus was the emperor of Rome, and more specifically, when Corinius, for only a number of years, the governor of Syria." We know exactly when that was, that overlap in time. Historians are able to pinpoint the year that that would have been. We know that it wasn't December 25, it was probably June, July, or August in the summer months of the year.

Christmas day is sort of, we've taken that to replace pagan worship, the worship of the sun, hundreds of years ago, to worship the sun, son of God. But Luke and the shepherds who heard this, this detail is as important for them as it is to us. And the message is Jesus has been born into historical humanity. He's entered the world at a moment in time. Then the second thing we see, not only was it a real day, it was into a real place.

"Unto you is born this day," the angel says, "in the city of David." Not only in a moment in time, but it happened in space, like Albert Einstein's concept of physics. Physical existence is the combination between time and space. The angel announces that Jesus has been born in the town of Bethlehem, in the city of David, he says. Again, in our passage in verse four, we have read that Joseph and Mary have gone to Bethlehem, which is Joseph's hometown, from Nazareth, which is up in the north of Judea, and they've come down to be recorded in a census that Caesar Augustus again, we know of this census that Caesar Augustus had asked for.

Bethlehem is about 10 kilometres outside of Jerusalem. But as it was referred to as David's city, people have become confused because people assume David's city is the city of Jerusalem, where David reigned as king. But Bethlehem is actually the place where David was born. King David, we know also from the Old Testament, was Israel's greatest king. And the Old Testament scriptures hold out a promise that after him, and despite all his failures that came later in his life, after him would come a greater king than David himself.

This king or this person is called the Messiah, the Hebrew word for anointed. And in one of these Old Testament prophecies from the prophet Micah, we see that Bethlehem is integrally connected to the Messiah. Have a listen or have a read to Micah 5:2. "But you, O Bethlehem, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days." Jesus enters into time and space.

And again, it's not some mythical place. He's not a hero from Gotham City. He's not from Middle Earth. He's not from a galaxy far far away. Jesus enters physical space, born as a baby in a town that exists to this day, Bethlehem.

You can buy a ticket to fly there. I was gonna say today, but you can't because of COVID. Maybe next year. The second thing we need to know and believe is that Jesus' arrival happens not only at a moment in history, but in a physical place as well, in a real place. And then we find in this one sentence, one announcement from the angel, three descriptions of the nature of this person who has arrived.

Firstly, he is a saviour. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a saviour." A saviour. Maybe for some of us, this idea of a saviour is cute or it's confusing. In fact, even this morning, we might have sung words that maybe we don't really think might be real, or we don't really know what it means.

But for Jesus to be a saviour means that basically we, humanity, is in serious danger. And therefore, we need someone to help us, someone to save us. As the ministry of Jesus continues, and where we will eventually see him 30 years later in the rest of the gospel accounts, we understand through his ministry exactly what this danger is. Jesus explains that if we have ever sinned, we have sinned against God. If we have ever done what is morally wrong, we have sinned against God, and therefore, we need a saviour.

Because our eternal life, our existence with a good God is at stake. In the gospel writer Matthew's account, another account of the life of Jesus, the angel Gabriel comes to Joseph in Matthew 1:21. And he says to Joseph and to Mary that they are to give this baby the name Jesus, which means he saves. "For he will save," the angel says, "his people from their sins." Over the years of Jesus' ministry, people then ask of him, about him, "Who can forgive the sins but God himself?"

Jesus will say to them, "Only he, only he himself has the authority to do that because he is God. Who can forgive on God's behalf? Only God can forgive." So the angel says, a saviour has been born to you, to the shepherds. But then there's another qualifier that he adds.

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a saviour who is the Christ." Now Christ, in the English translation, is the Greek word Christos, which means anointed one. The Hebrew version of that in the Old Testament, like I said, is Messiah. And when the angel makes this declaration to the shepherds that this is who the saviour is, he is the Messiah, he is telling them that he is the long awaited, the long prophesied and predicted Messiah, anointed king that was to come. The angel says that Jesus is the Christ because he is the fulfilment of the entire Old Testament.

In him, all the promises of God are being fulfilled. And because he is both the saviour and the Messiah, this leads us to realise the final description that he is given by the angel, and that is that he is the Lord. "For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, who is Christ the Lord." What it means for him to be Lord is that Jesus is king. Jesus is ruler.

He has the authority, therefore, over all of life. He has the authority over the human soul itself. He is the king over everything that exists. Neoma read earlier this morning from Isaiah 9, which is an Old Testament prophecy made 700 years before the arrival of Jesus. And this is the description of the Messiah.

"For to us, a child is born, to us, a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of the peace thereof, there will be no end." The Messiah means anointed, and to be anointed is to be king. And yet, in this prophecy in Isaiah and many others, and throughout the ministry of Jesus, we start realising that this is not kingship over Israel.

It does not just belong to the Jewish people. It is not over a geopolitical state in the middle of the Middle East 2000 years ago. It says, "Of the increase of his government, there is no end." It means he reigns over every part of this world. It is limitless his rule.

Now friends, I wanna tell you in closing that this last descriptor of Jesus and the announcement of the angel to the shepherds is probably the most applicable to us today. It is the thing that we can actually do something about. Everything else, "to you has been born today in the city of David, a saviour," those are all things that have been accomplished. The one thing that we have direct involvement with is that he is Lord. And I wanna ask you, is he your Lord?

Because it's only in the fact that Jesus has come to humanity in a moment of real time and space, and it's only because he was the fulfilment of the promised Messiah, the completion of thousands of years of promises from God saying, "Mankind is in trouble and I am doing something about that." It's only because he was God in the flesh that he could be a saviour that could forgive sin against God. But it's only because of all these descriptors that come before that the angel can say, "This one is the Lord." Friend, Christ is nothing to you if he is not your Lord.

To put it another way, Christ is everything to you if he is. And even if he isn't your Lord, he is still the Lord. He still reigns. And he will come back again, and he will judge all of us. But the reality is that for some of us, because he has not become our Lord, he will not be received as the Christ, as the saviour, as the one who came to Bethlehem, as the one who came into our history.

It's because of this last description, "Jesus is Lord," that all of us who receive Jesus and believe that he has come to earth, it makes sense when Jesus is Lord in our life. He will come again because he is Lord, and he will judge all of us. And for some of us, he will tell us that your sin is yours alone to carry because you have not allowed me to do so. And so on you will fall the punishment, which is the horror of eternity, separated from God and all that is good. So I wanna invite you again this morning, and I don't know where you're at.

I wanna invite you to explore these things if you don't know if they are true for you this morning. If you don't know that you truly believe that he is your king, your Lord. But for those of us who do profess and who believe and love Jesus as the Lord of their Christmas, have you reminded yourself this morning of what it means for Christ to be the Lord over your life? Do you live a life worthy of his lordship? Does your joy and affection for him reflect that he is your Lord and your saviour?

Or do you live as though he is your king that serves you? And if he serves you, then he isn't your king. We started by hearing about the bloke who thought he'd get away by sending some cards, not having been careful in looking over the details when he sent them away. He overlooked that one line in the cards that caused him a lot of headaches in the new year. He promised a gift to each of the people he sent those cards to.

Friends, as you celebrate Christmas this year, please do your due diligence and consider the details. Instead of a one liner, remember this one verse: "For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a saviour, who is the Christ, our Lord." It's the one liner that tells us the Christmas story is really true. And it tells us in a powerful summary that in a real city, in a real moment of history, stepped a saviour to take away sin, who has fulfilled the hopes we could ever have placed on him. And because he's able to defeat that brokenness inside of us and the consequences thereof, he has shown himself finally and fully to be the Lord that we would love to belong to.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the message that we hear again, that our hearts can be warmed up to this Christmas morning. And Lord, as we gather this morning to scatter again, as we come in to sit around the warmth, the coals of your word, to hear of that ancient announcement. Lord, may our hearts be filled with awe and with wonder, and may there be in our hearts that sense of peace which the angels declare: glory goes to God for this, but peace has come to man because of this. Lord, may we all crown you as the king, the Lord of our lives, because you are the saviour.

You are Emmanuel, God with us. In your name we pray, Lord Jesus. Amen.