Word of Salvation – Vol. 49 No.46 – December 2004

 

The Hidden Christ and His Sign

 

Sermon by Rev M Geluk on Luke 2:12

Scripture Reading: Luke 2:1-18

Suggested Hymns: BoW: 264; 268; 251; 247; 255; 276; 265

 

Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Throughout the Bible times, shepherds were ordinary people. Their job was as common as today’s carpenters and mechanics. And it was to shepherds that all of a sudden an angel of the Lord appeared. Not to the teachers of the law and the scribes, not to the high priest or king or some high government official, but to ordinary shepherds. And with the angel the glory of the Lord shone around these shepherds. It was so unusual that they were scared out of their wits. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you: He is Christ the Lord’ (vss 10-11).

Christ the Lord was the Messiah. Even these Jewish shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem knew about the Messiah. He was written about in the Law and the Prophets. For hundreds of years Israel had been waiting for the Messiah. Perhaps not always so keenly but if you mentioned the Messiah then your neighbours and workmates would not give you a surprised look. Everyone knew the Messiah was the Saviour God had promised. There might have been a few different ideas around the place as to what kind of saviour. Some were thinking of a political saviour, others thought more of a military saviour, and a few perhaps knew the Law and the Prophets well enough to expect a saviour from sin. And some might have given up altogether their expectations of a Messiah. But at any rate the angel did not have to worry that the shepherds had no idea what he was talking about.

The angel said the Saviour was born in the town of David. That could only mean Bethlehem. But how would they know where to look? In a town of that size more than one baby could have been born on any given day. That was just ordinary. Well, the angel had said, ‘This will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger’ (vs 12).

As soon as the angel had given this important message, the sky above the shepherds erupted with heavenly beings. Whatever the shepherds saw, it was spectacular and they heard these heavenly beings praising God and singing, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favour rests’ (vs 13).

When everything had settled down again, the shepherds set off to Bethlehem. They had to look for a manger with a baby. But fancy having to find Christ the Lord, the Saviour, in a manger. Not a palace. Not even the town hall. But a manger. A manger is nothing more than a bit of a lean-to, stuck to the side of an inn where guests could leave their animals. In today’s terms that would be the area at the back of the roadhouse where there are caravans or where you put up your tent. If all the motel rooms are full, that’s where you’ll be. So nothing special. All quite ordinary.

But this passage from Luke’s gospel is talking about the birth of Christ, the Son of God. It was the most important event since the creation. John 1:14 says: ‘The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among…’ The ‘Word’ is Christ. He is eternal. He is God. ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.’

That’s the powerful opening verse of John’s gospel. We’re left in no doubt that the Word is Christ and Christ is God. It’s about God appearing in the flesh. That’s who the baby in the manger was. John the gospel writer speaks of what effect it had on him when he and his fellow disciples some time later were called by Jesus to be a disciple.

‘We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (vs 14).

The apostle Paul, writing to Timothy, said, ‘Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion: God was manifested in the flesh’ (1 Tim 3:16a). Yes, a mystery it is – God, the eternal, almighty, majestic, holy God, coming into the world of men as the Saviour for sin. Remember the hymn, ‘Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes…’ (BoW 360). But in a manger in Bethlehem, God became visible to human eyes. The shepherds went to see God.

Quite a few years after the shepherds had seen Christ the Lord as a infant in a manger in Bethlehem, God inspired the apostle Paul to give this explanation, ‘Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, and being made in human likeness…’ (Phil 2:6-7). Yes, Christ, the eternal God, was willing to become human in order to save us from our sin. Christ -~emptied Himself’ of His attributes as God and became like us in every way, except sin. And how did He do it? In a most unspectacular way – in the birth of an ordinary child. Yes, Christ was born of the virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit in a miraculous way worked on the womb of Mary and caused her to be pregnant.

But the shepherds had no idea of that yet. In the humble surroundings of a manger, this Child was the Saviour, born of a virgin, the eternal, powerful Christ, equal with God, yes, God Himself, the Word who became flesh. And all that was hidden to all the other people in Bethlehem that night. Nobody else in Israel or in the world at that time knew that God had come to earth. The shepherds only knew because of what the angel had said to them.

After checking out a few mangers the shepherds came to one where bedded down for the night were a young couple, who as it turned out to be, were Joseph and Mary and the Child Jesus. As far as the shepherds could make it, this Child was an ordinary Jewish baby boy. Each one of the shepherds began their life as an ordinary Jewish baby boy. They saw nothing special in this Child. The fact that Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem meant that they were descendants of David.

The emperor’s decree about a census meant everyone had to go to their own town to be registered. That’s how Joseph and Mary had come to be in Bethlehem. But on thisnight Bethlehem was full of people who were descendants of King David. There was nothing special about that anymore. Not even if you said that your roots were in royalty. King David had died six hundred years ago. Whatever was special about that was long gone. And when they sing -~Once in royal David’s city’ at the big Christmas concerts at this time of the year then it’s doubtful if the majority associate David’s city with Bethlehem. And the world at large would know it even less. Bethlehem is better known today as a hotspot between Jews and Palestinians.

All the glorious facts about Christ remained hidden also during His earthly ministry, at least to some extent. To us and others who read the gospels, it stands out on every page that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. His miracles, His wonderful and profound teaching, Him being the Saviour, it is all special to those who believe. But the birth of Jesus was of no historic significance in the Roman world. And what Jesus did in Israel was mainly confined to Israel. The Bible tells us all about it but it’s not in the history books.

At the time when Jesus lived the Jews were not a significant people. The Romans were in control and to the Emperor the Jews meant no more than a group of sometimes difficult people in a small corner of his empire. The Greeks at least were known for their wisdom; they had the philosophers. And the Romans were known for their excellent legal system and their military genius. There were no Jews among the influential names of people that were known to the world of that time.

Jesus was known to His followers but He was not known as a great man among the rest of the Jewish population. He never even wrote one book. He never travelled outside the land of Israel. From a worldly point of view Jesus was very ordinary.

So what were the shepherds thinking when they found the baby in the manger? The angel had told them it was the Saviour, Christ the Lord, but just looking at the Child and Joseph and Mary, you would not know it. If they had not known the angel’s message, and had just happened to come by and see a young couple with a child in an animal shelter, then they would have just walked on without being surprised. But now, because of what the angel had told them, this was it. The sign, the angel had said, was an infant wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. The shepherds would have said to each other – is this it? Is this all there is?

All this meant, of course, that the shepherds’ faith was based only on what they heard from the angel, not on what they saw in the manger. That was too ordinary. In fact, seeing an ordinary baby in an ordinary manger put their faith to the test. They really had to focus on what the angel had said and on the appearance of the heavenly beings in the sky. Not seeing the Child but believing the message they heard was what made the shepherds afterwards ‘spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child’ (vs 17). The shepherds were, in fact, the first heralds of the incarnation, of God becoming flesh.

Yes, the hidden Christ. The same dilemma faced the disciples. They were so close to Jesus, were witnesses of what He said and did, and yet they had their doubts. They ran away from Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. They saw their Lord and Master, yes, God in the flesh, despised and rejected, just as the prophet Isaiah had foretold. He suffered and bled like any other man. Was Jesus really the Christ?

Where was the might and glory of heaven when He was led to the cross? Was the Son of God going to die? And once He was dead, how the disciples struggled to believe in His resurrection! Was this Jesus, who in His risen state stood before them, the same Jesus they had known before He died?

And think of John the Baptist. He too doubted that Jesus was the Christ. In prison he began to wonder about this Jesus. John had to prepare the people for Christ and told them the axe was laid at the root of the trees. In other words, sinners were put on notice that Jesus the Judge was coming. But in Jesus’ ministry there was little judgment, it was much more a ministry of grace and mercy. Judgment was to come with His second coming, but John didn’t know that. So John in his doubts sent messengers who had to ask Jesus, ‘are you the Christ, or is the real Christ still to come?’

You can see now why you and I sometimes have our doubts about Jesus. If it wasn’t for the Bible with its mighty witness about God coming to save sinners in Christ, then we wouldn’t even know about it.

Most of the people living in your neighbourhood, if they have no connection with the church and are not familiar with the Bible, have a hard time believing that Jesus, who was born two thousand years ago, and lived in Palestine, is God come in the flesh, the Saviour of the world. You bring a non Christian friend to church, maybe he or she is here today, but they have a hard time believing what the Christian church believes about Christ. Yes, there are all these stories about Christ in the Bible and we say it is special and we see God at work in all of it. But to many others it’s nothing special.

There are so many stories around with a claim to something special.

So how can the Christian church survive with a gospel and a kingdom of heaven, which for so many is not spectacular enough? Christians say it is special and they can clearly see it but for those who can’t see it, it is a hidden kingdom of God and a hidden Christ. A dominant world power like the USA is not hidden and those who are world leaders today are not hidden. But where is the might and the power of God? Our children grow up going to church and are regularly exposed to Bible reading and preaching. But some of them ask, ‘how do we know what the Bible says is true? If God is real, why is everything about Christians and the church so ordinary? Where are the miracles today? Why don’t we have happening to us what happened to the shepherds?’

And even the spectacular stuff in the Bible – why, some people argue that what you read is not what happened. They interpret things in the Bible in such a way that nothing is special anymore. It’s all ordinary, really. Or others, who are the complete opposite, are claiming that miracles are still happening today. But when you look closely then many things are not miracles at all but just the normal, and sometimes somewhat unusual, things of everyday life. In our world today there are no messages from angels, no heavenly choirs, no miraculous feeding of the multitudes, no walking on water, no resurrections, and no ascension into heaven.

Believers in the Word of God know the kingdom of God has come into the world and they can see it, but for most others it is hidden. Believers in the Word confess that Jesus lives today, they know it and are convinced of it, but for most others, Christ is hidden. If the works of God today were not so un-exceptional, then maybe many more would come to faith and join the Christian church. Yes, there have been times of revival and renewal, and the power of God was obviously noticeable.

Some revivals brought lasting changes to society and they were good changes. People repented of sins, began obeying God’s good commandments, and life in society improved greatly. But then it seemed as if God withdrew again and the fires died down again. There have also been great Christian scholars and thinkers but never enough to make an ongoing impression through time and history.

Some Christians have lived lives of wonderful compassion and sacrificial love, but most of us are just ordinary Christians. And it often happens that non-Christians make a greater and better contribution to society than Christians do. So will the Christian church survive? Many doubt it. It’s not special enough, they say, to make an impact.

So how did we come to believe in God as He has revealed Himself in His Word? Why do we still bother with things Christian? Why don’t we throw our Bibles away, stop praying and ignore the church? Is it because we are afraid of what others might think of us if we were to walk away from it all? Is it because we are holding on to tradition? Is it because there is no better alternative?

Hardly. We’ve seen others do nothing anymore about the Christian faith and they seem to be still getting along all right. So why are Christians still Christian? How come we still see children of believers become believers themselves? How do we explain that there are still people who turn to Christ and follow Him, bringing about dramatic changes to their lives? Yes, what made the shepherds come away from that ordinary scene of the baby in the manger and amaze others with the message the angel told them?

The explanation is not what you would call -~commonsense’, or in rational thinking, or in psychology, or through the influence of books and thinkers. Only Christ has the answer. He said to Simon Peter when he confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, ‘Blessed are you, Simon, for this was not revealed to you by man but by my Father in heaven’ (Mt 16:17). John’s gospel tells us that all who receive Christ as God, who believe in all what He is and stands for, have come to be children of God, ‘not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man’ (NKJV), but born of God (Jn 1:13). Only when God opens the mind, will people become believers. There is no other explanation for it.

Do we, therefore, just sit back and wait for that to happen? No, that’s not what God had in mind. Just as the angel’s message made the shepherds go to Bethlehem and look for the sign of a baby in a manger, so also is the Word of God His message to us today about Jesus being the Christ. And what is the sign for us today?

Well, it has been the same sign ever since Jesus went to heaven and left us His Word. It is not a search for miracles, for Jesus the Christ is still hidden to a large extent. It is not a search for things spectacular, for the kingdom of heaven is often very ordinary. It’s not the programmes a church provides, or its music, or its preacher, or its liturgy, or the many other things that go with things Christian and church. It is the Person and the Word of Christ. He is God in the flesh. He is the Word made incarnate and who made His dwelling among us. When God opens your mind, then in Christ you see the glory of God. All the grace and truth of God is in Christ. In Christ the Light you see your own sinfulness but you also discover forgiveness and cleansing. Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And you hear of Him through the Word. That’s why God wants us to keep on saying all these familiar things about Christ.

And one day soon there will be a new sign. It will be the coming of the Son of God on the clouds of the sky. Unlike the ordinariness of the baby in the manger, this second coming will be spectacular. There will be a great upheaval to this present earth never seen before. The sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light. The stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken (Is 13:10; 34:4; Mt 24:29). When all that happens, then it will be no longer a hidden Christ but Christ revealed with power and great glory!

Amen.