Christmas Eve Service 2021

Gone's the sun into us, the child has done a great thing, taken on flesh, conquered death's sting, shattered the darkness and lifted our shame. Darkness and lifted our shame. I biffed it for us last year, so you can biff it for us this year.

Oh, you know what? It's a pretend mic. You don't want to hear that. I actually want to hear you.

Just prettiness. Smile. Do those hand motions Josh was talking about the other night.

We're going to use another test condenser as well. Is this mic on? What's that? You do it a special way. While he's going to come do that, we'll do the first song. I brought it over here. She's got a mic right here.

I got it. Check one. There we are. Can you hold this, please? That's a lot of power you've got there. You better be careful. Man, it's like holding Odin's staff. Okay. Sorry. Going from Star Wars to Marvel movies.

Check one. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Check one. Check, check, check. Check, check, check. There we go. Okay. You're welcome. Check one.

The Father’s Provision of Salvation in Christ

Father, you have provided for us in your Son all that we have needed. Our most profound and pressing and eternal need was for a Savior. One who would live a life for us and die a death in our place. And we thank you that in Christ our Lord you have provided that very thing.

A Savior, a Redeemer, one who delivers us from the wrath that is to come and we thank you for that. We pray tonight for your blessing upon our time and our worship and our fellowship together as we lift our voices we pray that you would give us grace that we may lift our hearts as well in adoration and praise and thanksgiving to you our great God and our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ in whose name we pray, Amen.

Angels we have heard on high sweetly singing o 'er the plains and the mountains in reply echo back their joyous strain, glory excels these days, we stand in Joseph's ladder aid with us in our Savior's birth, we stand there watching o 'er silent flocks by the shepherd's field.

You may be seated. Would you please stand and we're going to sing Prepare Him Room. The stars shine on the virgin foretold, angels sing and light up the sky, hope rings out in the newborn's cry, swing wide you ancient gates, for Christ is born today.

Prepare Him Room, prepare, let the King enter in with us, the promise has come to be, this the one the prophets were longing to see, in the darkness of blazing light, to the hungry the words of light, His kingdom now is here, for those with ears to hear, Prepare Him Room, prepare Him Room, let the King of glory enter in, the King of as busy as Bethlehem, don't say there's no room to be, see the love of God displayed, now He's risen as Christ was made, above all ages.

The Virgin Birth and Matthew’s Fulfillment of Prophecy

In Matthew 1 verses 18 through 25 it reads,. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows, when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit, and Joseph her husband being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly, but when he had considered this, behold an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the one who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bear a son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.

Now all this took place in order that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled, saying, Behold the virgin shall be with child, and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which translated means God with us.

And Joseph got up from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son, and he called His name Jesus. Would you please stand with us as we sing, Salvation is Born.

The Word Became Flesh in John 1

In John chapter 1 verses 11 through 14 it reads,. He came to what was His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him, but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. Would you please stand as we sing, Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery.

In the dawning of the King, He the theme of heaven's praises, robed in frail humanity. In our longing, in our darkness, now the light of life has come. Who looked to Christ to condescend it, took on flesh to ransom Him.

Come behold the wondrous mystery, He the perfect Son of Man. In His living, in His suffering, never trace nor stain of sin. See the true and better Adam come to save the hell-bound man. Christ the great and sure fulfillment of the law, in Him we stand.

Come behold the wondrous mystery, Christ the Lord upon the tree. In the stead of ruined sinners, hangs the Lamb in victory. See the price of our redemption, see the Father's plan unfold. Bringing many sons to glory, grace unmeasured, love untold.

Behold the wondrous mystery, slain by death the God of life. But no grave could ever restrain Him, praise the Lord He is alive. What a foretaste of deliverance, how unwavering our hope. Christ in power resurrected, as we will be when He comes.

What a foretaste of deliverance, how unwavering our hope. Christ in power resurrected, as we will be when He comes. Weak and unstable we are not. In the last few Sundays for our morning worship service we've been going through Luke chapter 2.

The Trinitarian Work of Salvation in Luke 2

And we're going to be back in that passage again here this evening. There's a lot here that we've tried to unpack in this encounter between Simeon and Joseph and Mary. An event that happened within about two months after Jesus was born.

And I'm going to read the passage to you and then I'm going to simply draw out three aspects of this encounter that I want to focus on here tonight. Luke chapter 2, and if you have your Bibles you're welcome to turn there to verse 21 of Luke chapter 2.

Beginning of verse 21. And when eight days had passed before His circumcision, His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb. And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.

And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

And he came in the Spirit into the temple when the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for him the custom of the law. Then he took Him into his arms and blessed God and said, Now, Lord, You are releasing Your bondservant to depart in peace according to Your word.

For my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel. And his father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about him.

And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rise of many into Israel, and for a sign to be opposed, and a sword will pierce even your own soul to the end that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.

There's a lot that can be drawn out of this passage, and I have felt somewhat constrained over the course of the last three weeks as we've been looking at this, because as you would probably expect, if we were going through the Gospel of Luke, my pace would be slightly slower than what we have been going through in the last three Sundays.

So I feel as if I have left a tremendous amount on the editing room floor over the course of the last three weeks. And I simply want to revisit three aspects of this, and you might think that it would be convenient for me to just take like one point from each of those three weeks and put that together, and that would be a really easy work week for me, because I could just repeat basically three points from three weeks of sermons.

But I'm not going to do that. I'm going to go a little bit deeper into some of the things that we have looked at in this passage, in this encounter between Simeon and Mary and Joseph. First, I want you to notice that the birth of Christ was a Trinitarian event.

Here's my outline for this morning. It's a Trinitarian event, a public event, and a salvific event. Those are the three things we're going to focus on. First, a Trinitarian event. And we kind of noticed this in the passage as we looked at the fact that when Simeon walked into the temple, he is there under the power of the Holy Spirit, guided as it were.

His steps providentially directed by the Spirit of God into the temple that day. The Spirit of God had revealed to Simeon that he was to, I think, go to the temple that day, and that he was going to see the Christ child that day.

All of that was stuff that Simeon knew. He expected to see the Christ child in his own lifetime before he died, because that is what the Lord had promised to him. So he went to the temple that day in the Spirit, and the text says that he saw the baby Jesus.

He picked up the divine Son in his arms, and he spoke to the Father. And we just simply acknowledged when we went through this several weeks ago that that was a Trinitarian event. You have all three persons of the Trinity who are mentioned here.

Simeon, in the power and under the influence of the third person of the Trinity, describes the second person of the Trinity to the first person of the Trinity. Of course, not telling the Father anything new, anything that the Father didn't already know, but it is this exultation of praise that Simeon utters that is uniquely Trinitarian at this moment.

And it would be easy for us to simply acknowledge that that is a Trinitarian moment, and then to sort of move on, but I want to go somewhat deeper and pass just this moment itself, and remind you that everything that has taken place up to this moment has been a Trinitarian momentum, to use another M word just because I need one.

It has been a Trinitarian series of events that has unfolded for Simeon. In fact, it has been a Trinitarian series of events that has unfolded from eternity past. So we see in the temple the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit who are all there in that moment, but we shouldn't think that that is the only Trinitarian working that is involved in the birth of Christ.

It goes far beyond just that one moment. In fact, if we were to step back into eternity past, we would see that the Father planned our salvation and chose in His Son, before the foundation of the world, to give His Son a bride.

And the Father selected those whom He would save through His Son. Then in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son into this world, and He was conceived in the womb of a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit, a Trinitarian conception as it were, and the Spirit conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, this Christ child who was fully God and fully man, the second person of the Trinity, united with humanity in flesh.

And then the Son of God was born through that. So we have the Father planning our salvation, the Son coming to do what the Father sent Him to do, which is to take upon Himself human flesh, and then to live a perfect life and to die in our stead.

And the Holy Spirit is accomplishing that through the conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary. All of that is Trinitarian from eternity past, all the way through to our eventual glorification. The Trinity was involved in the planning of our salvation, the procuring of our salvation, and the effecting of our salvation in the person of the Spirit when He causes us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

All of it is a Trinitarian work. So it's not just that the Spirit conceived in the Virgin Mary a human child that was also God in human flesh because it's the second person of the Trinity. And by the way, He didn't begin to exist at that moment.

He existed from eternity past. He took upon Himself human flesh without ever ceasing to be God, without giving up any of His divine essence, without giving up any of His divine qualities or His divine attributes at all.

He became a man and He lived among us as a perfect man. It's all a Trinitarian work. Salvation's planning, it's purposing, it's unfolding, it's intentionality. All of it is the work of the Trinity from first to last.

It's not just this moment when all three persons of the Trinity happen to show up and, hey, isn't this neat? We're all in the same place at the same time. We're all in the temple and this is kind of cool.

No, that's not it at all. This entire thing has been planned from eternity past. So that we see in Christ doing the will of the Father, 1 John 4, 14, we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world and the Son came in obedience to the Father willfully and willingly.

John 14, 24, Jesus said, He who does not love Me does not keep My words, and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father's who sent Me. The Father was sent by the Son. Jesus said, I've come down from heaven not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

And the Son came to do the Father's will, and that was to save those whom the Father had chosen. It was to save those whom the Father had given to the Son. In eternity past, the Father gave to the Son a love gift, a group of people that was to be the Son's bride, and the Son's role was to come into this world and to die for His bride, the church, so that He might take away her sin and cleanse her with the washing of the water and the word and purify her and make for Himself a spotless bride in all of her glory to present to Himself.

And the Spirit of God does that work of perfecting and purifying that bride so that she may be presented to the Son to the glory of the Father who chose that bride and gave that bride to the Son. See, all of that is, it's all Trinitarian work.

We didn't get into any of that in Luke chapter 2. The Son lived a perfect life and fulfilled the law entirely so that He could live that life on behalf of His bride so that all of her sin would be credited to Him and all of His righteousness might be given to her.

That bride, of course, is the church. That is all those who believe. We are the bride of Christ if you have believed upon Jesus Christ. Jesus said, for this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life so that I may take it again.

No one has taken it from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my Father. The three Persons of the Trinity are in complete harmony as to the work of salvation.

The Son came to do the will of the Father and the Spirit affects the will of the Father in drawing people to the Son. All three Persons of the Trinity are involved in our salvation, the planning of it, the procuring of it, and the effecting of it.

And it is a Trinitarian work from first to last, all to the glory of our Triune God. The Trinity plans our salvation together, each person doing his role for the glory of our Triune God, and he accomplishes it perfectly.

The birth of Christ was a Trinitarian event. Second, it was a public event. Simeon says in our passage, My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all the peoples. And we talked about how this was not something done in a corner.

It was done publicly. It was done out in front of everybody. And though it was in Bethlehem, and though the birth was not attended by crowds and nations and dignitaries from every land, it was public in the sense that for centuries God had been planning this salvation and this event, and he had been telling people where it would happen and when it would happen and what type of person to look for.

And he had announced all of that through the prophets and written it all down and put it out there and published it to the nations. It was open and available for anybody who would come who had eyes to see and ears to hear.

It was a public event. And the event was told to us not just who he would be, the type of person he would be, but the very lineage of the Messiah was given to us publicly for generations, for hundreds of years before the Messiah was ever born.

In fact, it goes all the way back to the garden. When in the garden man fell and the Lord said to Adam and Eve and to the woman specifically that a seed of the woman would come and he would crush the serpent's head and the serpent would bruise his heel.

That was in one of the songs that we sung earlier. And all we could tell about the Messiah from that promise of a messianic deliverer was that the Messiah would be a male. That's it. He. That's it. Well, that kind of narrows down our options, doesn't it, to roughly half of humanity?

At least we know at that point something that we should be looking for. But then later on God would narrow that down through one of eight people on an ark. It would come through one of them. Okay, so we know then that the Savior has to come from the line of Noah.

And later on we would find out that it comes through the line of Shem when God chose Abraham. Okay, now we have narrowed it down. We've come not just from half of humanity, but when God made a covenant with Abraham we've narrowed it down now to the descendant of this one man.

But then this one man has two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. Which of those two sons is the Messiah going to come through? Well, God narrowed it down by choosing Isaac, the son of promise, and not Ishmael. Okay, well that helps us out, right?

Now we have eliminated a whole third of humanity basically with that choice. But Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Which of those two would be the one through whom the Messiah would come? Well, God chose Jacob.

He said, Jacob I love and Esau I've hated. Okay, that helps us out tremendously then, doesn't it? Now we've narrowed it down from Abraham through Isaac to Jacob. But Jacob, that dog had 12 sons. 12 sons.

Now, which of those 12 sons? You get to the end of the book of Genesis and we've narrowed it down to one, the tribe of Judah. So now we've eliminated 11 twelfths of Abraham's descendants. And we've got just the tribe of Judah.

A thousand years later, it would be narrowed down even further to one particular descendant, David. He would be the one through whom the Son would come. Of all of David's children, Solomon would be the one through whom the Son would come.

See how God for hundreds of years, for centuries, He announced it. He said, it's coming through this line, watch, I'm narrowing it down. As we move through history, God narrows out the people so that we can know exactly.

It has to be a descendant of David that narrows it down. David had a lot of children and David's children had a lot of children. And still the line of David was a big lineage. It was a big line, but that helps us out considerably, doesn't it?

But then God later on would say, not only would it be from the tribe of David, but it would be in the city of David in Bethlehem. And then through the prophet Daniel, God would predict the timing of the Messiah's birth.

Not the exact year, not the exact date, but certainly the season. Because we would know that Daniel predicted the time at which the Messiah would be cut off and he would die. At some point before that, the Messiah would have to live and live a life.

And so Daniel helped us predict even sort of the season in which this would happen. So we got it narrowed down to who to look for. And then we have it narrowed down to a specific time period. And then God narrowed it down to a specific place.

And then God specifically narrowed it down to the descendant of one particular woman a virgin will conceive. Now, does that narrow it down even further than Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all his twelve descendants?

It certainly does. How many virgins have conceived? One. One. That helps us understand exactly who the Messiah would be, right? God narrowed it right down to that for us, so that we could not miss it.

And then of course, preceding all of that, God told us the type of person that we should be looking for. We should be looking for someone who would fulfill all of the types and shadows and the symbols of the Old Covenant and the Old Testament.

So we should look for somebody who is a priest, who functions as a priest. We should look for somebody who is a spotless pure lamb of God. We should look for a sinless one. We should look for a deliverer.

We should look for somebody who is a miracle worker. All of these things were predicted for us in the prophets. We should look for somebody who could give his life as a ransom for many. Someone who would live a perfect life, so that he could die a perfect death and atone and pay for the sins of all those who will trust upon him.

That's the type of person we should be looking for. And then when that person, fulfilling all of those qualities, was born at that place and at that time from that lineage, God made it even more public and announced it when the angels proclaimed it to the shepherds out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night.

And the shepherds went in and they saw it, and the angelic hosts surrounded it, and an angel announced it to Elizabeth, and an angel announced it to Mary, and an angel announced it to Joseph. And they could have told anybody that they wanted and probably told a lot of people when the whole controversy surrounding Joseph and Mary got going because they were not married and yet she was pregnant.

And they would have told everybody about this angelic visitor. At least probably everybody that was close to them. So God made it very public. None of this was done in a corner. God came into the world and he announced it beforehand for hundreds of years.

Then he recorded the events for us, and he recorded the implications of those events for us. He wrote it down, and now it has been published to the entire world. So that if you deny this, or reject this, or turn away from this, or remain unbelieving in this great salvation, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Because the eternal God has been announcing this for centuries. It's not just a Trinitarian event and a public event, but it is also a salvific event. Simeon says, my eyes have seen your salvation. This is a salvation that came to Jews and to Gentiles.

The salvation that was brought by Christ in his first coming, it is salvation that was his primary reason for coming here. It's not his only reason, but it was his primary reason. This is what the angels announced.

When they said to Joseph, she will bear a son and you will name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. In Luke chapter 2, when the angel appeared to them, he said, do not be afraid, behold I bring you good news of great joy.

It will be for all the people, for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord. That was the announcement to the angels. It is salvation that is in view. He is a Savior because he alone has done what is necessary to save his people from their sins.

What was necessary to save his people from their sins? What did we need? We needed a Savior. Why? Because we're wicked, depraved, rotten sinners. That's why, that's the short answer to it. We needed a Savior because that was our most fundamental, our most pressing, our most eternal, our most basic need was salvation.

We didn't need a politician. We didn't need a legislator. We didn't need a judge. We didn't need a reformer. We didn't need a national deliverer. We didn't need a salesman. We didn't need any of that.

What we needed was somebody to save us from our sins. In his first coming, that is the reason he came. Galatians 4 verses 4 and 5. The fullness of time came. God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that he might redeem those who were under the law, and that we might receive the adoption as sons.

He was born under the law so that he might redeem those who are under the law. To be under the law was to be under the curse of the law. Because we were under the law and we're obligated to obey the law, and guess what?

We have violated the law. And this is what demonstrates that we are sinners. Because we have lied. We have stolen. We have blasphemed God's name. We've taken his name in vain. We've worshipped other gods.

We've not honored our parents. We've slandered. We've been abusive with our speech. The thoughts of our hearts have been wicked continually, day after day. This is us in our lost condition. And God has kept an accounting of all of our deeds in our lost condition, so that he knows every sin we have ever committed, every deed we've done in darkness, every thought we've had, every motive of our heart.

He knows it all. He sees it all. And it demands, it calls out, it cries out for justice. And being born under the law, we were under the curse of the law, which pronounced us guilty, and demanded that we die for our sin.

So what we really needed was somebody to be born under the law, to live in fulfillment of all of the demands of the law, and then to die in our stead, to die the death that we were required to die for our sin, having lived the life that the law of God required us to live for our righteousness, and he fulfilled both of those things.

So that having lived a perfect life and having died a perfect death, he could offer himself up as a savior to us, and by repentance and faith and trust in him, we can have our sins forgiven, we can have our sin debt erased, we can have our day in court canceled.

That is what we needed. Salvation. You'll name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Not that he will try and save them, not that he will mostly save them, not that he will save most of them, but our Savior actually accomplishes everything it is that the Father sent him to do, to die in the place of any and all who will repent of their sin and trust him.

Unbeliever, if you're here tonight and you've never trusted Christ for salvation, you have to reckon with this reality. This is truth. It's written in the pages of Scripture, it is recorded in history, it is fact, and your eternal destiny will be determined by what you do with the person of Jesus Christ.

He offers himself to you today as Savior. Reject him, deny him, turn away from that, live impenitent in your own sin, and you will face him someday as judge. He promises you that. What he accomplished at his first coming was salvation, but he is coming again without reference to sin, not to deal with the sin issue that has already been dealt with.

For those who trust in him, he is the atonement, he is the payment for sin, but he is returning again to judge the living and the dead. And he will be the instrument through which God pours out his wrath on any and all who will not believe.

So I beg of you on behalf of Christ tonight, if you've never trusted Christ, be reconciled to God, turn from your sin, understand that you are a sinner deserving of that wrath, and come to the Savior for salvation.

Christian, if you're here tonight, which I know a lot of you are, this is what God has provided for us in the person of Christ. And there is nothing that could or should thrill our hearts more than that.

Because we enjoy not only the salvation that he has given to us in his son, but we look forward to his return, and eternity with him. Knowing that our sins have been taken out of the way, and that he has given to us his righteousness, and he is waiting to see us as we are waiting to see him, and someday we will be with him, and we will be made just like him when we see him as he is in truth.

That is our hope, that is our glory. Let's pray. Father, we do rejoice and thank you for so great a salvation in your son. You have been so merciful to us who do not deserve salvation, but only deserve your wrath.

To not only plan salvation, but to procure it through your son, and then to woo and draw our hearts to the Savior, that we may believe upon him. So we thank you for that provision and for that salvation.

We rejoice in it. It is our hope. We long for and look forward to the day when we will be with Christ, and we will see him, and we will know him face to face. And until that time, make us faithful, adoring, loving, obedient, and faith-filled servants of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

For any who are here or listening who do not know that salvation, we do pray that you would draw those unbelievers to your son, so that they may have the fullness of grace, forgiveness of sins, and that they may know and experience the joy that is to belong to Jesus Christ.

We ask this, that the son may receive the full reward for all of his suffering in bringing to him all those for whom he has died. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Would you please stand? And in closing, we will sing Silent Night. We'll dismiss this evening with a quote by Augustine. Let the just rejoice, for their Justifier is born. Let the sick and infirm rejoice, for their Savior is born.

Let the captives rejoice, for their Redeemer is born. Let slaves rejoice, for their Master is born. Let free men rejoice, for their Liberator is born. Let all Christians rejoice, for Jesus Christ is born.

Have a Merry Christmas.