If you have a Bible, and it's okay if you don't, we're going to look at Luke chapter 2 for a little bit tonight. Luke chapter 2 verse 7 through 16. If you do want to use one of the Bibles that may be underneath the chair in front of you, the big blue Bible, it's on page 1090. Here now God's holy, true, and life giving word. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clouds and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn. And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them. And they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, fear not. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be assigned for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clouds and laying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger. It's the Word of the Lord. You pray with me. Heavenly Father, we are gathered here tonight to worship and praise you, to worship and praise your Son, our Savior who is Christ the Lord, to worship and praise you, Holy Spirit who fills us and reminds us that we belong to God. And that we have been saved by grace through faith in Christ. As we celebrate the birth of our Savior, Father, would you just fill us with your spirit, fill us with awe, fill us with excitement and joy about the good news of great joy for all people. For it is in Jesus name that we pray. Amen. A couple of years ago, there was an older gentleman who has a couple of grandchildren and it had become a little difficult for him to decide what to get them for Christmas each year. So a few years ago, he decided that he would just give them a big fat check each of them a check for $100. He thought that would really go over well. So on Christmas day, his grandchildren came over and he with a big smile, he gave them their cards and they opened them up and as they're staring at their cards, their faces looked a little peculiar and then they kind of looked at their grandfather and then they looked at each other and ended up just closing the cards and setting them down and running off to play with their other toys. Grandpa was a little bothered by this, he's thinking, I'm giving you $100, I don't know why they're not even saying thank you. So he leaned over and he picked up one of the cards and he opened it and realized that he had forgot to put in the checks. So the card simply read, Merry Christmas, love Grandpa, buy your own gift. It's the little things that matter. One of the little things in the story of the birth of Christ is a manger and tonight as we celebrate the birth of Christ, we're going to look at these three different parts in the second chapter of Luke where we see Luke refer to the manger. It really is fascinating as we think about it and we'll see that the manger really helps us understand the deep and true meaning of Christmas. It's going to help us understand a little bit about rejection, a little bit about redemption and a little bit about the truth of revelation, rejection, redemption and the truth of revelation. So first, if you look at verse 7, we see that the manger shows that Christ was born to reveal our rejection of God. Let me show you what I mean. Verse 7 says, and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger. Why? Because there was no place for them at the end. We can speculate about all sorts of reasons why maybe they weren't able to stay at the end, but the clear picture is they returned away. They were rejected, which is basically a foreshadowing of the entire life of Jesus. His entire life was a life of rejection. Of rejection, if you follow along in the gospels, as you read about the life of Christ, you see he was rejected by his family. Obviously, he was very much rejected by the religious leaders. He was rejected by all of the Jews. John, the Apostle John in John 111 says that Jesus came to his own and his own people did not receive him. He was rejected. And that actually makes perfect sense because when Isaiah hundreds of years before Christ came prophesied about the coming of Christ, he said that he would be despised and rejected by men in Isaiah 53 verse 3. When we think about why God, the Son of God, would become man. Why would he become one of us? One of the things that we see here is that God became man so that humanity would be given a clear picture of its rejection of God.
It is our rejection of God that leads to all sin and misery in the world. All of the sad things that take place are all a result of humanity's rejection of our creator. All the war, all the hatred, the evil, the oppression, the terrorism, as well as all the evil in our own hearts, our selfishness, our greed, our judgmentalism, our self righteousness, every bit of it is dripping with our own rejection of God ever since the fall of mankind. Human beings have rejected God. We've rejected our creators. It's almost like a cosmic version of that show undercover boss, if you've ever seen that. It's a show where a CEO of a company becomes a regular employee, a low level employee for a few days to see what things are like. Except in this case, the CEO is the creator and sustainer of all things and when he becomes one of us, we put them on a cross.
Isaiah also said in Isaiah 53, verse 6, all we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. Paul in Romans 3 says, no one is righteous, no not one. He says no one does good, not even one. The reality is we can't see God. So it's hard to see the ways in which we reject him, but we can see Jesus. We can see what was done to Jesus by people like you and me. Paul says in Colossians 1 verse 15 that Jesus is the image of the invisible God. So when we see Jesus, we see God. And when we see the way that Jesus was treated, rejected. We see the way that we treat and reject God. God became man. One reason was that he became man was so that we could see the way that we reject God in the way that we see that Jesus who is God incarnate was rejected. That's when we talk about the bad news. That's bad news for us because there are horrible and eternal consequences to rejecting God. Who's the authority of all things because he is a just judge and sin must be punished. You know sometimes I think people who don't believe make a mistake in thinking that Jesus was simply teaching giving some good advice about how if you do these things, then you get into heaven. But all of Jesus teaching was showing that we can never be good enough. We could never do enough. We could never live up to the law. And even as we try to obey, we find out we fail and it's because of our rejection of God. So that is bad news. But Christmas is about the good news as well. It's about the unbelievably amazing news that even though we reject God, he refuses to reject us. And if you look at verses 8 through 14, what we see is that the manger also shows that Christ was born. Not only to show us our rejection of God, but to provide redemption for us, to redeem us from the penalty of sin. In fact, think about this. Who are the first people to hear about the birth of the Savior? It's the shepherds. Shepherds? Why shepherds? The shepherds we see in verse 12 are the ones who, they first hear and they are the ones that are told that they will find the Savior in a manger. Couple things about the Old Testament that we need to understand to really get the full picture here. Number one, all through the Old Testament, we see that God's people continually struggled to trust and obey Him. They regularly rejected Him and His commands and brought misery upon themselves. Number two, we also see that all through the Old Testament, God's glory and grace were seen in the way that He instructed His people to sacrifice animals as a picture of a payment for sin. And so as the people of the Old Testament, the Israelites and the Old Testament, as they were sacrificing animals, they were saying that this is what we deserve. They realized the grace of God as they killed the animal, they realized that they are the ones who deserve death, but God graciously said, kill this sacrificial animal instead. The animal will die in your place and therefore you will live. And then we get into the New Testament and God pulls back the curtain even more. Revealing more about the sacrificial system, like for example in Hebrews 10 verse 4, where the author says that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. We see this reality that all through the Old Testament, all the sacrifices that were made, all the sacrificial animals that died were merely pointing to something else. To a true sacrifice, a real perfect ultimate sacrifice that would actually pay for the sin of God's people, it was these things were pointing to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. This is why when John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament type prophets, when he saw Jesus coming, he cries out, behold. The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world and later the Apostle Paul would refer to Jesus as the Passover lamb who has been sacrificed for us. Now you tell me who better than shepherds should be the first to hear about the birth of the Lamb of God, the one who can offer a true sacrifice, a true payment for sins to reconcile God and his people. And what's so interesting about what we see here in Luke's Gospel is, if you look in some of the ancient Jewish writings like the Mishnah and the Talmud, these things tell us that it was on the hills of Bethlehem that the shepherds kept flocks of sheep that were specifically designated to be sacrificial animals.
Those shepherds, ones watching over the animals that would be used as sacrifices are the ones that the angels appeared to and so the angels announced this amazing news to those shepherds announcing that the true and real sacrificial lamb has come. He has arrived, it's almost as if they're saying, don't worry about those animals anymore, we don't need them. They were all going to point to him anyway, he is here, he is the one who can truly save and so in verse 11. They say, for unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior who has Christ the Lord and this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. Jesus was born where animals are born because Jesus is the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and get this, I love this. Verse 13. Now all these other angels appear, it says suddenly there was with the one angel that was there, a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. And notice that it says glory to God in the highest. And that's important because all through the Old Testament there are multiple multiple references to the glory of God, but now at the birth of the Savior Christ the Lord, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, it's the highest revelation of the glory of God. That Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, born not only to show humanity's rejection of God but then to willingly be rejected by God in our place to be our sacrificial lamb. To die the death that we deserve to die, but we don't have to because he was willing to die for us which leads us to incredible, incredible peace, glory to God in the highest and peace to his people. And Jesus did die for us to be the perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. And then three days later triumphantly rises from the grave to prove that God had accepted what he did on our behalf. At his payment truly was a payment for my sin and your sin if you believe. He gave his life so that we could keep ours.
We read a story about an earthquake that took place in China. It was a pretty bad earthquake a number of years ago and there were buildings that were collapsed and falling in and rescue workers were dispatched right away as soon as they could. And they were looking through the rubble to see if they could find anyone who was still alive. One rescue worker was able to see through some rubble into a room that he could see a woman who was crouched over and he started yelling, hello, are you alive? Are you there? She didn't move but he could hear breathing. So he gets a couple other rescue workers and they begin to very carefully move debris, making sure that nothing else came crashing down. Eventually they are able to make an opening big enough where they're able to get their hands underneath her arms and they pull her back and begin to pull her out through this opening and it's then that they realize that she was dead.
The breathing was coming from her three month old son who when the building began to crash down upon her she wrapped up in her arms and knelt down over so that the building would crash down on her and not on her boy. She gave her life to save his and there's this sweet addition to the story. Somehow as she was dying she was able to get herself phone, she was able to type a message to her son and tuck it in the blankets. They found the phone when they found the boy and her message to her son was if you survive, you must know that I love you.
What a picture of Christ, the Lamb of God who wrapped us up in his arms and shielded our helpless bodies from the wrath of God as it comes down upon him. On the cross giving his life so that we can have hours and brothers and sisters you know the Bible is God's note to us saying that because of Jesus we will survive and we must know that he loves us. We absolutely must know that he loves us. The best part is we don't receive what Christ has done by doing things. It's not through doing certain things we receive salvation in Christ we receive the benefit of what Christ has done on the cross. As the Lamb of God who takes away our sin we receive it by grace through faith which is beautiful because the last time we see the manger in Luke 2 we see that it points to the fact that Christ was born to show the trustworthiness of revelation. He showed us our rejection he is our redemption and he also shows the trustworthiness of revelation if you look at verses 15 and 16 you see that what the shepherds heard was true what had been revealed to them was true listen 15 it says when the angels went away from them into heaven the shepherd said to one another let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known which the Lord has revealed. To us for 16 says they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger in other words in faith they went to see what God had revealed to them through the angels. And when they got there they found everything exactly as they had been told you know what that means believer that is a reminder that if you are a believer if you are a follower of Jesus and things are exactly as we have been told in the Bible that means that no matter what you've done where you've been or how many times you've made mistakes God truly has forgiven you of every single sin past present and future laid them on Christ punished him instead and so you are forgiven and free that's what's been revealed that's what's true. He also tells us in the Bible that God has not only forgiven us of our sin but is also declared us righteous in his sight takes the righteousness of Christ and wraps us up in it. In his true you really are forgiven you really have been declared righteous and the Bible tells us that God promises us eternal life in the new heavens and new earth when Christ comes again so believe that tonight child of God believe that the Lamb of God truly has taken away your sin and feel the deep and abiding peace that can only come from knowing that God is pleased with you. Because of what Christ has done if you're not a believer my hope and prayers that you will be like the shepherds that you will believe what has been revealed to you tonight that you would turn away from your rejection of God see how glorious he is and how much he loves you believe the gospel and you'll receive the Holy Spirit who will empower you to stop rejecting God and begin a life of glorifying and enjoying him which lasts forever and that is the most amazing source of peace Mary Christmas let's pray Father we do recognize that we reject you we reject your law we reject even your kindness but you are glorious and gracious to refuse to reject us and to send your son to be our redemption to be the Lamb of God who takes away our sin so we praise you and we praise you that all these things that have been revealed to us are true may they permeate all of our Christmas celebrations this year and all of our lives though we may continue to see how glorious you are in the majesty of Christ by the power of Holy Spirit we pray in Jesus name amen.