Pastor Scott Jonas
I saw the Sign
Christmas Eve
Matthew 1
We’ve seen the signs of Christmas
coming for months. In October, stores
started putting out Christmas decorations for sale. In November, Christmas songs played on the
radio. Cities dressed up their street lights
with garland. In December, you saw ugly
Christmas sweaters, including mine. The
signs of Christmas coming included Cards in the mail, e-cards with your family
as dancing elves. Store clerks started
saying, “Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas.”
The movie theatre played Elf and It’s a wonderful life. Christmas themed messages on facebook
appeared on your feed. Extended family
call to set up a visit. It is impossible
to miss the signs that Christmas is coming.
What about
the first Christmas? What were the signs
that Christmas was coming for Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the
Wisemen? They didn’t have visual cues
like decorations. Gone were audio cues
like Christmas greetings. We are used to
a society built on Christmas. That
didn’t exist back in the year 8 AD. So
instead God sent specific signs to those who needed it. He sent messengers who signaled the Savior’s
birth. These signs proved that God was
with them. The four signs gave them and
us insight into God’s plan.
To Joseph
God sent a scandalous sign. To Mary he
delivered a miraculous sign. To the
Shepherds he gave a symbolic sign. And
to the Wise men God presented a universal sign.
Sign #1
Joseph’s scandalous sign. In Matthew
chapter one, Joseph, Mary’s finacee, has a dream. In the dream appeared the Angel of the
Lord. He said, “Joseph, son of David, do
not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from
the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for
he will save his people from their sins.”
The sign for
Joseph was Mary’s pregnancy. The Angel
tells him Mary is with Child through the Spirit. Her condition is your sign. This is not comforting. This is scandalous. Mary is the only one who knows with 100%
certainty that she is a virgin. She
knows that she has not been with a man.
Joseph knows that he has not touched her but he has no idea if she has
been with someone else. Those in their
Jewish community will probably assume that she has been raped by a roman soldier. It is not her fault but she has been
defiled. The Angel tells him that God
knows she is telling the truth.
This sign
assures Joseph that Mary is a good woman called by the Lord. But if he marries her, they will feel the
neighborhood’s scorn. Others didn’t
receive this dream. They have to trust
the words of Mary and Joseph. They have
spoken to God and their friends and family have a choice. They can have faith that Mary and Joseph have
been chosen by God to birth the chosen messiah or they can believe the worst.
The
scandalous sign of Mary’s pregnancy is like the scandalous sign of the
cross. The cross is not initially
comforting. It is as gentle an image as
the electric chair. The son of God being
murdered by humanity is disturbing. We
must never lose sight of that. You must
never lose sight of that. When you tell
people about the cross, there should be a repulsion. God came to earth and we humiliated him. We tortured him like a sociopath tortures an
innocent animal. We treated him like he
was the worst person on earth when all he wanted to do was love us. That is a scandalous sign.
Sign #2
Mary’s miraculous sign. In Luke, God
mixes it up a bit. No dream for
Mary. Instead, she hosts the Angel
Gabriel. You can’t say in the flesh with
an angel, but he was in person. Gabriel,
or Gabe as his Angel friends call him, tells Mary that She has found favor with
God. She will conceive and bear a son,
and you shall call his name Jesus. He
will be great, the son of the most high.
He will sit on David’s throne and reign forever.
Now you
would think that Mary’s sign would be the same as joseph’s. After all, when you are a virgin and you
become pregnant, it begets a supernatural explanation. At least it does, 2,000 years before
invitro. Yet God gives her an additional
sign, designed to meet her needs. Gabe
said, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the most high will
overshadow you. The child will be the
holy Son of God. And check this out, your relative, Elizabeth, in her old age
has also conceived a son, and this is the 6th month with her who was
called barren. For nothing is impossible
with God.”
It’s a
miraculous sign. Mary isn’t going to
feel pregnant for a while, but she can travel to Elizabeth’s house and see this
wonder. An old lady who has never been
able to have kids is showing. God
overcame barrenness in the Old Testament with Sarah and Hannah and he is
continuing his work in Mary’s day. Mary
goes and visits Elizabeth and they celebrate their miraculous Lord.
Do you look
for miraculous signs from our Lord? Is
he not still working. Can’t he still do
the impossible? If you don’t see God
working in this world you are spiritually blind. Our God heals when people say it can’t
happen. The Lord plants faith in hearts
that are dead. Jesus Christ brings his
people together in amazing ways all the time.
If you don’t see it, then you need to ask God to open your eyes so you
can witness signs and wonders.
Sign #3 The
Shepherd’s symbolic sign. For some
reason, God chose manual laborers to communicate his most scholarly sign. It’s the equivalent of if he spoke to Truck
drivers instead of seminary professors.
In Bethlehem, there were Shepherds keeping watch over their flock by
night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord
shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 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. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will
find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
It is true
that there were shepherds in Bethlehem who were special. In the Temple, morning and evening an
umblemished lamb was offered as a sacrifice to God. To see that the supply of perfect offereings
was always available the Temple authorities had their own private sheep flocks;
and we know that these flocks were pastured near Bethlehem. It is most likely that these shepherds were
in charge of flocks from which the Temple offerings were chosen.
The Gospel
of John doesn’t have a traditional account of Jesus birth. But he does have John the Baptist yelling,
“Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” The shepherds cared for the Temple lambs
without blemish and now the Angels pointed them to the ultimate sacrifice. The Angels don’t use the words “Find the Lamb
of God” but it makes you wonder if they made the connection. Maybe it wasn’t until 30 years later when
they heard John’s words they understood the symbolism. Jesus must be killed so that Israel can be
saved.
Do you
search the scriptures, trying to gain greater depth in your understanding of
Jesus? God calls you to deepen your
relationship with his son through studying His word. The more you study the more you learn. The connections between Jesus and the Old
Testament will blow your mind. God is
confident that the more you read the Bible the more your faith will grow. That’s how it works. There is a direct correlation between
studying scripture and your spiritual development. You don’t need an angel to spell things out
for you. The Spirit lives in you and
will guide you.
Sign #4 The
Wise men’s universal sign. Joseph had a
scandalous dream. Mary had a miraculous
visit from an Angel. The shepherds were
given a symbolic wonder. The Wise men
didn’t have a person. They had a
star. We call them wise men. We call
them kings but they were really the astronomers of their day. They knew all the heavenly bodies that the
human eye could see. The studied them. They had no encounter with angels or
dreams. They didn’t have the
scriptures. Instead they read the sky,
which is a sign available to everyone.
Isn’t it
telling that God sent a sign that the whole world could see. By whole world I don’t just mean people. I mean all of creation is under the canopy of
stars. The Sun and the moon, the oceans
and the continents, every creature above and below could see the sign of the
star. But only a small amount noticed
and fewer still followed it.
Jesus was
born not just for Israel, not just for believers, not just for people. Jesus was born to save all of creation. If you think he came to just save Lutherans,
your God is way too small. He is
creating a new heaven and a new earth.
Every knee will bow. The Heavenly
bodies will all praise his name. We have
seen the signs.
His signs
are scandalous, miraculous, symbolic and universal.