1. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word for this Xmas Eve is taken from Luke 2:7 and is entitled, “She Gave Birth,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. An avid fisherman was heard to say the reason he knew the Bible is true was because it says, “That night they caught nothing” (Jn 21:3). Most fishermen would fudge a little: “Well, we got a few nibbles, but they just weren’t biting.” But here was an admission of failure by experienced fishermen. So, the man reasoned that if the Bible told it for real like that, all the rest must be true. Everything we learned from the Bible about Mary during the weeks of Advent is real. And Almost All About Mary Was Really Ordinary. Almost everything.
3. Every word of the Bible is completely true. You can depend on it. It will lead you to salvation in Jesus Christ. Nature even confirms some things in Scripture. Paul says God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). Pagans worship Nature with a capital N. Their gods are part of nature—sun, moon, trees, rocks. No excuse. Evolutionary science makes the same mistake. They reject God. Modern science tries to acquire knowledge about the world without admitting the One who made the world. Again, no excuse.
4. You can learn these things about God from beholding his works of creation, but you can’t learn about divine salvation. Only the pages of Holy Scripture will show you Jesus and create faith in your heart—faith that rests in his arms, faith that worships Christ on the cross, faith that follows Jesus from earth to heaven, even though you must bear your own cross on that long and weary pilgrimage. So, you know you can trust the Bible in this famous passage from Luke 2 that describes the nativity of our Lord. But look at this. In the passages before and after Luke 2:1–7, there are all kinds of supernatural happenings. In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel appears to the virgin Mary and tells her that she has been chosen to bear the Christ Child. And in Luke 2:8 and following, the angels appear to the shepherds. But in our text, verse 7, no angels singing, no supernatural phenomenon, no signs in the heavens, no nothing. A young woman gives birth to a baby. It’s all so very ordinary.
5. First, we are given a specific earthly time and event: “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered” (Lk 2:1). Here we have a secular ruler, head of the Roman Empire, and a secular event, a census with taxation. They didn’t have the IRS that we all know and love. They didn’t have a computer to file electronically. You had to travel physically to your ancestral home.
6. Mary and Joseph were way up north in Nazareth. They had to go all the way south to Bethlehem. Mary is “with child” (Lk 2:5). You know what moms who’ve done this say: “Three months bleary, three months cheery, and three months weary.” Bleary—morning sickness. Cheery—this is a piece of cake. Weary—please, somebody just give me a baby-ectomy. Poor Mary’s third trimester feels all too ordinary. They have to stop often so she can rest. It slows them down. Finally they get to Bethlehem. No Expedia.com, no advance reservations. Too late. No room for them in the inn. So they take lodging in a place where animals are kept. The Christmas cards make it look so lovely. They leave out the smells and the noise. Even so, given all these, Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son” (v 7).
7. A word of caution: People try to make more of Mary than she is—to make her quite extraordinary. They call her the Queen of Heaven. In 1880, the First Vatican Council established papal infallibility. When the pope makes an official decree ex cathedra, “from the throne.” It establishes doctrine. You have to believe it to be saved. In 1950, the first infallible decree was made: the assumption of Mary. That is, Mary didn’t die but was taken bodily into heaven like Elijah. There’s nothing in the Bible about this. There are also other errors like this in the Church of Rome. The immaculate conception says that Mary’s mother conceived Mary without passing on original sin. The Bible doesn’t say that. It just says, “She gave birth.” Then there’s the rosary: “Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” Dear people, Mary was none of these things.
8. Mary was a woman of great faith. The church where Martin Luther served as pastor was named St. Mary’s. But the Bible presents us with an earthly mother and an earthly birth of a real flesh-and-blood earthly child. It’s natural to assume that at some future time she would have consummated her marriage with Joseph. She cooked. She cleaned. She changed diapers. It certainly appears from Scripture that she bore other children. How else do we account for James, the brother of the Lord?
9. All of this reinforces everything about Jesus in Scripture. It’s all real. “Behold, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt” (Jn 12:15). And “[he] emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant. . . . He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:7–8). He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3). And at last, at last he comes to you though you are as low as low can be. He comes to your doubt and weakness. He comes to your confusion. He comes to your despair. And most of all, He comes to your sin and takes it away from you. He takes it and carries it on his back. It contains the sins of all the people in the whole wide world. He carries it with him to the cross and dumps it out as they hammer the nails into his hands and feet.
10. Why does Jesus do this? He does this because he loves you. He does it because if he didn’t, you’d be lost forever. He does this because you can’t bear the burden of sin yourself. He must bear it for you. And he bears it willingly. You could be crucified for your sins a thousand times and still not pay the debt you owe to God. Only the holy blood of the sinless Lamb of God will do. It was “for the joy that was set before him [that he] endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
11. The result of Christ’s sin-bearing? Your sins are forgiven. All of them. Not one remains. In God’s sight, you are as holy and righteous as his Son. “I was born in sin, and in iniquity did my mother conceive me” (cf Ps 51:5). The cycle of sin that began with Adam and Eve continued father and mother to child ever since. How devastating to Eve when her firstborn son Cain murdered his brother Abel. How devastating to every human mother when her child grows up a sinner. But with Mary was the cycle broken as she brought forth the sinless Son of God. In the Old Testament, only a lamb without blemish was acceptable sacrifice. Only the Lamb of God, holy and perfect, was acceptable sacrifice for the sins of the world.
12. So, you’re not intrinsically holy. But God is blind. God is blind in the sense that he can’t see your sin. It’s covered by the blood of the Lamb. You are wrapped in Christ like a garment. Christ is the baptismal gown that covers your sin. As Christ rose from the dead, you will rise on the Last Day. As he ascended to heaven, you will ascend to your heavenly home. There you will sit on a cloud playing boring music on the harp for eternity. Ya think? No! There will be “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev 21:1). We will be flesh-and-blood human beings like Jesus. Death is the fire that purges sin from our bodies. We will be perfect people in a perfect world.
13. What is real? Reality is God breaking into this world with grace. Reality is God interrupting history with the coming of Christ. Reality is a young woman giving birth in distressing circumstances. And this is all it says: “She gave birth.” She just plain gave birth, my dear friends. But at the moment when God enters this world in the flesh, he is born in the ordinary way babies have been born from the beginning. You moms know what this means. It’s strenuous, messy, bloody. It takes a long time. The water breaks. Yikes! Then nothing happens. Finally, another contraction. Long wait. Then another & another. Too late to turn back. Hubby is there. Breathe! Push! Just like they taught you in the how-to-have-a-baby class. Finally! There he is. Clip the cord. He’s hungry. Ahh. Better now. Burp. Wrap him up tight. Oops. Need a new diaper. Baby’s asleep now. So is mom. She’s wiped out. So is Joseph.
14. Just a plain childbirth. Except it is God incarnate that’s been born. And that is the miraculous thing, the delivery of the Messiah by lowly means. Could it have been any other way? Secular kings celebrate the birth of a son with fireworks, music, horses, a royal procession. This will happen in the second coming of Christ. He’ll come to reward your faithfulness, comfort your broken heart, heal all your diseases, set you free from sin, death, and the power of the devil. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, until life everlasting. Amen.
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