Worship Christ with the angelic forerunners!

Sermon for Christmas Day

Titus 3:4-7  +  Luke 2:14-20

We’re here this morning to worship the One who was born to us in Bethlehem, the Savior who is Christ the Lord. We heard it announced from the one angel last night. Who better to lead us in worship today than that multitude of the heavenly host who suddenly appeared with the angel, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men! That was the worship of the angels, and it’s our song of worship, too. We sing it throughout most of the year in our Divine Service. We sang it again this morning, after taking a break from it during the Advent season. Let’s ponder these words for a little while this morning, so that we can join the angels once again in worshiping the King who was once a newborn baby.

Glory to God in the highest, they sang. Or, as we sing, Glory be to God on high! “Glory” means brightness, splendor, radiance, and, by way of metaphor, honor, fame, and renown. It’s another way of saying, Praise God, give honor to God in the highest!, that is, to God in heaven, where He dwells visibly with the holy angels and with the souls of the saints who have fallen asleep.

Why do the angels give glory and praise to God? It’s not just that they owe Him worship as creatures owe worship to their Creator. It’s much more than that. When the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest,” it wasn’t a general song of praise. It was a song of praise on the occasion of Jesus’ birth. It was a celebration of the incarnation itself—that God’s Son had taken on human flesh and was finally revealed to the world in His birth. It was a song of praise, not only to God the Father in heaven, but also to the newborn baby who was God.

The author to the Hebrews writes, When God brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” So God the Father was the One who sent those angels to worship the Firstborn, the Son of God, to worship the One who, although He was as helpless as any newborn baby, was greater than they, higher than they, even though He lay in a humble manger, even though He was made lower than the angels for a little while, as it says in Hebrews. Glory to God in the highest is a song of worship sung to Jesus just as much as it is to God the Father.

The angels’ worship of the Firstborn came from their love of God for who is, as He revealed Himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai: The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.

The Lord’s chief qualities are mercy, grace, patience, goodness, truth, faithfulness, and a readiness to forgive. And the birth of Christ epitomizes all those qualities: It shows the lengths to which our God went to show mercy to wretched sinners, to give grace to the undeserving. It shows how patient (or longsuffering) He had been with rebellious mankind and how patient He would be still, so patient that He would allow sinners to reject His Son, to mistreat Him and finally to crucify Him. It shows that God is true and faithful to His Word in that He kept that four-thousand-year-old promise to bring His Son into the world, to earn forgiveness for all by one day shedding human blood, which was also God’s blood, so that He would have a basis for acquitting guilty sinners who seek refuge by faith in the blood of His innocent Son.

Most of those qualities of God aren’t even needed by the angels. Mercy, patience, forgiveness—the holy angels have no need of such things. We do. And yet the angels were amazed, astonished, awe-struck over God’s grace and His willingness to do all this, to take on human flesh, to be born into our dark world, in order to save fallen mankind. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—gets the glory, the praise, the honor, the worship, the credit, the thanks. “Glory to God in heaven” for being such a merciful, gracious God, for showing such mercy, patience, and forgiveness toward the human race.

The angels gave glory to God in heaven when Jesus was born into the world. And then they proclaimed, On earth peace, goodwill toward men! Peace to men. Peace on earth. We know that doesn’t mean what the world thinks it means, an end to war and conflict, or people treating other people kindly. The angels weren’t singing at all about earthly peace. Even Jesus says, Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. He didn’t come to end interpersonal conflicts. He came to receive the “punishment for our peace,” as the prophet Isaiah wrote, to suffer the wrath and condemnation of God in our place, so that all those who are connected to this Child by faith have peace with God. As St. Paul writes, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God. The angels were singing about the peace that would one day be purchased with the blood of this newborn Child, the reconciliation of sinners with God through faith in this Child.

In the same way, the angels weren’t singing about the goodwill that men are supposed to show to one another at Christmas time. They were praising God’s goodwill toward mankind, God’s good pleasure with men that was to be found in Christ and in Him alone. This is where God’s goodwill was found on Christmas, wrapped up in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. God’s goodwill toward men was always wrapped up in Jesus. One day, at His Baptism, Jesus would hear these words from His Father in heaven: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Literally, “In whom I have goodwill.” God’s goodwill toward men was born on Christmas Day. His goodwill dwelt among us on earth for a time. Whoever has Christ by faith has God’s goodwill, has God’s good pleasure, can be sure of God’s love and forgiveness and of God’s good plan to bring you safely into His heavenly kingdom.

That peace and goodwill that were brought to earth when Christ was born are still here where Christ has promised to be, in Word and Sacrament. That’s why we sing the angels’ song so often in our service, because the same peace and goodwill to men that they proclaimed over 2,000 years ago is being proclaimed to you today, promising you peace and goodwill, giving you peace and goodwill in Jesus.

After the shepherds heard and believed the angelic forerunners’ words, they went to the manger where Christ was and worshiped Him, and then they went out and spread the word of God’s peace and goodwill in Christ to everyone they found. So you, too, who have heard the message of the angels, who have come to where Jesus is in His Word and Sacrament and have worshiped Him here, you who have known and received God’s peace and goodwill in Christ Jesus, become forerunners of His goodwill to your fellow man, like the shepherds became, not just by doing charitable deeds, but by leading godly lives, by speaking of God’s goodwill in Christ, by standing firm on your confession of Christ, by not allowing yourself to be moved an inch from His commandments or from His revelation.

Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men! May the song of the angels fill you with joy and peace and wonder, and may it inspire you to worship the King who was once newborn, with your ears and with your hearts, with your lips and with your lives. Amen.