Advent 4 – Dec. 16, 2017
The Angel of the LORD Comes To Us
Hebrews 1:1-8
In the name of our Savior, dear friends,
I grew up in a home where my parents went along with the idea of Santa bringing all the presents under the Christmas tree. He would always come to our house while we were in church for Christmas Eve. I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but the thing that tipped me off that this was just a nice story was this: Wherever you went shopping, there was a long line of kids waiting to talk to Santa. Now how could there be so many Santas? My mom said that they were just all his helpers, because he couldn’t be everywhere at the same time. And that led me to conclude that Santa could not be everywhere on Christmas Eve either – this was impossible. So while many of my friends still insisted that Santa was real, I just quietly kept my mouth shut. I will do the same tomorrow too, when we have all the kids here. Each parent needs to decide how they are going to handle that one. Above all, it is important that each Christian family make sure that Jesus is the center of all the activities.
Now, what does this have to do with Jesus, the Angel of the Lord? When you hear the word “angel” you don’t usually think of Jesus. You think of the created angels who sang to the shepherds and visited people like Mary and Joseph. You could say that all these angels are his helpers, while Jesus himself is the real deal.
He is the Angel of the Lord and The Angel of the Lord Comes To Us.
First of all we see that:
1. He Comes To Us As the Word
We are going right to the beginning of the book called Hebrews, which is in the New Testament. The author doesn’t identify himself, but his purpose is to show how Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies and pictures. The first thing he shares with us is what kind of angel Jesus is.
He begins: 1 In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son. The angel of the Lord comes to us! Remember what the word angel means? Messenger! He is the ultimate angel, the ultimate messenger, He is the Word. He is God’s final Word of love for us.
Remember some of the familiar prophecies of Christmas. The prophet: Behold a virgin will conceive,… Jesus is that Immanuel, God with us. So our writer says: The son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being. So we sing in Hark the Herald Angels: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate Deity.” Which is a fancy way of saying: He is God – diety, and he is incarnate – he became human with true flesh and blood. So John wants us to know that He is the Word and “The Word became Flesh and made his dwelling among us”
The prophet wrote: Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulders. And so the wise men came, looking for the newborn King of the Jews. And our writer says he is the king of all: Sustaining all things by his powerful Word. This little newborn baby would set aside all his power for awhile, for 33 years. but he would take up his throne once again: After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.
The prophet: The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. So Jesus: I am the Light of the Word. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but have the light of life. And our writer reminds us that the very one who is the Light, is also the one who spoke the words: “Let there be light.” Jesus is the Word, through whom also he made the universe.
So as we celebrate Christmas, we never want to forget who this humble little baby really is. He is the angel with the power of the Word, and he is the Word. Keep that in mind whenever you feel things are not going very well. Jesus is the great Angel of the Lord, the greatest messenger, the Word. If he speaks it, we know that it is the truth. If he makes a decree, it’s going to happen. And as the Angel of the Lord:
2. He Comes to Us as the Angel We Really Need
I am thankful for God’s powerful angels. The Lord still uses them to protect us and watch over us and fight off the attacks of the devil for us. They are frequently called, the heavenly hosts, the heavenly armies. So our writer says about the created angels: He makes his angels spirits, and his servants flames of fire. 1:7 How wonderful it is to know that God created such wonderful beings to serve us! But as great it is to know that we have guardian angels, it is even greater to know the Angel of the Lord.
The writer wants us to know how much greater Jesus is. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. So it was that a regular angel instructed Joseph in a dream to take Mary as his wife, even though it was hard to understand how she had become pregnant. So the angel had to clear up the problem: What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. Matt 1:21 His name means Savior, and so the created angels proclaimed to the shepherds: To you is born this day in the city of David, a SAVIOR, a form of the name Jesus.
Now this is wonderful information, it can fill your heads with the right thoughts. Jesus is Savior! But do you really take that to heart? So often at this time of year, we are busy with good things, buying gifts for people, arranging for the family, thinking more about the people we love rather than ourselves. It is so easy to depend on our goodness, and after all we are more nice than naughty! Now that may be true! But all it takes is a little bit of naughtiness to mess everything up. Jesus had to come as the Savior, because we’ve made a mess of it. What pops up in your head, when you have to wait in long lines for check out, or get into a traffic jam and it’s messing up your plans? What do you say when the turkey is terribly dry? How do you handle it when uncle Fred gets obnoxious or has too much to drink? Or your spouse says something about you in the crowd that is just not very nice. Oh, we need a Savior, all right, we need to bow before him in humility and kneel before a manger and pray to the One who gave everything all up in heaven, to come to this earth and take our sins away. He is our Jesus, our Savior. Oh how we need him!
And there is another name that our writer has in mind for the Angel of the Lord:
For to which of the angels did God ever say, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father"? The writer is quoting from Psalm 2. And he quotes another OT passage: Or again, "I will be his Father, and he will be my Son"? The angel of the Lord is the Son of God! That’s the only begotten son of the Father.
And now he refers directly to Christmas when he says: 6 And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, "Let all God's angels worship him." So we see the Christmas angels worship him and give all glory to God in the highest, because of Jesus. What a privilege to join in the angels as they worship him in heaven with these familiar words: Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise! Perhaps that’s why Christmas carols are an important part of our celebration. They carry the entire message of the Christmas Gospel.
And our writer doesn’t want us to stay in the stable, he wants us to see Jesus as he is right now: But about the Son he says, "Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.” 1:8
That is our confidence: This son is on the throne and he is God. His rule is righteous: completely upright and fair and impartial and just. That’s what gives us hope when the world seems so hopeless. We don’t want to stay in the stable, we need to look to the skies.
There seems to be a lot of despair and hopelessness in the world situation right now. I’m not just talking about the upheavals in our messed up government. There seems to be more suffering people than ever before. I just read a WELS website article about the refugees in the desert of Kenya, people who have fled southern Sudan, and many of them are Christians. There is no place for them to go, until their homes in Sudan are safe, and no one knows when that will be. In the meantime, one of these refugees who came to the US has become one of our WELS pastors and he is going back whenever he can, to give his people hope in a Savior, in a hopeless situation.
Hopelessness is not only a problem for our souls, it also affects our bodies. The American Heart Association has researched the negative physical consequences of hopelessness. They have found that those who had experienced extreme feelings of despair had a 20-percent greater increase in hardening of the arteries. Other studies also have connected hopelessness with heart disease, heart attacks and death. What happens when hope is gone? Despair sets in! Depression takes hold. And even the AHA recognizes that it has an effect on our physical health.
But here is the good news: Jesus is no longer a babe in the manger, he is seated on the throne! We have a Savior who is ruling all things by his power. Christmas time gives us the opportunity to show everyone that there is hope for the entire world! The Angel of the Lord has come to us! He enters our hearts with his hope and peace. So we pray: Lord Jesus, Angel of the Lord, Come to us this special season and enter the hearts of many others. Amen