Christmas Eve 2022

Merry Christmas.

Tonight's reading is from the book of Colossians, chapter one, verses 15 through 22.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, and in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

In you, who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

That's good.

Merry Christmas! Let's pray, and then we'll move into our text this Christmas Eve.

Holy Father, we praise you for the love which you have poured out onto us.

Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that you would have mercy upon us, sinners, that you would consider our frame.

Lord, we know that you remember us and that you know what it is like to be one of us, that you took on flesh, that you might die in our place, and that we might have a hope even in the face of death, that we might share in your resurrection, and that you might give to us your righteousness, that we might dwell eternally with you.

Lord, the hope of Christmas is that the Father's love was so deep that he did not withhold his only son, but sent him to die on our behalf.

Lord, let us wonder and marvel at this hope as we look at the one who is just a baby in a manger, and we proclaim this is the living God.

Lord, let our hearts connect those two impossibly different things, a baby and the living God, and let us understand what this means for us this evening and celebrate together.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, we've been moving through the Advent songs.

Uh, nope, the servant songs this Advent season.

And so we've covered the four servant songs in the prophet Isaiah's writings.

Now, these are songs that describe the servant who is to come, the servant of the Lord.

And he's described in these sort of mysterious terms because we don't know who this servant of the Lord will be, what the shape of his life will be, or who in particular is being referred to by these songs about the servant of the Lord.

It is a hidden revelation.

It is shown to us that this servant is coming, and yet it's hidden kind of like a seed that is buried.

And when a seed is buried, it is hidden, but that's also where it becomes active.

So these songs are like these planted seeds in the prophets, 700 years before Jesus arrives.

They are planted into the consciousness of a people, so that when Jesus arrives, they might understand what it is that they are seeing.

Peter talks about this.

He says in 1 Peter 1, 10 through 12, he says, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when the predicted sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories, it was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but they were serving you.

In the things that have now been announced to you, through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit, sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look, those four servant songs, which were hidden and incomprehensible to the original readers, they weren't for them, they were for you, that you might see them and understand who the Christ is.

Now I wanted to bring these four servant songs that are sort of hidden in the Old Testament to a culmination today on Christmas Eve, that we might hear a song in the New Testament, one which is not hidden to describe who the Christ is, but one which, as in it, the most explicit terms that we see in all of the New Testament, we hear who the Christ is.

And that's what we're looking at this evening.

A song that takes place in Paul's letter to the Colossians.

He begins by praying, a prayer of thanksgiving to the Lord.

And this prayer overflows into a hymn of praise describing who Jesus is.

Now I want our minds to be transformed as we hear this song, seeing clearly who Jesus is.

But it can be a difficult thing to see because we we we don't really have a category, we kind of do, of songs singing praise to someone.

And if we were to sing praise to someone, I think that the things that we would expect to hear would be something like this.

He is the strongest possible man.

He is the fastest runner of all the runners that I've seen.

He is the smartest, most intelligent man of all the men that I've encountered.

We would use these phrases that are superlatives so that we would show the person that we are praising is the greatest among all the people that we could possibly praise.

Now, I was trying to think, what is a song like that that we have in our culture where we praise someone who is great for being great?

And I the one that I could come up with was this.

I think you might uh recognize this one.

No one's slick as Gaston.

No one's neck as incredibly thick as Gaston.

There's no man in town half as manly.

He's perfect, a pure paragon.

You can ask any Tom Dick or Stanley, and they'll tell you whose team they'd prefer to be on.

So this is a hymn of praise to a man.

And the way that we sing a hymn of praise to a man is we use superlatives.

We say he is the best of all possible men, the best at expectorating, and he uses antlers in all of his decorating.

None of his decorating does not have antlers in it.

These are superlative hymns, superlative phrases.

Now I want you to hear how different the hymns of Christ are.

These are not merely saying he is the best among all possible men.

Listen to the way Paul describes the Christ.

Colossians 1, 15 through 22.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

These are not things, these are not ways of saying he is the best man you've ever met.

These are categorically different than phrases like that.

These are ways of saying the categories that you have to assess someone who is the best, they do not satisfy a description of who this one is, because he is the very image of God.

He is the one from whom all things come.

He is the one who sustains existence.

This is not the best one to exist.

He is the one who upholds existence itself.

This is the baby we are talking about, who is lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes.

He is the one who upholds existence itself.

And Paul puts it as plainly as can possibly be put, as explicitly as we can hear when he says in verses 19 through 20, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Why is it that we gather together with so much of the world to celebrate this one man?

It is not because he was the best of all possible men, it is not because he held the most things together more than anyone else is held together.

It is because in him the fullness of God dwelt.

Now, why did the fullness of God take up a habitation in one man?

It was so that he could die.

In his death, we are reconciled to him.

It is his death on the cross which stands in place of our death.

It is a man who must die for men.

And so God, because of the love with which he loved us, took on our frame so that he might die the very death that we ought to die, so that we might live to an eternal glory with him.

It is no man, not even the best possible man, could accomplish such a task of reconciling humanity to God.

But the one who is a man and is also God has accomplished that on our behalf.

And that is what we celebrate this Christmas.

So now, this hymn of praise, which Paul sings, he turns towards you.

And he says this in Colossians 1, 21 through 22, and you who were once alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled.

Where?

In his body of flesh, by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.

Where does your righteousness rest?

It rests in the one who took on flesh, so that he might die in your stead, and that you might take up his resurrection by faith alone.

The baby who is lying in a manger is not just the best of all possible babies.

He's not just the greatest of all possible men, he is God in the flesh.

And in what he has accomplished, we face an eternal glory which we might share with him for free because of the great love with which he loved us.

What better news could you possibly hear?

Only this news.

This is the heart of our faith.

The great love with which he loved us caused the God of all creation, the one who upholds all existence, to take on our frame, so that we might be reconciled to him, celebrate him, praise him.

Let us honor him in song.

Now let's turn to a time of communion.

In 1 Corinthians 11, 23, it says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

I want to invite you this evening to partake together with the body of Christ in the sacrament that he has given us, that we might remember that just as real as the bread is, as real as the wine is, so physically real is the Christ.

And that we might participate with him because he broke himself and laid himself down on our behalf.

Praise be to his name.

Let's go ahead and bring the communion forward.

Holy Father, we praise you that we might remember the incarnation and the hope that it brings to us.

Lord, let us see into your actions that we might understand the depth of your love towards us, that we might walk in such a confidence that you are the one who sought us.

Therefore, we can confidently turn in faith to you.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.