Isaiah 52:7–10

December 25 2013 Christmas Day Sermon

Merry Christmas. The text is the Old Testament Reading: How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" The voice of your watchmen! They lift up their voice; together they sing for joy. Because they will see it with their own eyes when the Lord returns to Zion. Break out into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord will lay bare his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

What is it about Christmas that beckons us home with such longing? I think it's to know joy again. It's joy to break out into songs of joy together, because we've been comforted with the glad tidings. It's joy to give and receive. And the joy, the anticipation of the Christmas feast beckons us home. All the good stuff, the meats, the pies, the eggnog, the chocolate. Love, family, home, feasting, longing, the Lord invented all of it. Why else would we travel so far to know it? Joy is calling. Joy has been calling you, down all these years.

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Our Christmas text is full of many joys, including a prophecy, because it actually says, "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim Yeshua"—and it says literally in the Hebrew— "Yeshua" (v 7) the Hebrew name for Jesus. To discover Jesus so clearly in the prophets is a great joy.

"The voice of your watchmen" (v 8) doesn't turn out to be guards on the walls or kings or nobles, but shepherds watching their flocks. "And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them" (Lk 2:16–18). The wonder that fills the Good News is pure joy.

"Together they sing for joy" (v 8), because they will see it with their own eyes when the Lord returns to Zion. We sing the canticles of the Church, the Benedictus, Magnificat, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, and Nunc Dimittis, because Zechariah, the blessed Virgin Mary, the shepherds and angel hosts, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Simeon saw the Lord's coming with their own eyes. Seeing the Lord accomplish salvation in history inspires the joy of singing.

"Break out into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem" (v 9). If a song can make you happy, how much more can true happiness make you sing?

The Lord of salvation truly brings tidings of comfort and joy. For whom?

"You ruins of Jerusalem" (v 9). This song of joy is only for you ruins, because salvation, salvage, is only for ruins. One of my sainted Professors, Kurt Marquart, would illustrated our need for salvage with broken windshields in an auto salvage yard. The windshield was still a windshield, but shattered, ruined. In the same way, fallen as we are, the image of God is still there, but ruined. How can we be salvaged if we don't believe we are ruined? Many think you have to be a tyrant like Pilate or a sociopath like King Herod to wind up lost. Just refuse to agree with God about your ruin and shake your fist at God's grace, hear his love without a reason and despise it, and there is no salvation, no joy.

Only the ruined sinners, the broken, those who need the Lord's comfort, sing for joy. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Mt 5:4). It's a gift. And the Lord loves giving gifts, especially the ones that bring joyous gasps! He has redeemed Jerusalem. The first Noel was the birth of the Redeemer, the Kinsman, the big Brother who wouldn't let you perish, no matter how many tyrants and devils came out of the wormwood to stop him. How?

"The Lord will lay bare his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations" (v 10). Just as he told Moses, "Say therefore to the people of Israel, 'I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment' " (Ex 6:6). "Oh sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things! His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him" (Ps 98:1). "The Lord will lay bare his holy arm" (v 10). What a powerful figure of speech! Maybe it was, but only until Christmas, the day we found out that he really meant by "his holy arm!" "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14). When the prophet said, "proclaim salvation [Yeshua]," God meant a person!

Behold his right hand and his holy arm, swaddled stiff on that Holy Nativity, ready to work salvation. "The Lord will lay bare his holy arm" to be pierced through "before the eyes of all the nations"—even the Roman soldiers who stretched and nailed—his bare holy arm! His arm is not short that he cannot save.

On that first Christmas, did anyone see his holy arm? "Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?" (Job 40:9). Behold the baby's tiny flailing arms and the infant voice that one day would thunder in Gethsemane, "I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go" (Jn 18:8)! "All the ends of the earth will see the salvation [Yeshua] of our God" (v 10), putting his holy arm between you and punishment for your sins. That's worth a joyous gasp. And joy rises even higher as joy comes closer.

"The Lord will lay bare his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God" (v 10). Isaiah felt a hot coal touch his lips with that salvation when God absolved and called him in the temple. But now that the Lord has laid bare his holy arm, all the nations, even we, at the ends of the earth, have an even greater reason than Isaiah to sing, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts" (Is 6:3).

John the Baptist cried out, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" (Jn 1:29). But we, the least in the Kingdom, are greater than John, because we have reason to sing those words with higher joy.

Simeon held that salvation in his arms, and said, "Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation" (Lk 2:29–30). Yet we can sing those same words with higher joy than Simeon, because

The Christmas Feast Is the Greatest Joy of All.

The highest way God has chosen to be closest to you, and you to him, is the feast. "This will be a sign for you" (Lk 2:12).

On Christmas we first see Yeshua, the salvation of the Lord, the Word made flesh, in a manger, a feed box, in Bethlehem, the House of Bread. Why not on a royal pillow, where above all things we can obey him? Yes, obey, but he was not above all things. Why not in a treasure chest, where above all things we see his worth? Yes, but not above all things. Why not in a synagogue, where above all things we can learn from him? Above all things, he was first displayed for us in the manger, a feed box. Did anyone see that sign at the time? I don't think so. Did anyone see what the location of the incarnate God symbolized? How could they? I don't think it entered anyone's mind until over thirty years later, when Jesus uttered the impossible.

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh" (Jn 6:51). Although "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son" (Heb 1:1–2), who told five thousand he had just fed with dying bread to seek him rather than food that perishes. But did anyone ever imagine how literally Jesus would be the living bread on the night he was betrayed?

His holy arm reached for the nail on the cross two thousand years ago. He has redeemed you. And "all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God," his Yeshua (v 10). Rejoice with loud singing, you ends of the earth: his holy arm, his whole body and blood reaches all the way to you, here and now. He's traveled so far that you would know it. We prayed, "Almighty God, grant that the birth of Your only-begotten Son in the flesh may set us free from the bondage of sin" (Collect, LSB Altar Book, p. 658). Did we even suspect that God would answer so swiftly and literally?

The salvation, Yeshua who first appeared in a manger, a feed box, "is the bread that came down from heaven. . . . Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever" (Jn 6:58).

So, Merry Christmas. Celebrate with high delight. Give, receive, and "break out into songs of joy together, you ruins, for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed you" (v 9). Enjoy feasting with your families on the bounty that all comes from God. And highest joy of all, open wide for the feast for salvaged ruins.

The food on this table is God, beckoning you home. Gasp! Amen.