Read Luke 2:1-22; Matt. 27:45-66; 38:1-10
These three Scriptures, taken together, give us the birth, the death, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Three wondrous facts for any sinner to think of. Ponder it one moment―the birth of the Son of God, the death of the Son of God, the resurrection of the Son of God.
Why this birth, this death, this resurrection? Because nothing could save you or me but this. Nothing! There was no possibility of man being redeemed, and brought to God―saved, and delivered from eternal judgment―but by the wondrous means which these Scriptures unfold.
I do not wonder that Heaven goes into a perfect ecstasy the moment it is promulgated that man can be saved. And how can he be saved? Only by the coming down of the Savior! And surely, dear reader, if God has been loving enough to provide a Savior, what does He expect from the sinner? That the sinner shall have wisdom enough to avail himself of the Savior God has provided.
Have you availed yourself of the Savior, and the present salvation God presents to you in the Gospel of His Son? It is the grandest news that ever fell on mortal ears―a Savior for ruined sinners!
Let the Shepherds of Bethlehem show you the way to the Savior. I want you to be like these Shepherds; they are the best illustration of good Gospel listeners that I know. They are men who hear the Gospel, receive it, embrace it, enjoy it, act upon it, tell their neighbors all about it, and then go home with hearts brimming over with praise and worship to God because of it!
Luke 2 opens with the birth of the Savior.
Did you ever notice that God only tells the story of creation once, and in few words, but twice He tells, with every particular, the wondrous tale of the birth of His Son, and four times over the Holy Ghost records the death of the Savior, and His resurrection.
Why is this so? Because it is of very little matter if you know about creation or not; but it is of great matter if you know about Him who is the Creator.
Four times over the Holy Ghost tells the story of the death and resurrection of the Son of God, because that death is what alone avails to bring the sinner to God. On the actual knowledge of Him who was born, and Him who died, hangs the eternal salvation of your precious soul and mine.
It is important to see what comes out in the commencement of the chapter, for we live in infidel times.
Has it ever struck you, then, how careful God is to have the birth of His Son recorded?
The Roman Emperor, in his pride and folly, wants to know how many subjects he reigns over, and not only so, but their nationality, and also their city; and so Joseph and his espoused wife Mary go up to Bethlehem, their native city, to be enrolled, and I should not wonder if that register of the birth of the Son of God exists still.
The pride of the Roman Emperor was the means God used for the fulfillment of the Scripture, that the King of Israel, God’s Messiah, should be born in Bethlehem. See the manner of his birth: Joseph and Mary come up, and there is no room for them in the inn. “Oh,” you say, “that was a coincidence.” Ah, do you think so? Supposing Joseph had been a great man, with a large cavalcade, and he had sent ahead to order apartments, do you think there would have been room for him? I think so! But the world never did like the poor, and the Lord loved them intensely.
They generally make room for the rich in the inns, though the poor are put out. The Lord comes as the poor man, though He comes into the world His own hands had made, content to be reputed the Son of a Carpenter.
He comes in this lowly way; shall I tell you why? Because, then, there never could be a poor person who could say, “I never could go to Him, for He could not understand my case.”
He took His place down here at the outset as a poor man; God came into the world in this gracious way to win man’s heart. In grace He came, content to be cradled in one man’s manger, and buried in another man’s tomb.
Do you still say it was a coincidence that there was no room in the inn? Then I ask you―Is it a coincidence that there is no room in your heart for Christ? There has been room for your friends; room for folly, for vanity; room for pleasure, but no room for Him!
Is that true of you? Well, let me tell you this: though there has been no room for Him in your heart, there is room for you in His heart.
Though there was no room for Christ in man’s world, He sends out the message that there is room for man in His world, i.e. heaven!
The sinner’s heart is like the iceberg often; but beneath the rays of the sun, the very iceberg melts, and beneath the beams of Jesu’s love the very hardest heart must melt too. Let Him make room for Himself in your heart, and let Him get a whole heart, too; for I believe, if He does not get the first place, and the chief place, He gets a very little place.
If God tells you of His dear Son, do not you refuse Him. Look at these Shepherds, they are at their business, and the Lord sends an angel to preach the Gospel to them. Here is a message from Heaven for sinners on earth; God visits them with a message for Eternity, and what do you think is the effect? They are sore afraid! The first effect of the Gospel is to make people sorrowful―it makes them glad afterward. There are two lovely points in the way the message comes; not only it comes right down to the men where they were, God, as it were, interrupting them in their business to show them there is something better than their business, even the salvation of their souls, but there is more than this: they are sensible of the presence of God with the message―”the glory of the Lord shone round about them.” I covet that! The holy, the solemn, searching sense of the presence of God Himself with the Gospel message. God is there, God is dealing with those Shepherds, and they are sore afraid, and rightly so; they are properly solemnized before God, and I maintain this is the first effect of the Gospel, the sinner begins to feel he is in the presence of God, and that he is unfit for that presence.
But you will find, the moment the right kind of fear is produced in the soul, God comes in to remove the fear. “Oh,” you say, “I have never feared.” Then, my friend, I am sorry for you, for the days of your fear are coming―the days of your terrible dismay are coming in which no voice will bid you “Fear not.” The mark of the unregenerate man is this, “no fear of God before his eyes.” Sporting with God’s grace, risking His terrible judgment. O man, O woman, wake up! The day of your terror is coming. The first thing a soul knows when God is dealing with him is fear and trembling. A man sees the glory of God, and his own unfitness for it. Rom. 3 gives us the unconverted man unfit for the glory of God. Rom. 5 gives us the believer rejoicing in view of that glory, because he knows he is fit for it. The jailor of Philippi wakes up when the glory of the Lord comes in, and he cries out, “What must I do to be saved?” ―he sees his own unfitness for that glory.
When the glory comes in on the prophet’s soul, in Isaiah 6, what does he say? The seraphim cry “Holy,” but he cries “Unclean, unclean, woe is me!” Oh, have you ever learned that you are undone, unclean? “I am a man of unclean lips,” the prophet says. Why unclean lips? Because, deeper still, deeper than the lips, there is an unclean heart, which produces unclean lips. Then the right fear being produced in the prophet’s soul, the seraphim flies with a live coal from off the altar. God loves to dispel the fear which He Himself has produced.
Have you ever felt this fear? I am very much afraid of you if you have not! Have you seen yourself in the presence of God? Have you felt what a sinner you are, owned what a sinner you are before God, convicted by God’s presence?
What is conscience? It is the eye of God on the soul, the knowledge of good and evil in God’s presence; knowing I am full of evil, and there is no good in me.
Repentance is the soul judging itself before God ― owning it is, what God says it is, a totally lost sinner. If you are not a lost sinner, I have no Gospel for you, for it was to save the lost Jesus came. When once I discover I am lost, I am glad to look outside myself for a deliverer, a Savior. It is a beautiful thing to see a soul going down, and owning itself lost, and really anxious. Are you anxious, my friend? If so, I have two distinct words from the Lord for you, “Fear not.” Are you troubled and cast-down? “Fear not” is God’s assuring word to you. Do you feel the weight of sin? then you are the very one Jesus came for. He came to save sinners, to seek the lost.
“Fear not,” says the angel, “I have for you tonight the very news you need. I bring you to-night tidings which will produce great joy.” The first effect is fear in the presence of God, and then, when the tidings God has to tell fall on the heart, what comes next? Great joy; and now, if you are anxious ― if you are burdened by the weight of sin ― I stand, an ambassador to you from the courts of glory, with this Divine message, “Fear not!” And oh, I have better tidings for you than the angel had for the Shepherds. He could tell of a Savior born; I can tell you of the death and resurrection of that Savior, of the work that has been done whereby the sinner’s redemption is completed, Satan’s power destroyed, death and hell vanquished, and lost man saved!
“To you is born a Savior.” Now, a Savior is for the lost! not those who are going to be lost, but who are lost already. God never would have sent a Savior if man had not been lost, for He is not a helper, but a Savior. There is one thing Christ absolutely refuses to do―to help a sinner; His saints He helps. The Lord will save a sinner, He will not help him. Help is for a man who can do something. Christ comes down to the sinner when he is dead in his sins, utterly helpless, dies Himself for the sinner’s sins, and saves him. Are you saved or lost, I ask you, my friend? “I am not lost,” you reply. Are you saved, then? “No.” Then you must be lost.
“Oh,” you say, “I do not think that.” Well, then, would you like to die just now where you are? If you did die this moment, would you be saved or lost? If I should be lost if I died this moment, I stand in the position of a lost man now. But the Lord comes to seek and to save the lost. There is a lovely alternative and a dread alternative. What is the lovely alternative? I am saved the moment I come to Christ. What is the dread alternative? If I am not now in Christ, I am now lost.
You are either Christ’s, saved, and on your road to glory, or you are lost, and on your road to hell.
This company of Shepherds hear the joyful news that for lost man there is a Savior; and as they hear it, the hosts of Heaven seem to come trooping together to hear the joyful news too, that there is a Savior for man. Heaven seems to go into an ecstasy over the very thought of a sinner being saved, and the heavenly hosts come down to give praise for it. It is like the picture in Luke 15, where we hear of “joy in Heaven.”
A Savior for man―and how does He save? By Himself undergoing the judgment due to man’s sin. He saves by bearing the punishment instead of me, by dying in my place. In bitter derision they cry, as He hangs upon that cross, “Himself He cannot save.” Is it “cannot”? No! no! no! Himself He will not save, that He may save you and me; because if he save Himself, he cannot save man, and He chooses to save man.
On the cross He takes on Himself the judgment due from God to wicked man: He takes the wages of sin, He meets the claims of God, He does that which can eternally redeem you, and then He expires. He dies as no other man ever died. Not in weakness, but in strength; He cries with a loud voice, and gives up His Spirit to God. And then the grave receives Him, but does it hold Him? No, it cannot! He comes forth again Conqueror over it, risen from the dead, and by His resurrection proving that the sinner’s substitute is free.
An angel comes down again at His resurrection, as at His birth. He rolls away the stone. To let Jesus out? Far be the thought! It is to let us look in and see an empty tomb―to see that He who died is dead no longer, that He is risen.
Why is it there is such profound silence here? Angels praise at His birth, but at His resurrection there is no song. The angels seem to stand back now and say, “It is for you to sing; He did not die for us, He died for you.”
He died, He rose, and now He is on the throne of God. What are you going to do, now you have heard of Him? Mark what the Shepherds did, “And it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into Heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing—which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.” The moment they heard the tidings they said, “Let us go and see!” What will you do?
Where can you see the Savior now? In Bethlehem? No! Upon the cross? No! In the grave? No! In Galilee? No! Where, then? Up in the glory at the right hand of God.
“And they came with haste.” They lose no time; they are not even exhorted to come: they are so earnest to come, they need no exhortation. They are splendid Gospel listeners. They came and found. It is what always happens. They who seek find! Oh, cannot you picture that scene! Bowed down before Jesus, the babe in the manger!
They have heard, believed, sought, found, accepted, praised and worshipped God, and now they make known abroad the good news, We have sought and found the Savior, a babe in Bethlehem, but our Savior!
“And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”
They were anxious sinners; are calmed by the words “Fear not;” they hear about the Savior, they seek Him, they find Him, they worship Him, and they return, praising God for all they have heard and seen.
The Holy Ghost makes Christ so real and precious to the soul that believes Him, that He is seen and known better than the nearest friend.
The tale has come out that God has sent the Savior, and what have you to do? Accept Him simply; you cannot buy salvation, it must be God’s gift to you. The sinner comes to God oftentimes for salvation and brings something, “No!” says God, “I cannot sell it, I will give it to you.”
May the Lord print upon your heart the blessed news that He has sent you a Savior; and if he has sent you a Savior, will you not accept Him―and more, confess Him? These Shepherds make known abroad the Savior they have found; and let me tell you there is nothing that so impresses another as to be able to say, I know Him myself―this is the One I have found―He has saved me. May this be your language henceforth for His Name’s sake.
W. T. P. Wolston