So we're beginning this morning in Advent series, which will take a look at four different perspectives on the birth of Christ, from Luke, from Matthew, from John, and from the book of Revelation. And so our first comes from the gospel of Luke in chapter two. So please turn with me to Luke chapter two. beginning in verse eight. Hear now the word of the living God. And in the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us. 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. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen as had been told them. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord will stand forever. Today, we begin Advent, the season where we remember the first coming of Christ and eagerly await his second coming. And as we remember the first Advent, the first coming of Christ, we are going to think about what it means and how we are to respond. The coming of Christ is good news, good news of great joy, good news that brings glory to God. All that God does is for his glory and brings him glory. But the birth of Jesus Christ is a special event in history that is the ultimate glory of God. The coming of Jesus Christ reveals God's glory in a special way. Jesus is the image of the invisible God. He reveals God to us. As the 18th century pastor and theologian J.C. Ryle put it, now has come to the highest degree of glory to God by the appearing of his son, Jesus Christ, in the world. He, by his life and death on the cross, will glorify God's attributes, justice, holiness, mercy, and wisdom, as they were never glorified before. The coming of Jesus Christ brings good news of salvation for anyone who believes in him. It's not his birth that brings salvation, but he was born to live a perfectly righteous, holy life under the law as a human man, and to die a sacrificial death on the cross as the atonement for the sins of all who believe in him. His birth is a reminder of what God was willing to do to save his people. not only to take on the form of a creature, but to die in the place of sinners. And so when you and I hear this good news, the only appropriate response is to glorify and praise God for the good news of his Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord. Our passage this morning follows Luke's account of the birth of Christ in a manger. And now in verse eight, he moves from the major to the fields nearby. And there are the shepherds were watching their flocks as shepherds do. And an angel of the Lord appears and the glory of the Lord shown all around them. The glory of God is all his beauty, all his goodness in its fullness. The glory of God is the greatness, the worth, the loveliness, the splendor of all of God's many perfections. And this glory of God is a theme all throughout the Bible. And in many cases, it communicates his special presence in a specific location. And that is what we see here. The special presence of the Lord is shown through his glory with the arrival of the angel of the Lord. God is fully present with the arrival of his messenger. And he's there to let the shepherds know that this message is truly from God. And to the glory and the presence of the Lord, the shepherds respond in fear. It says they were filled with great fear. Fear is the response to the presence of God that we see repeatedly in the scriptures. Isaiah chapter 6 is an especially great example of this because it gives us a vivid description of the prophet Isaiah being brought into the presence of God. Isaiah there is lifted up into the throne room of God, and God is sitting on his throne, high and lifted up, and the train of his robe filled the temple. And above him were angels, and they covered the Lord with their wings, and they called out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. and the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called. When God spoke, everything shook and the house was filled with smoke. It was quite a frightening scene. The awesome power of God and the holiness and the purity of God are on display whenever someone in the Bible comes into the presence of God. And Isaiah knew this, he said, woe is me for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. The power, the holiness of God puts a sinner immediately in their place when they come into his presence. We see this in Exodus and Moses and the people of Israel. We see it in Judges when Gideon and an angel appears to him. In 2 Samuel, David was terrified to bring the ark of the Lord into Jerusalem because of the power of the presence of God. And in Daniel, when he's visited by an angel, he was terrified and he fell on his face. We even see this same reaction the disciples had to Jesus when his divine glory was revealed on the Mount of Transfiguration. And in the book of Revelation, when the apostle John comes into the presence of the risen Lord Jesus in all his glory, he falls at his feet as though he is dead. The glory of the Lord brings fear, trembling, devastation. Describing all these biblical accounts of men coming into the presence of God, James Montgomery Boyce once wrote, this is what it means to come face to face with the holy. It's not a pleasant experience. It's profoundly threatening. For the holy cannot coexist in the same space with the unholy. God must destroy the unholy or else purge out the sin. When you fully understand who you are in the presence of God, you are brought face to face with the reality of how sinful you are in contrast with the holiness, the righteousness, the power of God. And the first response would be to fear because you know what you deserve in his presence. It's a reality we can ignore in our day-to-day lives, but the Bible includes passage after passage of people entering into the presence of God and responding with fear. So you will not ignore this reality, that you are a sinful person. Your whole nature is sinful and God is holy and righteous and you deserve his holy wrath, his righteous judgment. But the story doesn't end there. The shepherds don't stop there with them being surrounded by the glory of God and them responding in fear. And your story doesn't end there either. It doesn't end with you being a sinner and God being holy and righteous. The birth of Jesus brings good news of great joy for all who hear. The angel tells the shepherds, fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Their fear is actually the foundation for the good news of the gospel. You must understand the reality of your sin and the holiness of God. You must have a fear of the power of God and the judgment you deserve. You must grasp the bad news before the good news can be understood. If you reject the idea or ignore that you are a sinner or even dilute the full reality of your sinfulness, then you won't feel the need for a savior. If you reject the bad news that is the reality about yourself being a sinner and your situation before a holy God, then you will reject the good news of salvation and the great joy that comes with it. Fear is the initial response, but the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ brings joy instead of fear. The word gospel simply means good news. The good news of Jesus Christ is what makes Christianity different from every other religion. The great Welsh preacher of the 20th century, Martin Lloyd-Jones, once made a distinction between good news and good advice. He said, advice is counsel about something to do, and it hasn't happened yet, but you can do it. But news is a report about something that has already happened. You can't do anything about it. It's been done for you, and all you can do is respond to it. And Tim Keller gave a good illustration of this point. He said, imagine there is a king and he goes into battle against an evading army to defend his land. If the king defeats the army, he sends messengers back to the capital city and they would have good news to report that he would send back to them. And they would come back and say, it's over, we won. It's all been done, therefore you can respond with joy. You can go about your life. You can conduct yourself with peace, knowing what has been accomplished for you. But if the invading army were to break through, the king would send a different message back. There would be advisors telling people what they now need to do. Swordsmen are over here, marksmen go over here. We are going to have to fight for our lives. The point is that every other religion sends military advisors to people. They're saying, if you want salvation, you're going to have to fight. Here's all the things you're going to have to do. It's not something that's already been done. It's something you need to do. It's advice in advance. The difference with the gospel and Christianity is we send messengers with good news of great joy for all. That doesn't mean that there isn't anything to do. Both the advice of religions and the good news of Jesus Christ call for obedience in response. But the difference is, the good advice of religion calls for obedience out of fear of what will happen if you don't do it. That what you do is the reason you are saved. But the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ calls for obedience as a response out of joy and love for what has already been done for you. The gospel reports the good news of what has already taken place in history. Your obedience is a response of joy because the reason you have been saved has already been accomplished for you. The angel gives the message of good news to the shepherds. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ the Lord. There are a few points about the angel's message, the good news, the gospel that this angel delivers. The first is that a savior is born. Our estate before God is one of complete helplessness on our own. It's dreaded. If we are left to ourselves, we are doomed. But God, in his infinite mercy and grace, provides a way out of our state of sin and misery. He provides a Savior. The view of salvation It has been questioned over the years in the church. Liberal theologians stripped the good news of its ultimate message of divine salvation from the wrath of God. Teaching salvation, they teach that Jesus saves us from ourselves. He provides a great example for us to follow, but to truly understand what the Bible has to say about salvation, you have to see what Jesus saves you from. That is the key to understanding the coming of the Savior. What if I told you I saved someone? Then you asked me about it, and I said, well, they were about to make a mistake on a math problem, and I told them about it, and I helped them fix it, and so I saved them from getting a math problem wrong. But how much different would it be if instead I said I ran into a burning building and saved them from being burned alive? What you are saved from matters. It's important to remember this, to consider the terrible state before a holy God you were born into, your state of spiritual death because of your sin, your state of living in sin and rebellion against God as an enemy of God, deserving nothing from God but his wrath, completely and utterly unable to save yourself in any way, unaware of your need for salvation. This is the state of all of humanity from birth, born with a sinful nature, desiring sin instead of God, children of wrath. What you are saved from matters. It also matters the cost of salvation. If you heard I saved someone from burning to death in a burning building and that it cost me my life, that would change how you thought about it. Jesus not only came to save humanity from the punishment of our sin, he did so by submitting himself to an excruciating, humiliating death, the death of a criminal, a public execution, and shaming on the cross. And even worse, he submitted himself to the wrath of God and spiritual agony. That is the cost of salvation, because the wages of sin is death. Jesus had to die in your place. The Old Testament sacrificial system that was there to show us how serious our state of sin is and that the only solution is a sacrificial substitute. It shows the problem of sin. It reveals the need for holiness. There was 1,500 years of repetition over and over again showing the need for atonement, the need for an atoning sacrifice in the place of a sinner. It showed the seriousness of our sin before God and the need for a substitute. And the whole sacrificial system was a shadow to point us forward to the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So when you consider that a Savior was born, you can remember what you're saved from, you can remember the cost of that salvation, but you can also remember what you are saved to. The Savior came not only to die for the forgiveness of your sins, to live a perfectly righteous, holy life so that you could be counted as righteous in the eyes of God, but also so that you could live as a citizen of his kingdom with his people, so that you could be called out from the world, living as one who has been saved by the Savior, so that you could live a new life in Christ, in the light, separate from the darkness. You are saved to a community, to a people, to a church, both local and global, As the people of God in Jesus Christ, you are saved to live a life of holiness by grace through faith. By the grace of God, you are empowered and strengthened to live according to God's holy way of life and you're forgiven when you fail. By the grace of God, you are called out of the darkness of the world into the light of his kingdom to live for his glory. By the grace of God, you are called out of the self-worship of the sinful nature into the people who worship God in spirit and in truth. Salvation gives you eternal life. You are saved to a future glory in the future resurrection, which is the crown jewel of salvation. but there's also blessings now in your new life in Christ that you enjoy as a believer in Jesus Christ, you are forgiven and declared righteous in the sight of God by nothing you have done yourself, but completely by the grace of God in the work of Jesus Christ. And these blessings come through a savior who was born over 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. The angel, not only said that a savior was born, but also that he was the Christ. He was the Messiah or anointed one, the Christ long awaited by God's people. He was promised to be the savior to end all saviors. He will save God's people forever. He is the culmination and the fulfillment of all the priests, the prophets, and the kings before him. He will bring divine blessings, not only to Israel, but to the world. He will reign in perfect peace, justice, and righteousness as king over the entire earth. He will unify and restore God's people, and he will be given glory and an everlasting dominion over all the nations of earth, and his kingdom will be established forever. On that day in Bethlehem, a savior was born who was the Christ. And he had come to fulfill all God's promises for his people. All the promises of God find their yes in him. He came not to be served, but to serve. He came to be a suffering servant of the Lord. And he was promised to be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, he promised. to bear our griefs, carry our sorrows, be smitten by God and afflicted. He was promised to take the chastisement that brings us peace. By his wounds we are healed. Because we all like sheep have gone astray, everyone turned to our way. And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. The Christ was promised to provide the atoning, sacrificial death for our sins that we need. The Christ was promised to take the wrath of God on our behalf. And in the birth of Jesus, the promise Christ has arrived. Jesus Christ is the savior of his people. He will die. This baby that is born in Bethlehem will die in the place of his people. He will rule over them in peace, justice, and righteousness through him. God blesses people from all nations through his Christ. And he's not only the Christ, but he is Christ the Lord. The term the Lord refers both to his sovereign rule over all things, as the king of kings, but also to his divine nature. Jesus Christ is the Lord. He is king over all, but he is the Lord God. He is the creator come as a baby. The only way that he could be a Savior is if the Lord came as a human being, if God was born as a human baby to live a perfectly righteous life that you and I could never live, to die the death that we deserve as our substitute, as a sacrifice to atone for your sins. There were many anointed ones in the Old Testament. There were priests and kings who weren't the Christ. They weren't the Savior because they were sinners. There was a long list of men who did many great things as servants of God. But in order to save his people from our ultimate problem, in order to save us from sin and death, it took God breaking into history and taking on the form of a creature. so that he could fulfill the perfect righteousness we need as a human, and so that he could die the death to atone for all the sins of all his people, he had to be God. That you and I can have new life in him. The good news of Jesus Christ is that he is a savior, Christ the Lord. In the announcement, of the good news of great joy from the angel wasn't the end. He told the shepherds that they would find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Then all of a sudden there was with the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts that broke out in praising God. Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. This angelic chorus is the praise for God's Savior coming down from heaven. It's also confirming to God's people that they will receive the peace of God through this Savior. And the only proper response to the good news of salvation found in Jesus is to glorify and praise God. It's not only the angels who praise and glorify God for the Savior, But after the angels returned to heaven, the shepherds, recognizing the magnitude of what God has just revealed to them, they decide to go to Bethlehem to find the baby. And there they find Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in the manger, and they tell them all that they had seen and heard. And obviously, Mary was tremendously happy to hear these things. But when they left, they returned home, glorifying and praising God for all they had seen The proper response to the glory of God's salvation in the person of Jesus Christ is to glorify him, to praise him, to worship him. In the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, the glory of God is revealed as never before. Through his life, death, and resurrection, God is fully glorified. He's ultimately glorified. On the cross of Jesus Christ, we will see the justice, holiness, mercy, wisdom, and love of God as has never been seen before. It doesn't matter how many times you've heard it. Maybe it's your first time. Maybe you've heard it a thousand times before. But the good news of salvation that is found in Jesus Christ should bring you to glorify God, to praise him, to worship him in the whole of your life. Let every minute of every day be a praise to God, glorifying him for all that he has done in Jesus. The gospel of Jesus Christ brings you to faith in Jesus Christ. It brings you to praise him. It brings you to worship him. May you never take for granted the beauty of the good news, the gospel. So as you go about your day, your week, the rest of your year, praise God in your day-to-day life. Let others know about the gospel of salvation, the good news of Jesus Christ, that they may come to know the salvation God has given them, that they may turn to him and praise him with their lives. Your life can be a testimony to the power of God's salvation found in Jesus Christ. Over 2,000 years ago, a baby was born that changed the course of history. He came to fulfill thousands of years of promises. He came to bring God's salvation into the world. And the good news that he brings is ultimately fulfilled not in his birth, but in his life, death, and resurrection. And when you believe that you are saved by him alone, and that he has not only brought you salvation, but is strengthening you to be more and more like him each day, you can live your life to glorify and praise God for the good news of his Savior, Jesus Christ, the Lord. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you, Lord, knowing that we only enter into your presence as your people by the salvation provided by Jesus Christ. Lord, you broke into history. You came as a baby to live a life that we could never live. And Lord, we are forever grateful. We respond in all of your glory. And we ask, Lord, that you continue to strengthen us, that this truth will never be mundane. It will never be ordinary, that we will always praise you and glorify you. for the amazing truth that is the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, and that we will live according to your word, that we will spread the good news of the gospel, making disciples of people of all nations, teaching them all that you have commanded, living our lives as a light in this world of darkness, that more and more people will come to know you. They will come to know your glory. They will come to know the good news of Jesus Christ in all His glory. And it's in His precious name we pray. Amen.