The good news of great joy is for all the people and the good news is that it has been born for you, that is individualizing this universal good news, a Savior. The angel proclaims the good news of great joy which is for you, that is to say it's for everybody and anybody. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. With all the decorating and cooking and last-minute shopping and traveling that are so often part of the Christmas season, there certainly are plenty of things that can shift your attention from the important truth that Christmas is meant to commemorate. Well, today John MacArthur helps redirect your focus, showing you how to keep your eyes on the profound, transforming reality of Christmas in his study, The Promise of Christmas.
So with today's lesson, here's John. In the second chapter of Luke, of course, the first seven verses describe for us the birth of Jesus Christ, born to the virgin Mary. We remember the circumstances, born in a little village of Bethlehem, no place for them in the inn so that basically they were having to lay the child in a feed trough in a stable. And the birth of Jesus Christ, as we remember, was anonymous at first. Nobody really knew anything about this child as far as people around were concerned. It was just another young couple and another baby born.
No one at first really understood what was going on. Didn't take long, however, because we come to the text of Luke 2, 8, on the very same day that the Lord Jesus Christ was born, we read, and in the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terribly frightened. And the angel said to them, do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people. For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord, and this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace among men with whom He is pleased. The beautiful old Christmas carol asked the question, what child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping?
And of course that is the real question. Who is the baby in Bethlehem born at first so anonymously to anonymous Joseph and Mary as far as any public knowledge was concerned? Who is this child whose birth established the world's calendars? Who is this child more widely known than any other child ever born?
Who is this child whose life and work have impacted more souls than all other influential people in history combined? Who is this child who determines the eternal destiny of every human who has ever or will ever be born? Who is this child, the angel says, a Savior who is Christ the Lord? There is no question, there's no need for clarification as to who is this child because the angel tells us in very explicit terms. First, the child is Savior.
We've already looked at that. That's the great, great affirmation of the angel that causes, verse 10, to say, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be for all the people. And what is the good news that produces universal joy? A Savior has been born. A Savior has been born. And somebody at this point might ask the question, a Savior to save us from what?
That's certainly a fair question. Well, the word Savior implies that we need to be saved from something. Saved is a synonym for rescued.
It's a synonym for delivered. And it implies that there's some kind of threatening condition, there's some kind of dangerous condition, some kind of desperate condition, some kind of deadly condition from which we need to be rescued. But that still begs the question, from what do we need to be rescued, from what do we need to be delivered and saved? And today when you hear people present the gospel, very often you get the idea that we need to be rescued from our unfulfillment, that there's something in life that just isn't complete, that there's some great level of disappointment with which we live, that our marriage hasn't really worked out the way we hoped it would, you know, all the euphoria, all the hearts and flowers, all the bells and whistles that were going off and we thought that this was going to be one, you know, permanent state of romantic bliss and it would all work out and it just didn't go that way. And, you know, even our family situation when the precious little ones came into the world has turned out to be a disaster. You know, the kids have not turned out the way we would want them.
They bring us heartache and grief, etc., etc. Our careers don't necessarily follow the path that we perhaps dreamed they should. We wind up working for years at a job we really don't like, particularly working for people we can't stand. And the people around us we like the least get promoted over us and life just doesn't seem to be as fulfilling as we would wish it was. And it doesn't seem to work out that we get the kind of the house we would like. We're not able to go the places.
We look at the travel brochures and, you know, and we really want to go to Switzerland and we end up with a three-day trip to Tijuana. You know, it's really not...life just doesn't deliver, you know, that's kind of it. And so you get the idea that Jesus will come and deliver you from your unfulfilled life. Jesus will fix your marriage and Jesus will notch you up a few latches on the career ladder. You know, He'll deliver you from this sort of unfulfilled life, this sort of purposelessness, this kind of frustration or disappointment or even despair, this kind of hopelessness that you're never really going to get.
It's not going to ever come to pass. All the dreams that you dreamed for so long have really turned into nightmares, and that's the way it's going to end, and Jesus will come along and fix you. Jesus is the one who rescues you from being unfulfilled.
Secondly, the gospel takes a tone that Jesus will rescue you from debilitating habits, things that kind of you can't get control of, that Jesus is going to cause you to be able to get control of your life. As the alcoholic would say in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, he never was able to get control of his alcohol until he came to recognize there was a quote-unquote higher power. Somehow...somehow there's a hook up there, and if you can latch on to that hook, it can lift you up out of the...out of the pain of your passion, that you look at your life and not only are you unfulfilled, but you find yourself literally overpowered by lusts and desires and passions. You're out of control, whether it's in the case of alcohol or whether it's in the case of drugs or medication or whether it's just some kind of other habit. For some people it might be something like smoking that leads to cancer and you still can't quit. It might be that you have other preoccupation with pornography.
You get on that Internet and sooner or later you go to that stuff because you can't resist it and you're really tired of these debilitating things. Maybe it's sexual sin, homosexuality or heterosexual sin where you know the price of that can be death and sexually transmitted disease, etc., etc., and you just can't get control of it. You can't get control of your temper and consequently you're ruining your relationship with your wife, you're ruining relationship with your kids and Jesus is going to come along and fix that. Jesus will deliver you from drives and desires that destroy life, your life and the lives of those around you. And there are people who would look at the gospel and they would see it as that and Jesus will fill up the empty holes in your life and Jesus will give you victory over those things that tend to destroy your life. And there's a sense in which the gospel secondarily does make an application to those things because when you come to Christ and you are genuinely saved and you are genuinely converted and you become a new creature and you belong to God and the Holy Spirit takes up residence in your heart and you have a new reason to live and the hope of eternal life and the promise of heaven, it does have a dramatic effect on the lack of fulfillment in life and you do receive the power of the Holy Spirit over the debilitating habits and passions that your sinful nature generates. This is true, but those are not the primary issues in salvation.
There is another issue that is primary and singular and there's a reason for that. Not everybody in the world is unfulfilled. In fact, I think unfulfillment very often goes with our western culture. There are people in the world in third world countries who don't have any expectations so they don't experience any unfulfillment.
They're not unfulfilled because there isn't anything out there anyway. And not everybody in the world is discontent with their condition in life. I mean, there are a lot of people even in a materialistic environment like ours that are very happy to perpetuate permanently the condition they're presently in. They're living life to the max as far as they're concerned. They've got all the wine, women, and song money that they could possibly want.
They've got it all. They're really very content. There are others who are very content with their lifestyle.
Maybe they're retired, they've got the ultimate fishing spot and that's it for them. I mean, not everybody is unfulfilled. There are people who exceed their dreams and ambitions, so that is not a universal problem. If we have a Savior who came to save the world and is the Savior of the world, then it can't be dealing with just unfulfillment.
That can't be the main issue. Not everybody is unfulfilled. In fact, there are large segments of the population of the world that don't have any expectation for anything because there isn't anything in the materialistic world to fulfill them and so they don't experience the artificial unfulfillment that so many people do in our western culture. And, on the other hand, not everybody is driven to a point of danger and disaster by their passions. Not everybody is to the same degree dominated by those things.
There are people who have a certain measure of self-control. Those aren't the universal problems. The universal problem from which the Lord sent a Savior to deliver us is not the problem of purposelessness or unfulfilled living. It's not the problem of passion or lust or unbreakable habits. It's the problem of sin and guilt.
That's the issue. It's to rescue us from the consequence of our sin. That is to say, everybody falls into that category. I don't care whether you're a person living in a third world country with no expectations of anything and whether you're a person who isn't particularly consumed by lust and evil desire, you have a certain measure of self-control and you live life on a certain moral even keel, you still have the same problem. You have broken the law of God and you are on your way to eternal hell and you need to be rescued from sin. In the presentation of the gospel, folks, that's where we need to go with the gospel. That's the issue of the gospel. The fact of the matter is, when you're rescued from sin and its power and its penalty and one day from its presence, you may never still realize your career dreams or your marital dreams or your vacation dreams or your economic dreams. You may never get total dominance over the drives and passions of your life, but you will get some measure of triumph because when your purpose is eternal, those things that don't come true in life don't matter as much. And when you realize you have complete forgiveness and you do have the power of the Holy Spirit to give you victory over your passions, there's a measure of joy and victory in that.
Those things will be dealt with, but that's not the main issue. Church needs to get back to remembering that God sent His Son into the world to save His people from their...what?...sins. That's the issue and a proper presentation of the gospel is to talk about that. That is precisely what is bound up in the announcement of the angel that the one who is born today and is lying there in a feed trough in Bethlehem, one day old, is a Savior. And as the angel told Joseph, who will save His people from their sins. That's why you must name Him Jesus.
The real destroyer is sin and the guilt for sin is a real guilt, not a psychological or artificial guilt, not a self-imposed guilt, but a God-imposed guilt that damns to eternal hell. It is from that that people need to be saved, rescued and delivered. And that is precisely what we must understand in understanding the gospel. So this is good news. The good news of great joy is for all the people and the good news is that it has been born for you, that is individualizing this universal good news Savior. And so in the first few verses, verses 8 to 10, we talked about the proclamation of the good news and we talked about the pervasiveness of the good news. The angel proclaims the good news of great joy which is in its pervasiveness for all the people and for you.
That is to say, it's for everybody and anybody. Now that leads us to the person of the good news, the third point. Proclamation pervasiveness is the person of the good news and this certainly is the message of verse 11. Who is this child?
Who is this child? Already we have noted that He is the Savior who saves His people from their sins. But beyond that, this one who is born that same day today, the day, the very day of the birth of Messiah, the day is the same day as the angelic announcement to the shepherds that came that evening, that same day one was born in the city of Bethlehem, which is the city of David, actually the village of Bethlehem, the Savior who is identified, and here is the identification, who is Christ the Lord. His earthly name is not given, Jesus, that is given in Matthew 1 21, it's not given here, but Savior is the equivalent, it's the synonym, and so we understand that. But His title is given here, not His earthly name, but His title. His title is Christ the Lord, Christ the Lord. That is to be understood that He is both Christ and Lord.
He is both Christos and hakurios, He is both Christ and the Lord. This is an exalted title, by the way, for a baby in such humble circumstances. It would be a little hard to convince anybody who was located in that traveler's rest stop, stable area, when two teenagers, Joseph and Mary, were taking care of that little baby that was lying in the feed trough. It would be very hard to convince anybody there looking into the face of that baby that this was the Christ, the promised Messiah, the anointed one, and the Lord. That would be...will you say, well, didn't He have a gold halo around Him and a little gold spikes all the way around His head?
No, He didn't have that. There wasn't any hat on His head, there wasn't any halo on His head, He was a baby just like any other baby. There would have been no visible distinctive marks of His sovereignty, of His deity, of His Messiahship. But...and by the way, when the shepherds were told to go and see the child, they were simply told in verse 12, that there will be a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. He's not going to have any other distinguishing mark than that He is lying in a feed trough, which is very distinguished.
There wouldn't be any other baby placed in such an unspeakable environment after birth, but this baby. So this baby, in terms of what anybody would assume, wouldn't be anything remarkable, anybody remarkable, but in fact He is identified as Christ the Lord. Let's talk about the word Christ, that's an exalted title. Back in Daniel chapter 9, verses 25 and 26 is a prophecy concerning the coming Messiah, and there He is called Messiah, twice, 925 and 926. That is the Hebrew word for anointed. In the Greek Old Testament, that is Christos, it simply means the anointed one, God's anointed one. Now in the Old Testament time and in ancient times, and in some places even in modern times, when someone was anointed by the ultimate authority, that was signifying that they were being placed into some very high office, given some very, very high title. First of all, the Messiah is anointed because He is God's King. He is in the line of David, we've already learned that when Gabriel came to Mary and said, you're going to have a baby.
She was told that the baby would be the Son of the Most High, that is the Son of God, but the Son of David also. And He would sit on David's throne, and He would establish a kingdom, and then He would reign forever and ever. He is the ultimate King, He is the eternal King, He is the King of kings. And kings were anointed.
It was a way to symbolize that they were identified as set apart, elevated above, and distinguished. And this indicates, Christ being called Christos, or Jesus being called Christos, that He is the anointed, God's King. Later on in His life, you know, when Pilate confronted Him, he said, are you a king?
And he said, you said it. But my kingdom is not of this world, at least not yet. There will be a day when He reigns over a kingdom on this world for a thousand years, according to Revelation chapter 20. Then He will reign, of course, forever and ever as King of kings and Lord of lords.
But He was a King. Matthew, all the way through his gospel, portrays Jesus as a King, clear through the gospel of Matthew. That is the theme of Matthew's emphasis.
But there was more to it than that. Priests were anointed, and particularly the high priest was anointed. And the one who comes, this Messiah, the one who is the anointed one will not only be anointed because He is the King, but He'll be anointed because He is the great high priest.
There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, Paul said in his letter to Timothy. And this is the anointed high priest, the final high priest, the glorious high priest, the great intercessor between God and sinners, the one who can truly take sinners into the presence of a holy God, the one who alone can give them access, the one who by His death literally severed the veil that separated men from God. He is therefore the great priest, the great high priest who takes us into the presence of God. He also is the great prophet, and prophets were anointed as well because they were God's spokesmen. God never had such a spokesman as Jesus. God at sundry times and in diverse manner in time past, Hebrews 1 says, spoke according to the prophets, but in these last days He's spoken unto us by His Son. And His Son, of course, is the greatest of all prophets, the greatest preacher that ever lived, the one who spoke and out of His mouth came only the truth of God. So when it says He's the anointed one, it can sum up all of that. First of all, I think, and primarily it means that He is the one to fulfill Davidic promise to be the anointed King who would establish the great promised kingdom that lasts forever, a kingdom for Israel and a kingdom from Israel over the whole world and a kingdom that would last forever in the new heavens and the new earth. But also it implies also that He is the great high priest and the great prophet of God. So we know Him in that way. What was happening there, the little child in the feed trough was the greatest king the world will ever know, the greatest priest the world will ever know, the greatest prophet the world will ever know, all summed up in one person. He was the King of all kings. He was at that very time in His birth the priest who alone could give access to God and the prophet who spoke for God and only for God. That was this child. It's amazing to think about that, to understand that you had a real baby there and that the condescension of the second member of the Trinity was so great that He submitted Himself to the conditions of being an infant.
What does that mean? Well, later on when He was commented upon in Luke's gospel, Luke says about Him that He grew in wisdom, in stature and favor with God and there was actual growth that is normal to human beings. He actually started out as a baby and was a toddler and grew to being an adult.
This is the wondrous condescension. But all the while, even from the beginning, He was the anointed King and Priest and Prophet. And then He is called Lord. And Lord could be just a term of honor used in a human sense, in the sense of a benefactor, in the sense of a patron, in the sense of someone who is revered and highly esteemed and given some exalted position in England today. You hear about Lord so-and-so and Lady so-and-so.
That's been pretty traditional in western society through the years. Lord is a term referring to someone in a place of leadership, in a place of authority. In fact, in 1 Peter 3 we find that it was even true in a Jewish environment and a New Testament environment because it says that Sarah called Abraham her husband Lord. And Peter affirms that that is a right designation, that in fact a woman should recognize her husband as one who has authority over her. So it can be used in a human sense to speak of a legitimate authority.
But in this usage, it's way beyond that. When it says this is the Savior who is Christ the Lord, you'll notice, and it will be true every time it's used in the Bible to speak of Jesus Christ or of God, it's a capital L. You're not seeing it here as some human designation. You're seeing this as a divine designation. To say that this child is Lord, listen very carefully, is to say that this child is God. Lord is intended to imply in the Greek all that is implied by the Hebrew word Yahweh, the tetragrammaton, the Hebrew name for God. To say that Jesus is Lord is to say that Jesus is God, first and foremost.
And let me say this as clearly and simply as I can, and you need to remember this. The most fundamental and basic confession of Christianity is this, Jesus is Lord. That is the most fundamental and basic confession of the Christian faith. Without that, you don't have Christianity.
There are so many people out there who really don't get it. There are Christian people who when they hear people talk about grace and talk about faith and we love Jesus and Jesus is our Savior and He died for us, they don't understand the subtleties of what's going on. Those cults obviously masquerading as Christian are not Christian.
They are satanic counterfeits because no matter what they affirm, they deny that Jesus is Lord. And that again I say is the most fundamental and basic confession of the Christian faith. If you want to be saved, Romans 10, 9 says, you must confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.
That is unequivocal. It's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of his current study here on Grace to You is The Promise of Christmas. Now, John, although your lesson today focused on the birth of Christ, it was a great example of what happens every day on this broadcast, whether it's the week of Christmas or even the middle of the summer or many time, you just explain what the Bible means and you rarely tell people precisely how to apply scripture. So talk about your approach to this and why you focus so much on interpretation more than application. Well, I think, Phil, a simple way to understand it is this. Everything starts with interpretation. You read the Bible and then you ask, what does the Bible mean? And you have to get that right. You have to get that absolutely right. That is the dividing the word of God accurately.
So what does it mean? And connected to what does it mean is to draw out the doctrine that is there. Every passage of scripture yields a truth or truths. Those are doctrines. Those are propositional truths. The power of the doctrine is that it provides the basis for all application. So you've interpreted the text, you've extracted the doctrinal absolutes out of that text. Those doctrinal absolutes have powerful, powerful implications. So I talk about implication before application.
Application is down to specifics, do this, do that, do the other thing. Implication is feeling the sheer weight of this truth. You feel it on your mind.
You feel the weight of it on your soul. We're to forget none of his benefits. Well, who catalogs every benefit that the Lord gives us on a daily basis? He forgets all our sins and asks us to remember all his benefits. If you just spent your life remembering all his benefits, you wouldn't have time for foolishness, you wouldn't have time for bitterness, you wouldn't have time for gossip. Your life would be consumed with nothing more than just cataloging his benefits. Like the old song said, count your blessings, name them one by one. So drawing out of that an implication that becomes a weight on people's conscience.
Boy, I need to do that. You don't have to tell them, you know, do it this time of day, do it over here, do it over there. They just need to feel the weight of the text. So that's what we endeavor to do here at Grace To You, is to explain the meaning of the Scripture and then draw the doctrines out that have weight, that have power and force on our minds and hearts and wills. That's our ministry.
And then the Spirit of God goes from there to take it into application in many places in life. So if you've benefited from our teaching of the Word of God through Grace To You, this is a good time for you to make contact with us and give us a yes vote for our ministry through your support. Thanks, John. And friend, your support helps keep this broadcast on the air in your neighborhood and on thousands of stations around the world. Your gifts are especially important as the year comes to an end. About a quarter of our annual budget is met by donations we receive in the last few weeks. To express your tangible support for Grace To You at this strategic time, contact us today. You can mail your gift to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or you can donate online at gty.org or just call us at 800-555-GRACE. Thank you for all you do to help us take God's Word to the spiritually hungry people across the globe. Again, to make a year-end donation, visit gty.org or call 800-555-GRACE. And a reminder, we want to hear how this ministry is helping you grow spiritually. So if you've never written to us or if it's been a while, jot a quick note and share your story. Our mailing address again is P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or if you prefer to use email, our address is letters at gty.org.
Be sure to include the call letters of the radio station you listen to whenever you write. And thanks for praying for John and the staff here. That is your most important ministry to us. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson with a question. You've heard it said that Christmas is a time of goodwill toward men. But what do those words really mean? It may not be what you think, as John MacArthur will show you when he returns with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
