The Angels Of Bethlehem – Part 1 of 2

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Angels are organized in ranks like an army. Angels know their roles and responsibilities, including communicating with humanity when God directs them to. Today on Running to Win, we'll learn more about these powerful heavenly beings who worship God without ceasing.

Stay with us. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, I'm so glad the angels rejoice when a sinner repents. That gives us one glimpse into their motivations.

It really does. And you and I should rejoice when a sinner repents. Well, today is Christmas. What that means is, our focus is on Jesus Christ when he was a baby, and we all know the story.

But what we have to do is to spend some time contemplating the mystery. I like to refer to the fact when one of my daughters asked, Dad, who was taking care of the world when Jesus was a baby? Well, I explained to her that when Mary held the baby Jesus, that there was a part of him that no one could see. He was God in the flesh. And so the world was being taken care of very well when Jesus was a baby. But there in that manger, we get a glimpse of the descent of God into our predicament, into our mess, even though he was sinless. And of course, then he died for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. If there's anything that you should do today besides connect with friends, above all, worship the Christ child.

Bow down and remember it's all because of him. And even as we think about angels, we rejoice in the fact that their motivation is correct. It all has to do with our Savior. So they saw the splendor and the wonder of Jesus. Then they saw man's humiliation, his fall into sinfulness, and being in league with Satan in rebellion.

They saw the depths of man's sin and helplessness. And then for God to become a baby, for him to assume human flesh and then of all things to be born in an inn and laid in a manger. For that to happen, this must have just made the angels filled with awe, filled with awe. And so the lead angel, an angel of the Lord came. Now we don't know who that angel was. Maybe it was the angel Gabriel, the same one who had given the message to Mary, but an angel came.

And he indeed was the bearer of good news. And immediately with him, the scripture says, the glory of the Lord is shown around them. This is the Shekinah glory. That glory left Israel centuries earlier. You can read about it in the book of Ezekiel, where the glory of God, the Shekinah glory left the temple area, went over the Mount of Olives and then disappeared as a judgment because God says, I'm leaving you because of your sin and your idolatry. Now that same glory appears on the outskirts of Bethlehem. The glory of the Lord comes and then the whole host participate and they sing and they chime in.

Someone has said there is no place where earth's joys and sorrows are more felt than in heaven. And notice the specificity of the message. Born unto you this day in the city of David, Bethlehem was considered the city of David because David grew up close to Bethlehem, a savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths, that strips of cloth that are wrapped tightly around a baby to restrict movement and to give the child, the infant, a sense of security. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. That's how you will identify this child so that the shepherds could not mistake who it was that they went to see. And so the message comes to them. It is Spurgeon who says, all the attributes of God were in that little child, most marvelously displayed and veiled.

Conceive the whole sun to be focused to a single point and yet so softly revealed as to be durable by the most tender eye. Even thus the glorious God is brought down for man to see him born of a woman. So the angel knew where Jesus was born. They knew the city. They knew the manger.

They knew how he was dressed. And they said, that's where you can now go. The angels remember accepted and gave the message that they'd been given. And then let's notice also they glorified the God that they loved. You'll notice that when the multitude of the heavenly host comes, they praise God and say glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. Glory to God in the highest, in the highest heaven of heavens. God is to be admired and he is to be glorified. God is glorified in every single drop of water.

You look at that water and you know that it was put together by a creator and he's magnified in every single flower. But someone has said, but single universe until you have exhausted thyself thou canst not make a song as sweet as the song of the incarnation. And most assuredly there is no song that is sweeter than the good news that Jesus was born. And so they bring glory to God and then you'll notice they add this and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. Many of us who grew up with the King James version of the Bible know that in the King James it says peace among men.

That isn't exactly accurate. The other translations translate it the way in which I think Luke intended it to be understood because it is not true that Jesus came to bring a universal peace, at least not now. There's some people who are not better off because Christ came. Simeon said this child is set for the rise and the fall of many in Israel and that there are some people who are going to stumble over Jesus.

Judas is far worse off because Christ came than he would have been if Christ had not come. And so it is not true that that Jesus just brought universal peace. I happened to turn on the news as I was coming to the church this morning. The seven o'clock news, I was listening in the car, another suicide bomber in Iraq killing 13 people, many of them women and children. There's no peace in Iraq today and there's no peace in Israel today and there's no peace in Yemen and some of the other countries.

There was no peace in Angola today or Osiri, the refugee camp. There is no peace in this world universally. Now eventually Jesus will bring peace to all men. Then it will be true that he rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the wonder of his righteousness. But that verse, that stanza of joy to the world is not fulfilled in this era. But it is true that there is peace for those with whom he is pleased or with those upon whom his favor rests. You say, well, I would like to be among those who have the favor of God.

That can be true if you come through Jesus Christ and you believe on him whom he has sent. That's the way we receive God's favor. It is not something that we deserve.

It is always a gift, just like the garden and the vegetables in a garden. They may not deserve the rain. They cannot create the rain, but all that they can do is to enjoy the rain that comes in the very same way.

We can't create it. We don't deserve it, but we make ourselves available to be people upon whom God's favor rests. Now when the angels are finished their song, what did the shepherds do? Verse 16, and they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby in the 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 to glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen as it had been told them. The angels give glory to God and now the shepherds are giving glory to God.

Let me help us understand and to apply this. When we think of angels, because this will be the last message I'm preaching on this topic on this very, very brief series. First of all, keep in mind that angels exist for God. God does not exist for angels. Angels exist for God. Angels never say to themselves, I wonder what I want to do today and now that I've made up my mind, I'm going to pray and ask God to bless me while I do what I want to do. No angels who don't have to wake up in the morning, by the way, because they're never tired, ceaseless energy.

Angels never think in those terms. The good old angels have only one question to ask and that is, what does God want me to do? They have one responsibility to find out what the almighty asks of them and then to do it because they do not exist for themselves. They exist for the God who created them, who sends them and who uses them according to his will. I would say that most of the problems that we face in the Christian life are problems that we get into because we think that God exists for us.

So we decide what we want to do and then we pray that God will bless these pre-made plans instead of laying it all out in God's presence and asking one question, Lord, what will you have me to do? I think that you and I need what could be called a Copernican revolution. Remember Copernicus? In those days, centuries ago, it was always believed rather reasonably so, it appeared reasonable, that the sun revolved around the earth.

The earth was stationary and the sun revolved around it. And that's what we're thinking, isn't it? I'm here. God, you're here to bless my plans. And if you listen to a TV preacher that I heard snatches of this past week, God exists in order for me to be rich and healthy and well and to be able to have a wonderful life.

And all that I need to do is to send in money to the TV preacher and somehow it's going to happen. So we have that kind of mentality when we have to understand that it is not the sun that revolves around the earth. The earth revolves around the sun. The sun, the s-o-n, he is the one that is the focus. And we have one question that we ought to ask him every single day. And that is this, Lord, show me the orbit, show me the orbit because I exist for you. Imagine the freedom that would come.

Imagine the lack of jealousy. Imagine the sense of contentment that there would be even in the midst of difficulties. If you knew that you existed only for the will of God and you are doing God's will, there is nothing else that would be more important to you than saying, God, you led me, you cared for me.

I lay it all before you because you exist, you exist and I exist that I might glorify you. That's what the good angels are thinking all the time. Second, angels rejoice in God's attributes. They rejoice in God's attributes. If we had time to go into the book of Revelation, we'd soon discover that the angels rejoice in God's judgments. In fact, the angels are calling out that God is going to judge the world.

They are going from one end of the heavens to the other talking about God's judgments. So they delight actually in the judgment of God because they see his attributes and they know that whatever it is that he does, he does well and rightly. But they also rejoice because of God's grace. And as I mentioned last time, most confidently, they rejoice in the incarnation. They rejoice in the humiliation of God. It was Augustine who said, God has humbled himself and yet man remains proud. When they see the condescension, remember that when Jesus came from heaven to earth, it isn't because he was squeezed out of a position in heaven. It isn't because there was a restructuring and he needed some place to go.

It was a voluntary decision. In heaven, everybody knows who Jesus is. In heaven, all of the created world gives praise to him in heaven on earth. Nobody knows him.

Nobody knows him. He's spat upon. He's cursed.

He shoved around. He's rejected. He receives injustice and he is misquoted. And yet there he is, son of God, holy one.

Think of his condescension. By the way, there may be some of you saying, well, you know, this is all true of the good angels. They exist for God's glory. But what about the bad angels? What about the evil angels? They also ultimately exist for the glory of God, not willingly because they hate God.

They hate us. They hate everything that God does and they know right well that hell is coming. And yet even they, even they must contribute to God's glory. If for no other reason, God will defeat them as he already has at the cross. God will confine them and God will judge them and they too shall display the glory of God.

There's a lesson there for us. Those of you who are standing against God in rebellion, may I remind you that rebellion is a very bad idea. It's a bad idea. It's a bad idea for you because in the end, God will always win. Heads, God wins, tails you lose.

Rebellion is a bad idea. So they rejoice in God's judgment. They rejoice in God's grace. Are they jealous because we're going to be above them?

No, no. They are so free of jealousy, just like we are going to be in heaven. Remember what Jonathan Edwards says, when you get to heaven and you find someone above you in the heavenly ranks, we will be so free of jealousy that we will delight in their exaltation as if it were our own. Won't that be a wonderful day when we'll delight in the exaltation of others?

That's the way angels are right now. As I've mentioned, they'll never be a brother of Jesus. They'll never have the opportunity of being an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ because they're of a different order.

They can't be part of God's family even though they can serve him and they will rejoice in that. Fifteenth chapter of this book of Luke, Jesus tells a very interesting parable. He says, what man of you if he has a hundred sheep and he loses one, doesn't he leave the ninety and nine and he goes seeks the one that is astray? And the answer is yes and there are shepherds who do exactly that.

They leave the ninety nine with someone else or perhaps in some kind of a confinement and then they go and they hunt for the one that is lost. Maybe that's what's happening today as you're listening to this message. You're the one who is lost and God is coming for you. The good shepherd is coming to find you. And then Jesus says, and when he's found the sheep, he puts it on his shoulder and he comes back and he rejoices and he says, this my sheep was lost and now is found. And then Jesus adds these words just as the shepherd rejoices. So there is rejoicing in heaven among the angels because of one sinner that repents. Even as a result of this message today there could be a cosmic celebration in heaven. Imagine heaven is watching. Angels are watching. And when someone responds to God's love and grace, they rejoice because they see the wonderful display of God's forgiveness.

Maybe you're the one who is lost today. The shepherd has come to find you and angels are waiting for your repentance that they might rejoice. Why don't you respond to Christ in faith and say, thank you for dying for me.

Be my savior. Thank you for coming and for your birth, for your life and for your death on behalf of sinners. That's the good news of the gospel. I really do think that James Montgomery got it right when he wrote the song that we've already sung today.

Angels from the realms of glory wing your flight or all the earth. You who sang creation story now proclaim the messiah's birth. Come and worship, come and worship, come and worship Christ, the newborn king.

Let's pray. Our father, we want to thank you today for this story. We thank you that it is true. We thank you that it is believable because we have a God for whom nothing is impossible. Thank you that you came to shepherds and we rejoice today because of the birth of Jesus and all that it means and the good news in the coming of Jesus. You were saying to us, the war can now be over. The gap between man and God can be bridged.

We can know you personally. We can walk in your light. We pray that all who have listened to this message today would respond to to what you've revealed that we all might be with you forever. Today we pray that angels will rejoice because of those who have put faith in Jesus in whose name we pray. Amen. Amen. Well, if you've been listening to Running to Win for any length of time, you know that the message of Jesus Christ is our motivation. We desire that men and women come to know him. But let me have a personal word with you.

I trust that in addition to worshiping the Christ child today, you'll take out time to connect with other people. We live in a very broken world. There are so many people for whom Christmas is a very difficult time because they don't have family. They feel isolated. They feel lonely.

They feel rejected. Even as Jesus Christ came at Bethlehem and he came and became one of us in order to redeem us, he came into our world in the very same way we should be going into the world of other people, recognizing their brokenness, helping them to see that God does indeed love all who come to him by faith and to know that the baby in the manger grew up, became a man, died on the cross for our sins, was raised again, triumphant, King of Kings, Lord of Lords, God of all gods. So my friend, in the midst of all of the hustle and the bustle of Christmas, amidst all of the noise and in many instances the partying, let's remember whose birthday it really is. Let's make the most of this day even as we recognize that the one whom we worship is not only, of course, a baby in the manger, but as I've already emphasized, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Let's proclaim that message with the same enthusiasm that the angels had when they said to the shepherds, glory to God in the highest, on earth peace and goodwill toward men.

You can write to us at Running to Win, 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614. Running to Win is all about helping you find God's roadmap for your race of life. The God who gave us His Son gave the greatest gift of all. His generosity is the key reason why we as God's people support His work with our gifts in turn. Next time on Running to Win, we take a look at the generosity of God. Plan to join us. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.