A week ago, Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator, died. Before his death, he made arrangements for his son, Kim Jong-eun, to succeed him. In fact, Kim Jong-eun has already been given the title “The Great Successor,” as he succeeds his father who was called “The Dear Leader.”

The giving of power to Kim Jong-il’s son is, as you might expect, controversial. In fact, it really is kind of shameless how the father prepared the way for his son to take power. Last year, as Kim Jong-il was growing increasingly weak, he named his son his successor and made him a four-star General in the North Korean military even though his son has never served a day in the military. More than that, he gave his son the title, “The Respected General.” The young man is allegedly twenty-eight years old (nobody really knows) and inexperienced (something everybody knows). In addition to giving power to a son who did not deserve it, who has done nothing to earn it and whose credentials have been intentionally overstated, news agencies report that, last year, “[d]uring his illness, Kim promoted his younger sister, Kim Kyong-hui, and her husband, Chang Sung-taek, to positions where they could oversee the succession of Jong-eun.”[i]

The media in North Korea is owned by the government and they, too, are doing all they can to make sure Jong-eun’s transition to power will proceed smoothly. The news stations are calling on the people to honor the young man, to “faithfully revere” him. Radio stations are currently playing two songs which are odes to the young man and his greatness. The people of North Korea have also been told that he is very smart, that he speaks many languages and that he is a computer whiz. Outside of that, nobody really know much about the young man, including his definite age, when he was born or even who is mother is.

Like many of you, I have watched North Korea over the last number of years with a sense of sadness and outrage. Jong-il was a ruthless and debauched tyrant and dictator who has the blood and suffering of countless human lives on his hands. Regrettably, the son will likely carry on this lineage of shame.

What fascinates me at this moment, though, is the giving of power to his son on the week leading up to Christmas. They do not celebrate Christmas in North Korea, for the dictator is the only god the people are allowed to reverence. But for those of us who can and do celebrate Christmas, consider the poignant irony of Kim Jong-eun as he contrasts with Jesus. This seems fitting, after all, since Christmas is about the relationship of another Father and another Son…the Father and the Son. But consider the contrast:

·        In North Korea, a wicked father prepares a wicked son to continue his reign of evil. At Christmas we celebrate a loving Father sending His perfect Son to reveal His reign of goodness.

·        In North Korea, a desperate father prepares the way for his son to have power. At Christmas we celebrate a sovereign God giving His Son a life of humility and lowliness.

·        In North Korea, the father has to make up fake titles so the people will revere the son. At Christmas, the Son sets aside his legitimate titles and becomes a baby, and we revere Him here today.

·        In North Korea, the father kept the son shrouded in mystery. At Christmas, the Son sets aside mystery and comes to reveal the Father.

·        In North Korea, the radio plays fabricated songs in an attempt to win the favor of a skeptical public. At Christmas, the angels sing songs to proclaim the glory of the Son.

·        In North Korea, the people do not even know who the mother of the offered son is. At Christmas, we know who Jesus’ mother is and we call her “blessed.”

·        In North Korea, the son’s power is manipulated and manufactured. At Christmas, the Son’s power is legitimate and righteous, but he sets it aside.

·        In North Korea, the people fear that the coming of the son will mean further anguish. At Christmas, the coming of the Son means freedom and joy and peace.

·        In North Korea, the father prepared for his son a crown and a throne. At Christmas, the Father prepared for His Son a cross.

·        In North Korea, the son shielded from the suffering people. At Christmas, the Son comes among the people, lives and shares their suffering.

·        In North Korea, people already cannot wait for the son to pass from the scene. At Christmas, we cannot wait for the Son to come again.

·        In North Korea, the people are told they must worship the son. At Christmas, all who see the beauty of the Son want to worship him

The world has never seen a King like Jesus. His idea of power has turned our ideas of power on their heads. His idea of glory has forever redefined what glory means. And it is at Christmas that we most realize these facts.

John of Damascus, a monk from the 7^th-8^th century, wrote this about Christmas:

“Heaven and earth are united today, for Christ is born! Today God has come upon earth, and humankind gone up to heaven. Today, for the sake of humankind, the invisible one is seen in the flesh. Therefore let us glorify him and cry aloud: glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace bestowed by your coming, Savior: glory to you!

Today in Bethlehem, I hear the angels: glory to God in the highest! Glory to him whose good pleasure it was that there be peace on earth!…Light has shone on those in darkness, exalting the lowly who sing like the angels: Glory to God in the highest!

Behold [Adam] who was in God’s image and likeness fallen through transgression, Jesus bowed the heavens and came down, without change taking up his dwelling in a virgin womb, that he might refashion Adam fallen in corruption, and crying out: glory to your epiphany, my Savior and my God!”[ii]

That is well said! Jesus is great and worthy of great praise. Let us, then, consider the shocking and unexpected greatness of Jesus. Let us consider who this baby is.

In the angel’s announcement to Mary, he reveals that Jesus will be a Savior.

³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

The angel tells Mary that she had “found favor with God.” That word “favor” is the Greek word charin which is also the word for “grace.” So the gift of bearing the Christ child was a gift of God’s grace and kindness to Mary. But this also means that Mary, in a microcosm, becomes a depiction of the world in general and of all who come to Jesus. For just as Jesus was a living sign of God’s grace in Mary’s life, so Jesus brings grace into the life of all who trust in Him.

Jesus is the Savior and He saves us by His grace. Even his name speaks of salvation, for the word “Jesus” means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation.” The angel told Mary that this baby would be named, “Yahweh is salvation.” Last week we saw in Matthew 1:21 that the angel told Joseph that “[Mary] will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

This baby, then, represents God’s rescue mission for lost humanity. He was born to die and He died to save and He rose again to seal our salvation in eternity. Jesus is the Savior.

He said this Himself when He went back to His hometown of Nazareth and attended church there. We find this scene in Luke 4:

¹⁶ And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. ¹⁷ And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Of course, the people of His hometown rejected Him as most people will today as well, but the rejection of Jesus as Savior does not compromise the fact that He was, in fact, the Savior!

The whole universe waited with bated breath for the birth of Jesus. The whole universe groaned in anxious anticipation of a Savior who would come to set things right. From the very beginning, though, people have failed to understand the great significance of the birth of the Christ-child.

A few years ago the book Timelines of the Ancient World—A Visual Chronology from the Origins of Life to A.D. 1500was published by the Smithsonian Institute. It was promoted by the American Library Association and became a bestseller. It presents readers with timelines spanning periods of time showing along the way the most significant political and religious and cultural events of those periods of time. In the book on the timeline crossing from BC to AD, you would think the birth of Jesus would be listed as the most significant religious event. You would be wrong for thinking that. Instead, for the line crossing from BC to AD, this bestselling history book listed the “[addition of] four stone gateways to the Great Stupa at Sanchi in central India, showing scenes from the life of Buddha” as the most remarkable religious event.  Just imagine that: the line spanning from BC to AD, from “Before Christ” to “the Year of our Lord,” lists the erection of four Buddhist gateways in India as the great religious event of that period of time!

When pressed by some offended readers about how these gateways could conceivably outrank the birth of Jesus as the most significant religious event for that time period, the publisher responded, “While acknowledging that you are entitled to your opinion, our respective views as to the appropriate content and approach for the book are each valid from each perspective, but also very different.”[iii]

If that makes no sense to you, join the club. That answer is, of course, smoke and mirrors, but here is the brunt reality: all over the world today people awoke with a song in their hearts and with joy and hope and a sense of unbelievable peace. They did so not because four stone gateways to the Great Stupa at Sanchi in central India depicting scenes from the life of the Buddha were erected 2,000 years ago. No, they awoke with an otherworldly joy because a Savior was born this day! The great gateways at Sanchi cannot save us. The great Gateway that is Christ, however can! The angels did not herald the birth of the Buddha. We cannot stop celebrating the birth of the Christ.

Around 1600 years ago, St. Augustine stood before his congregation on Christmas morning and pronounced, “Your faith, which has gathered you all here in this large crowd, is well aware that a Savior was born for us today.”[iv]

I like that. Your faith has gathered you here today. Your faith knows the reason why! We gather because this day a baby was born who would grow into a man. But this baby was more than a baby and that man was more than a man. He was Immanuel, God with us. And He came to give Himself as a sacrifice to buy for Himself all who would come to Him in repentance and faith.

Today a Savior is born! Jesus is the Savior.

We do not merely marvel at His task, however. We marvel also at His person. For Jesus was the Son of God.

^32a He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

The angel says that Jesus will be the Son of the Most High, that is, the Son of El Elyon, which means “God Most High.”

The idea of the promised Messiah being the Son of God would actually not have been that surprising to observant Jews. After all, in 2 Samuel 7, the Lord sent Nathan the prophet to say the following to the King David:

¹² When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³ He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ¹⁴ I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, ¹⁵ but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. ¹⁶ And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’”

The Jews would therefore not have objected to the notion of a Messiah King who was God’s Son. But they would have meant by this term nothing more than that God had raised the Messiah up, commissioned Him and secured His reign.

Jesus would fulfill but also would exceed this prophecy, for He would be without sin though He would take the sins of the world upon Himself on the cross. At first, however, the Jews would not have grasped the full implications of Jesus being called the Son of God. It is questionable how much Mary herself understood it. I agree with Darrel Bock when he argues that Luke, in his gospel, “chooses to present Jesus from the ‘earth up,’” and that “only slowly do people grasp all of what is promised.”[v]

Bock points out that Luke tends to present Jesus from the earth up but that John tends to present Jesus from Heaven down. This seems fairly clear. It is also clear, however, that much more was meant by “Son of God” than that the approval and blessing of God was on Jesus. In truth, this title really meant nothing less than that Jesus Christ was God among us. It was a statement of deity and we rightly hail Jesus as the second Person of the Divine Trinity.

In John 1:1,14, John eloquently says that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In Hebrews 1:3a, the writer of that book says Jesus “is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Paul, in Colossians 1, poured out divinely inspired speech when he wrote:

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. ¹⁶ For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. ¹⁷ And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹ For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Jesus’ sonship was therefore unique and exceeded the traditional understanding of the Messiah as the Son of God.

Jesus did not merely posses divine approval, He bore a divine nature. Jesus was not merely sent by God, He was God with us. He was the Son who alone could say, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9b).

There has never been a father/son relationship like the relationship between God the Father and God the Son. The amazing miracle of Christmas is that, in Christ, God has been born in human flesh.  The amazing second stanza of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” gets this right in a powerful way:

Christ by highest heav’n adored
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold Him come
Offspring of a Virgin’s womb
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
Hark! The herald angels sing
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Yes, in Christ, the Deity has become a man…and not simply a man, but a Jewish man, first a Jewish baby, born in a manger because there was no room for Him in the inn.

No room for God in the inn! How on earth can this happen? In fact, it can only happen on earth, but it was for the salvation of the earth that God was born in a manger.

In one of his Christmas poems, G.K. Chesterton wrote:

To an open house in the evening
Home shall all men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Jesus is the Savior, but Jesus is also the only begotten Son who shares the Father’s and the Spirit’s deity.

This Jesus is also sovereign. He has a reign and a rule and it is without end.

^32b And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

The shepherds found a baby in a manger, but, in doing so, the shepherds found a King. His royal rule is legitimate because he was born in the line of David. It is legitimate more so because He was Lord of heaven and earth.

Once again, we find in the birth of Jesus a fulfillment of the prophecies foretold of old. In Isaiah 9, the prophet foretold the unending reign and rule of the coming Messiah King:

² The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
³ You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
⁴ For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
⁵ For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
⁶ For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.

Ah! “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end…” Jesus is Sovereign and King!

The people of the earth are already beginning to dream of the time when Kim Jong-eun’s reign will end…and end it will!  It will end just as the reigns of countless despots and dictators and tyrants have ended.  It will end and the earth will be better for it. But if the reign of Christ ever ended, the earth would cease to be!

^32b And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Christ’s reign will have no end for it is founded not on popular vote or the will of the people but on the will of God Himself.

It seems to me that this day is worthy of celebration, of pomp and circumstance, of grand and grandiose proclamations! I personally like the “Proclamation of the Birth of Christ” from the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Mass. It goes like this:

The twenty-fifth day of December.
In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world
from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;
the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;
the two thousand and fifteenth year
from the birth of Abraham;
the one thousand five hundred and tenth year
from Moses
and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the one thousand and thirty-second year
from David’s being anointed king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the forty-second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
the whole world being at peace
in the sixth age of the world,
Jesus Christ the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
being conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and nine months having passed
since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea
of the Virgin Mary,
being made flesh.[vi]

The Savior, the Son, the Sovereign…Jesus! He reigns and rules forevermore. Does He reign and rule in your heart today? Does He? Have you embraced His eternal person and His eternal rule? Have you bowed heart and knee to this great and glorious Jesus today? Oh I do hope so!

Today, we celebrate the birth of Christ. But today, we might also celebrate your rebirth. Today, Christ is born! Today, Christ might be born in you.

Have you accepted Jesus? Are you saved? Have you embraced the Savior, the Son, the King? In Romans 10:9-10, Paul writes:

…if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

Confess. Believe. Be saved.

Would you like to be saved today? Would you?

Bow your heads with me this morning.

 

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