Worshiping Christ With The Angels
Luke 2:13-20
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit
St. Luke 2:13-14 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, goodwill toward men!”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… We are here this morning to worship the One who was born to us in Bethlehem, the Savior who is Christ the Lord. We heard it announced from the one angel last night. Therefore, who better to lead us in worship today than that “multitude of the heavenly host who suddenly appeared with the angel, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
That was the worship of the angels, and the really cool thing is that it is our song of worship, too. We sing it throughout most of the year in our Divine Service, except in Advent and Lent. And we sing it again now that Christmas has come and we rejoice all the more. So since these are some of the words we sing by which we worship our Lord, let us ponder these words for a little while this morning, so that we can join the angels once again in worshiping the King who was once a newborn baby.
“Glory to God in the highest,” they sang. Or, as we sing, Glory be to God on high! “Glory” means brightness, splendor, radiance, and, by way of metaphor, honor, fame, and renown. It is another way of saying, Praise God, give honor to God in the highest!, that is, to God in heaven, where He dwells visibly with the holy angels and with the souls of the saints who have gone before us into heaven.
Why do the angels give glory and praise to God? It’s not just that they owe Him worship as creatures owe worship to their Creator. It’s a bit more than that. When the angels sang, “Glory to God in the highest,” it wasn’t a general song of praise. It was a song of praise on the occasion of Jesus’ birth. It was a celebration of the incarnation itself – that God’s Son had taken on human flesh and was finally revealed to the world in His birth. It was a song of praise, not only to God the Father in heaven, but also to the newborn baby who was God. The angels knew exactly how BIG of an event the birth of our Lord was, and they let loose in an amazing heavenly chorus!
The author to the Hebrews writes (1:6), “When God brings the firstborn into the world, He says: “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” So God the Father was the One who sent those angels to worship the Firstborn, the Son of God, to worship the One who, although He was as helpless as any newborn baby, was greater than they, higher than they, even though He lay in a humble manger, even though He was “made a little lower than the angels” as it says in Hebrews 2:9. SO, Glory to God in the highest is a song of worship sung to Jesus just as much as it is to God the Father.
The angels’ worship of the Firstborn came from their love of God for who He is, as He revealed Himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai: “Yahweh, Yahweh God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” (Ex 34:6-7)
And this is possible only when you are intended to have amerikabulteni.com tadalafil 40mg love making session shortly. Erection issues in men have turned into a vital part of discount viagra online everybody’s life. Essentially, the GDL laws allow young drivers to gain experience in “lower-risk” super generic viagra conditions. This method is canada cialis levitra believed to help eliminate all forms of sports massage. The chief qualities of the one true God are mercy, grace, patience, goodness, truth, faithfulness, and a readiness to forgive. And the birth of Christ epitomizes all those qualities. It shows the lengths to which our God went to show mercy to wretched sinners and to give grace to the undeserving. It shows how patient and longsuffering He had been with rebellious mankind and how patient He would be still, so patient, in fact, that He would allow sinners to reject His Son, mistreat Him, and finally to crucify Him. It shows that God is true and faithful to His Word in that He kept that four thousand year-old promise to bring His Son into the world, and to earn forgiveness for all by one day shedding His blood so that He would have a basis for acquitting guilty sinners who seek refuge by faith in the blood of His innocent Son.
Most of those qualities of God aren’t even needed by the angels. They have no need for mercy, patience, or forgiveness. But we do. And yet the angels were amazed, astonished, awe-struck over God’s grace and His willingness to do all this, to take on human flesh, to be born into our dark world, in order to save fallen mankind. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, gets the glory, the praise, the honor, the worship, the credit, the thanks. “Glory to God in heaven” for being such a merciful, gracious God, for showing such mercy, patience, and forgiveness toward the human race.
The angels gave glory to God in heaven when Jesus was born into the world. And then they proclaimed, “On earth peace, goodwill toward men!” Peace to men. Peace on earth. We know that doesn’t mean what the world thinks it means. It doesn’t mean an end to war and conflict, and it doesn’t mean people being nice to other people. The angels weren’t singing at all about earthly peace. Even Jesus says, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword” (Mt 10:34). He didn’t come to end interpersonal conflicts. He came to receive the punishment for our peace, as the prophet Isaiah wrote. He came to suffer in our place the wrath and condemnation of God for our sins, so that all those who are connected to this Child by faith have peace with God. As St. Paul writes, “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:1). The angels were singing about the peace that would one day be purchased with the blood of this newborn Child, the reconciliation of sinners with God through faith in this Child.
In the same way, the angels were not singing about the goodwill that men are supposed to show to one another at Christmas time. They were praising God’s goodwill toward mankind; they were praising God’s good pleasure with men that was to be found in Christ and in Him alone. This is where God’s goodwill was found on Christmas: wrapped up in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. God’s goodwill toward men was always wrapped up in Jesus.
One day, at His Baptism, Jesus would hear these words from His heavenly Father: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased” (Mt 3:17). God the Father is well-pleased with His Son and everything His Son is and came to earth to do. God’s goodwill toward men was born on Christmas Day. His goodwill dwelt among us on earth for a time. Whoever has Christ by faith has God’s goodwill. Whoever has Christ by faith has God’s good pleasure, and can be sure of God’s love and forgiveness and of God’s good plan to bring you safely into His heavenly kingdom.
That peace and that goodwill were brought to earth when Christ was born. And they are still here where Christ has promised to be, in Word and Sacrament. That is why we sing the angels’ song so often in the Divine Service, because the same peace and goodwill to men that they proclaimed over 2,000 years ago is being proclaimed to you today, promising you peace and goodwill, giving you peace and goodwill in Jesus.
After the shepherds heard and believed the angelic forerunners’ words, they went to the manger where Christ was and worshiped Him, and then they went out and spread the word of God’s peace and goodwill in Christ to everyone they found. So we, too, who have heard the message of the angels, we who have come to where Jesus is in His Word and Sacrament and have worshiped Him here, we who have known and received God’s peace and goodwill in Christ Jesus, we become, in essence, forerunners of His goodwill to our fellow man. It is like the shepherds became, not just doing charitable deeds, but by leading godly lives, by speaking of God’s goodwill in Christ, by standing firm on our confession of Christ, by not allowing ourselves to be moved an inch from His commandments or from His revelation.
“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!” May the song of the angels fill you with joy and peace and wonder, and may it inspire you to worship the King who was once newborn, with your ears and with your hearts, with your lips and with your lives not just in this Christmas season, but all the year through.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
