What Child is This?

Luke 2:8-14
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, December 19, 2021
Copyright © 2021, Gregory Broderick

“What Child Is This?”  This week, billions of people around the world will gather to celebrate Christmas, including ninety-three percent of people in this country.  The whole country shuts down essentially for this time of year.  Schools are shuttered.  Shops are closed.  Businesses are shut down for holiday parties and so on.  People travel all over the country, far and wide, all over the earth to see friends and family, to exchange gifts, and to share lavish celebratory meals.

In all the eggnog and caroling, in all the merrymaking, few will ask this critical question—What child is this?  This is the key question of human history, and it is the key question for each one of us.  What child is this?  Who is Jesus Christ, and what did He do?  Is He God-become-man to pay the ransom cost and to save His people from their sins, or is He not?  Is He the Christ, the Son of Almighty God, or just a delusional charismatic guru from two thousand years ago who deceived the world and is now nothing more than a pile of decomposing bones someplace?

What child is this?  It is the fundamental question of life.  It determines heaven and hell.  Our very eternity hangs in the balance.  Yet few will seriously entertain this question in this holiday season, even though it bears His name and commemorates His birth.

So let us consider this Christmas Sunday morning what child is this, and I will tell you the answer up front.  He is the Christ.  He is the Messiah.  He is the God-man.  He is the only way to be saved.  Trust in Him; He is the King of kings and Lord of lords.  He is our Savior.  Trust in Him and live.

Who is Jesus Christ?  Both the historical books of Matthew and Luke detail the birth of Jesus.  His mother Mary was a young Jewish girl pledged to be married to Joseph, an honorable carpenter and a righteous man (Matt. 1:18).  Before their formal marriage, however, Mary was found to be pregnant with Jesus.  This Jesus was raised in Nazareth, an otherwise insignificant backwater.  He preached a gospel of repentance and saving faith, and He claimed to perform many miracles and outstanding signs.  He was executed by Roman authorities at the behest of the Jewish religious leaders.

All these facts are found in the Bible, but they are also almost universally agreed upon by secular and religious scholars.  There is no debate about the things that I just said.  As an example, Jesus is mentioned by Roman historian Josephus as a man who did surprising deeds.  This is a just a few decades after the crucifixion, and it is in a secular account of the execution of Jesus’ brother James, which is also recorded in Acts 12.  The historian Tacitus mentions Jesus as the founder of a religion who was later executed by Pilate.  This is contained in a story about the burning of Rome in 64 AD.  This story was written about fifty years later, in 116 AD.  Jesus is also mentioned by Pliny the Younger and Suetonius.  These are not believers, but they are proximate historians, all within a short time of Jesus’ death, all speaking about this Jesus.  Now, none of them believed that He was who He said He was.  None of them believed that He was the Christ.  But none of them believed that He was a made-up, mythical figure either.  And the Jewish rabbis of the era often slandered Jesus as illegitimate, but never as fake.

Of course, we take the Bible as the word of God—the infallible and inerrant truth.  So we do not put our faith in Christ because Josephus said so or because Pliny said so or because of archaeology or anything else.  My point here is that there is no serious debate that a man named Jesus lived and died, and that His followers died asserting that Jesus was God, that He was the Messiah, and that He was raised from the dead.  They tried this thing a few years ago called “The Jesus Project,” to argue that Jesus was a mythical, made-up figure.  That project was totally destroyed by atheist historians.  My point here is that you cannot dodge this question.  You cannot reject the premise.  Jesus was a real person who made real claims and did real things and He really died.  He really had a brother named James who was really executed for his faith in Christ.

Now if anyone knew, it would be James.  He is a brother and a follower of Jesus.  He could have lived.  He did not have to be executed.  He could have kept living, and he would have been a great piece of propaganda for the Jewish religious leaders—a brother and a follower of Jesus saying, “Hey, we made it all up.”  All he had to do was to say, “Jesus is fake.”  But he refused to do it, and he died refusing to do it.  He died asserting that Jesus was the Christ, the God-man, the Savior who rose from the grave and who appeared to many, many people including James.

What does this tell us about James?  One of three things: he is either 1) very stupid to die for what he knew was a lie; or 2) he was very crazy, delusional, and deceived; or, more likely, 3) he was very credible, willing to die for truth, convinced of that truth to the point where he could not deny it even at the cost of his own life.  And this was not just true of James.  It was true of Peter and Paul and John on Patmos in prison and many, many others.  They answered the question:  “What child is this?”  We also must answer that question.  Those who knew Him most closely answered that question unanimously:  “He is the Son of God.  He is the Christ.  He is the Savior of the world.”

What child is this?  What does the Bible say?  Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.  In Matthew 1:20, we read that no less than an angel of the Lord announced to Joseph that what was conceived in Mary was of the Holy Spirit.  He was no ordinary child.  Luke 1:35 says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born to you will be called the Son of God.”  And Mary is referred to as a virgin several times.  There is no doubt about this.  This is a clear and factual claim.  You can reject it if you like, but you cannot explain it away.  It is a clear and factual claim.  He was either conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, by a divine and miraculous conception of God by God, or He was not.  If you reject this claim about Him, you must reject every other claim about Him as well, for they are all built on this foundation, they all hang on this claim.

What are the alternatives?  I said you can reject it if you like.  So what are the alternatives?  Alternative number one was that Joseph was the real father.  This does not make a lot of sense.  Why divorce her if you are the real father (Matt. 1:19)?  On top of that, why would she not speak up?  There is no penalty, after all.  They would just have to get married, but that was already pledged.  Why concoct a whole complicated and easily disprovable tale like this if Joseph was the real father?  So that is the end of that.

Alternative two: Mary was some kind of tramp, knocked up by a smooth-talking huckster.  This also, of course, makes no sense, and it is too complicated and too easily disprovable to be credible.  After all, the real father would be walking around somewhere, and no one can keep a secret like this.  Joseph would likely find out and perhaps stone her to death.  This would also be totally inconsistent with Mary’s character that we see in the rest of the Bible.  And moreover, she would know for sure that it was false.  Why would she let her son die for something she knew was false?  Why would she let her close friends and relatives and associates, her other sons, die for what she knew was false?  Surely, she would speak up.  Surely, she would confide in someone.  And once two people know a secret, it is not a secret anymore.

What else does the Bible say about this child?  He is the promised Messiah.  The story of Jesus does not begin in the New Testament.  It does not begin with the tale of His birth, and even the foretelling of His birth.  No, the promised Messiah, the Christ, the Savior of the world, is spoken of throughout the whole Bible.  In Luke 2:10–11, the angel explained, “I bring you good news of great joy”—our Pastor has translated it “mega joy”—“good news of mega joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord.”  This is not an isolated reference.  In Luke 2:30–32, at the temple, Simeon prophesied, “My eyes have seen Your salvation, which You have prepared in the sight of all people, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to Your people Israel.”  In speaking of this Messiah in John 4:26, Jesus told the Samaritan woman—this is Jesus’ testimony about Himself—in speaking about the Messiah, Jesus said, “I who speak to you am He.”  In John 14:6 He said, “I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

He is the Christ, the Son of the living God, according to Peter who knew Him best (Mark 8:29).  Jesus made the same claim before the Sanhedrin in Mark 14:61.  In John 11:26 He said, “Whoever believes in Me will never die.”  He was speaking of eternal life in Christ.  In Acts 2:36, after He had died and risen, they said, “God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.”  In Acts 2:38 we read that He offers forgiveness of sins, something that only God can do.  He was sent, it is said in Acts 3, to wipe out our sins.  Acts 4:12 says, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which men may be saved.”

He is the Christ.  The title “the Christ” is applied to Him more than five hundred times in the New Testament.  What is the significance of this Christ?  It is not His last name.  It is a title.  “Christ” means “Anointed One” in the Greek.  Its counterpart in Hebrew or Aramaic is “Messiah.”  The title “Christ/Messiah” had deep, deep meaning to God’s people.  This is not a term that they would have just thrown around casually.  It was for hundreds or maybe thousands of years the central focus of Jewish religious life, waiting for this Messiah to come again.

In Genesis 3, in the earliest stages of human history, mankind dwelt with God in perfect harmony.  But man sinned.  Man disobeyed.  Man rebelled against God and against God’s order.  We call this the Fall.  Man sinned and permanently damaged his previously perfect relationship with God.  And he was disfellowshipped and cast out of the garden apart from God.  Man became an apostate, apart from God.  He became subject to death, both physical death and eternal death in eternal hell.  Because he had sinned against God, he deserved an infinite penalty for his infinite sin.  And, of course, finite man could never pay that price in full.  And yet God promised that He would send a Savior, a Messiah, a Christ, one who could pay that price in full, one who would pay the whole penalty in full for our sins.  This is the significance of the Christ.

Also back in Genesis 3, we find the protoeuangelion, the first gospel, that Christ would crush the head of the serpent, the devil.  In Genesis 12:3 it is mentioned again, that all nations on earth will be blessed through the coming of this Christ, a descendant of Abraham.  In Genesis 28 we find the same thing.  They were not using that title “Christ” yet.  There was a progressive revelation.  But this promise is made clearer and clearer to God’s people over time.

Genesis 49:10 speaks of the scepter, indicating His lordship, and the one to whom that scepter belongs, referring to the Messiah.  Second Samuel 12 and 13 spoke of the Christ as a distant descendant of David, which Jesus was.  God would establish the throne and kingdom of this Christ forever, so He would be no ordinary earthly king.  Your throne or kingdom might be established in your time.  It might even be established through several generations.  But this Christ, this Messiah—His throne, His kingdom would last forever and ever.  He would, it says, be God’s own Son.

Isaiah 7:14 speaks of this Christ.  It says He would be born of a virgin.  It is a physical impossibility.  He would be a biological impossibility, at least.  But He would be born of a virgin.  And although mankind lived in darkness and slavery to sin, Isaiah 7 tells us that this Christ-Messiah would proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.

Daniel 9 speaks of Him.  He would put an end to sin.  He would atone for wickedness and bring in everlasting righteousness.  He would die the death that we deserve but be raised from the dead because He never sinned.  And thus He was not subject to death’s hold (Isa. 25:7–8).

For thousands and thousands of years, the people of God had eagerly awaited the advent of this Messiah, the one who would save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).  Micah 5:2–5a says, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”  He is everlasting God.  He did not come into existence at His birth.  Micah continues, “Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of His brothers return to join the Israelites.  He will stand and shepherd His flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord His God.  And they will live securely, for then His greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.  And He will be their peace.”  Almost every verse in the Bible is speaking about Jesus, directly or indirectly.  The whole book is about Jesus.

For thousands of years, they had awaited Him.  And these prophecies that I read to you, and dozens of other prophecies about this Christ, are all fulfilled in Jesus, born in a manger to His virgin mother.  The long-expected Messiah Christ had come.  This is the first step in the critical path that would make a way for us to be saved.  So when you ask, “What child is this?”  the answer is, “He is the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.”  Galatians 4:4 says He was sent to redeem those under the law that we might become children of God.  He would save His people from their sins.  How?  By living a perfect life of perfect holiness, sinless in word, sinless in deed, sinless in thought.  John 8:29 says He always did the will of God.  He died for our sins in our place and was raised to life for our justification (Rom. 4:25).

The Bible also tells us that this child, this Christ, this Messiah, was no mere man.  He is very God who became man.  He is a unique being, the God-man, the one and only God-man.  In order to be the Messiah, the Christ, in order to pay for our sins, He had to be very God.  We already established that we owed an infinite debt for our infinite sin against infinite God.  So the only just punishment is infinite.  It is very logical, very simple.  But man, even a perfect man, is finite.  Perhaps he himself could be saved if he was sinless.  It is not possible, because we all sin.  But in theory, if you were sinless, you would not have to go to hell.  But that is all.  Or you could maybe trade your life for one other equivalent life in the counterfactual hypothetical in which you are sinless.  Perhaps you could trade—you probably would not—perhaps you could trade places with someone else, dying in the place of one other person, but that is it.

But the Messiah, to pay for the sins of all of God’s people, had to be infinite God to pay the infinite price for all of our sins.  The Bible explicitly explains that this Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, was indeed both God and man.  John 1:1 says He was “with God” in the beginning, at the dawn of time, in eternity past.  He was part of the Godhead.  He was triune God, part of the triune God.  It is also explained in John 17:5 and John 17:24.

John 1:1 continues:  Not only was He “with God,” but He “was God” (Theos ēn ho logos).  His close friend and follower Peter calls Him, “our God and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:1).  In Philippians 2:5, Paul explains that Christ Jesus was in very nature God, but made Himself nothing, made Himself like us, nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness for our salvation.  So He had to be God in order to pay the infinite price for our sins.  He had to be man in order to stand as our representative. (GTB)  So God in very nature took on human likeness for our salvation.  He is infinite God.  He could pay the penalty for all who put their faith in Him and are saved by Him.

What child is this?  He is no mere child.  Even laying there in the manger, He is very God who took on flesh, who became a man for us, not to gain anything for Himself but to gain something for us;  To live the life of obedience and fulfillment of the law that we were all supposed to do but which we could not; to die the death that we deserved to die because we sinned against God; to pay the full and infinite price for our sins which we could never do, no matter how long we worked, no matter how hard we tried.  He took on flesh to turn away the just wrath of God due to us and to restore us to fellowship with God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and to give us eternal life of glory in heaven.

He was, for a season, a man like us.  He was weak.  He was hungry.  He was tired.  He was sick.  He was needy.  He was tempted.  He experienced all the trials and challenges that we experience except He experienced them to the maximum because He never sinned.  So He was a man like us, but no mere man.  He is the God-man.  He was God before all time, and He is now ascended into heaven and seated at the right hand of the Father as Lord of lords and King of kings, and He reigns forever and ever.  What child is this?  He is very God.  What child is this?  He is Lord.  He rules.

Now, it is true that Jesus was once a baby in a manger, and some would like to keep Him that way.  It is an inaccurate picture because even in the manger He was very God.  And yet we like to picture Him small and sweet and helpless and harmless, always giving us a hug.  He can be my Savior, I suppose, but He cannot be my Lord.

This is a false picture of Jesus the Christ.  This is a lie.  He is no baby Jesus.  He certainly is no baby Jesus today.  He is Lord.  Romans 10:9 says, “Jesus Lord.”  Luke 2:11 says, “Christ the Lord.”  Colossians 3:17 says, “Whatever you do, . . do it in the name of the Lord Jesus.”  Philippians 2:10 says, “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”  First Peter 3:15 says, “In your hearts, set apart Christ as Lord.”  First Corinthians 8:6 says, “There is one Lord Jesus Christ.”  He has been exalted to the highest place, and all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him (Matt. 28:18).  Psalm 2 tells us He rules with an iron scepter.  So you can have a sweet baby Jesus if you like, but it is not the Jesus of the Bible.

What child is this?  He is King of kings and Lord of lords.  Many people would like to remove the divinity of Jesus and claim that He was just a good man, a good moral philosopher.  This does not make any sense, of course, because He claimed to be God.  So either He was God, or He was a crazy person, but He was not merely a good man.

Many people would like to remove the divinity from Him.  But perhaps more insidiously, many attempt to say even that Jesus is God, even that Jesus is Savior, but they reject Him as Lord.  This is usually done by omission, saying, “He does not rule my life.  He lets me keep my sin, to continue in my sin.  He saves me, but that is all He does.  He does not make any demands on me.  He is, in other words, that sweet baby in the manger to cuddle me or to hug me.”  This is totally false.  He is Lord.  He is King.  And He does rule.  He commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30).  He says, “You must go and sin no more” (John 8:11).  We must live in obedience to Him in everything (Col. 3:17).

You see, His position, or office, as Savior cannot be divorced from His position as Lord.  He is a ruler, and He is the ruler of our lives.  And as His disciples, as people claiming to be followers of Christ, we must joyfully obey everything Jesus our Lord has commanded us to do (Matt. 28:20).

So it is true that He is Savior, and, hallelujah, He is Savior.  But Savior from what?  He saves us from our sins (Matt. 1:21).  He saves us from our sins; not in our sins, but from our sins.  He did not merely save us even just from the punishment of our sins, but from slavery to sin, from bondage to sin.  You see, we used to be slaves to sin.  But now, in Jesus’ name and by the power of the Holy Spirit, whom He sent, we can say “No” to sin and “Yes” to righteousness (Tit. 2).

What child is this?  He is Lord, and He rules today.  He rules at God’s right hand, and He will judge the world on the last day, condemning the wicked and pardoning those who are in Christ—in other words, pardoning those whose sins He has paid for.  He will say to those who confessed and obeyed Him in this life, who have put their faith in Him, “Well done.  Come and enter your Master’s rest.”  And He will condemn all others.  He will condemn all who rejected Him to the eternal fire.  After they bow to Him, after they confess that He is Lord, He will judge them and send them to eternal hell, for they rejected Him.  But He will also judge the false believers, the people who tried to imprison Him in the manger as sweet baby Jesus, the people who say, “He is my Savior,” but who do not live with Him as their Lord.  He will say to such people, “Depart from me; I never knew you.”

What child is this?  He is the Christ, He is the Messiah, and He will come again, not as a sweet baby in a manger, not as a weak and sick and tired and hungry man, but as Lord, to judge the living and the dead.  Listen to this from Revelation 19, beginning with verse 11: “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True.”  This is speaking about our glorified Christ, our glorified Messiah.  “With justice He judges and makes war.  His eyes are like blazing fire, and on His head are many crowns,” signifying His rule.  “He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and His name is the Word of God.  The armies of heaven were following Him and riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean.  Out of His mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.  ‘He will rule them with an iron scepter.’  He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty.  On His robe and on His thigh He has this name written:  King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:11–16).  That is what child this is.  What child is this?  He is very God and very man, Savior of the world, Lord of heaven and earth.

That is who Jesus Christ is.  What did He do?  In sum, He made a way, one way, for us to be saved.  We all deserve wrath, and we are all separated from God.  We fell as a species when Adam sinned in the garden, and we are all now infused with a sin nature from our birth.  We are born sinners.  Psalm 51:5 explains this:  we were sinful from conception.  We never had a chance.

On top of that, we all sinned (Rom. 3:23).  We are all dead in our transgressions and sins (Eph. 2).  The wages of our sin is eternal death (Rom. 6:23; 1 Thess. 5:9).  But God is good.  He is perfectly loving and perfectly kind.  So even though we sinned, even though we were cast out, even though He did not need us, even though He could have left us in our sinful estate, He did not do that.  He is a God who loves.  John 3:16 says, “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.”  So we see the motivation is not for God to get something.  It is not for God to look good in someone’s eyes.

His motivation is His love.  It is a part of His nature, a part of His character, to love.  Because He is good, because His love endures forever, He made a way for us to be saved, a way to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  The way to be saved is not that God simply forgives and waves off our sins and says, “It’s no big deal.  Forget about it.”  No, He is perfectly good, He is perfectly kind, He is perfectly loving, but He is also perfectly just.  Our sin had to be punished in full for our just God to justly forgive us.  So He sent His Son, very God, Jesus Christ, to become a man, to become our representative, born under the law—the law that we were supposed to fulfil.  And He lived in perfect obedience to that law, and He never sinned (1 Pet. 2:22).  Then, having lived that perfect life of perfect obedience—the life that we were supposed to live but were incapable of living—having done that, He offered Himself as a sacrifice in our place.  His perfect and infinite righteousness transferred to us, and our infinite sin and penalty transferred to Him.  And as infinite God, He paid the whole price.  He took the full and infinite wrath onto Himself on the cross and declared, “Tetelestai,” meaning, “It is finished.  It is paid in full.”  Then He died the death we deserved, as we know from Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.”

This is the glorious double transaction: He who had no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).  Our sin was paid in full on the cross by this child.  Our slavery to sin was abolished by this child.  We became free.  We were set free—free to live a life of love for God; free to fellowship with God and destined for glory.  Then, to prove that He never sinned, to show that His payment for us was satisfactory, He was raised from the dead.  Death could not keep a hold on our sinless Savior.  As I said, “The wages of sin is death.”  He did not sin, so death had no claim on Him.

He came and He made a way to be saved by offering His own precious blood of infinite value, the highest price ever paid.  He offered that as a sacrifice of atonement in our place for us, for all.  He made it available to all.  It is not just available to the tribes of Israel.  It is not just for Americans or for whites or blacks or men or women.  It is not just for people born in the church.  It is not just for people with good jobs or lots of money or no money.  It is for Jews or Greeks, slaves or frees, born a Muslim or an atheist or into a Christian family, for rich or poor, smart or stupid, highborn or low-class.  Christ offers His salvation to all for free.  All you have to do is to receive it by faith.  Call upon the name of the Lord and you will be saved.  The Bible promises it.  Confess with your mouth, “Jesus Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved.  The Bible promises it.  It is the word of God.  Jesus Himself promised that He never turns away anyone who comes to Him in faith.

It is the way to be saved; it is the only way to be saved.  This Jesus told us so in John 14:6:  “No one comes to the Father except through me.”  Don’t look for another way.  There is no other way.  You cannot earn this salvation.  You cannot inherit this salvation from your parents.  You cannot buy it with silver and gold.  You cannot gain salvation by your supposedly sincere atheism or by your supposedly sincere belief in false gods of some other religion.  You cannot earn it by being a supposedly nice person.  There is one way and only one way.  It is through faith in Jesus Christ, the God-man, born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life and who died a substitutionary death in our behalf, and who was raised for our justification.

My question for you this Christmas morning 2021 is simple: What child is this?  Is He the Christ?  Is He the Savior of the world?  Is He your Lord?  Is He your Savior?  Or do you reject Him as a mere babe in a manger, a long-dead man of no eternal import?  You must answer this question.  It is the question.  It is the one thing needful in this life.  Jesus said to Peter, “Who do the people say that I am?”  And there were lots of different answers to that—some of them good, some of them bad.  But He said to Peter, “Who do the people say that I am?” and Peter answered.  Then He said to Peter, “But what about you?  Who do you say that I am?”

He declared to beloved Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.”  It is a glorious declaration.  But He did not stop there.  He followed it up.  He challenged her: “Do you believe this?” (John 11:25–26).

He is asking you the same thing today:  “Do you believe this?  Who do you say that I am?”  You either confess Him and put your trust in Him alone for your salvation, or you reject Him.  There is no third way.  There is no “I don’t know.”   There is no rejecting the premise.  There is no avoiding the question.

Perhaps you can deceive yourself in this life into thinking that you have avoided the question.  If you have avoided the question, though, your answer is simply “No.”  Your answer is, “I reject Him.”  Your answer is, “You are not the Christ.  You are a fraud.”  But you could deceive yourself in this life and say, “Well, I’ll think about it later.  Maybe I will answer it one day, or maybe I don’t have to answer.”  You can live your whole life this way.  I cannot force you to give an answer to that question.  But there is someone who can, and there is someone who will.  And one day you will stand before the risen Christ and there is only one answer that you will give on that day.  You will not say “No” on that day.  You will confess with your mouth the truth that you know, that Jesus is Lord.  You will bow your knee to Jesus Lord on that day.

But on that day, you cannot be saved.  Yes, you will confess the truth, and you will bow your knee to Him as Lord.  But then you will depart to hell, if you have rejected Him.  So my counsel to you is, don’t wait until it is too late.  Confess with your mouth today while you can be saved.  Bow your knee to the Lord Jesus today while you can be saved.  Make Him not just Lord and Savior, for He is Lord and Savior apart from you, but make Him your Lord and your Savior today while you can be saved.  You see, He graciously is asking you today, “What child is this?”  Confess what you already know in your heart to be true:

• that He is the Christ, the Son of the living God;
• that He is God who became man;
• that He was born of the virgin Mary and lay in the manger;
• that He lived a sinless life as God-man;
• that He turned water into wine;
• that He walked on the water;
• that He healed the sick;
• that He gave sight to the blind;
• that He raised the dead man Lazarus;
• that He fulfilled every prophecy about this Christ, about Himself;
• that He suffered under Pontius Pilate;
• that He was falsely accused, unjustly sentenced, and wrongfully executed;
• that He suffered the full blast of God’s wrath on the cross for us;
• that He suffered;
• that He died;
• that He was buried;
• that on the third day He rose again in fulfillment of the Scripture;
• that He appeared to hundreds, indeed, to thousands after His resurrection;
• that He ascended into heaven, and even now is seated at the right hand of the Father;
• that He is the light of the world;
• that He is the way, the truth, and the life;
• that He is the Word become flesh;
• that He is full of grace and truth;
• that He is the bread of life;
• that He is the good shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep;
• that He is gate, the way to be saved;
• that He is the true vine;
• that He is the promised Messiah;
• and that He graciously offers His salvation to all, to you, for free today.

 

This is what we celebrate on this Christmas Sunday.  And one more thing about Him: that He shall come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead, and that His kingdom shall have no end.

Receive His free offer of salvation by grace today by faith today.  Trust in Him alone and be saved today.  What child is this?  He is Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of the world.  Amen.