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December 25, 2005
Christmas Day
Isaiah 52:7-10
Pastor Joel Zank

Our Redeemer Has Come!

(Isaiah 52:7-10) How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" {8} Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. {9} Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. {10} The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.

In the name of the Christ-Child whose birth brings us comfort and joy, dear fellow redeemed,

In December of 1903, after many attempts, the Wright brothers were successful in getting their "flying machine" off the ground. Anxious to share their news, they telegraphed this message to their sister Katherine: "We have actually flown 120 feet -stop- Will be home for Christmas-stop."

Katherine hurried to the editor of the local newspaper to show him the message. He glanced at it only briefly and replied, "How nice. The boys will be home for Christmas." Can you believe it - that newspaperman missed the big story totally - man had flown!

I'm afraid the same thing often happens when it comes to Christmas. People look at Luke, chapter 2 and see nothing more than a birth announcement. They completely miss the big story - God's Son has been born on earth. The Prophet Isaiah wants to make sure that we don't overlook this news or its significance for us and our world. So he takes us back this morning, back before the wise men, before the manger, back to a time 700 years before the birth of Jesus. Isaiah gives us a unique perspective of our desperate need for God's Christmas gift to sinners so that we may value and appreciate Christ's birth all the more, not just on Christmas, but always. So today we rejoice with Isaiah, for Our Redeemer Has Come! 1) He has come to comfort sinners; and 2) He has come to save sinners.

If in his gospel, St. Luke would have taken a moment to talk about the beauty of the Christmas angels appearing in the skies over Bethlehem, we would, no doubt, have understood why. Those heavenly beings must have been a sight for sore eyes. And yet, Luke says precious little about their looks. He moves right on to their message. So it might surprise us a bit that Isaiah feels compelled to talk about the beauty of some earthly messengers-and not their dashing good looks, but their beautiful feet: "How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news..." Isaiah 52:7). Feet? Beautiful? What is Isaiah thinking? Well, he's got to be thinking about the news these messengers are bringing. When someone brings us bad news we tend to hold it against that person - we even have a saying, "Don't shoot the messenger." Here just the opposite is happening. The messengers are bringing such good news that it stirs up in us warm feelings toward these people, to the point where even their dusty, dirty old feet seem beautiful to us. That must be some news!

And so it is - the greatest news ever, seen here in Isaiah from a such unique perspective. Isaiah is speaking to Zion, one of the nicknames given to the city of Jerusalem. The prophet is looking about 150 years into his future, a time when Jerusalem is in ruins - practically a ghost town. Nearly all of her inhabitants have been taken away to Babylon as a result of God's judgment against them. They had angered God by giving themselves over to every kind of sinful desire. They had refused to follow God's ways. They had failed to trust God's promises. Because of their sin they had sealed their own fate. They would live out their lives on earth as captives of Babylon and then death would make them captives of hell for eternity. As for Zion, it was a city without hope. There was no one to rebuild it. It was left feeling very much alone, very much ashamed and very much hated by God.

Then, suddenly, everything changes for Zion. All at once there are messengers coming over the nearby mountains. Can you picture them in your mind's eye? They're all out of breath, but still they stop and shout "Good news!" They take a few more steps and shout again, "Peace!," a few more steps, "Good Tidings," a few more steps, "Salvation," and, then, after running a bit further they tell Zion, "Your God reigns!" What are those messengers talking about? Well, they've just come from Babylon - they've run the whole way. They've seen a miracle. It seems that God in his grace has stormed the gates of Babylon's capital. In his great power their King has put down the oppressors of his people, he has freed the captives, and even now is leading them back across the desert to Jerusalem.

Zion's watchmen, standing on the rubble of her broken down walls, are the first to see and hear the messengers who have run on ahead of the LORD. Prophesying once again, Isaiah says to Jerusalem, "Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. When the LORD returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes. {9} Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem, for the LORD has comforted his people..." (Isaiah 52:8-9).

The Lord has comforted his people - that's almost an understatement. The watchmen of Zion could have been viewing a far different scene, and reporting a far different message. They could have been looking on God's anger. Rather than approaching Jerusalem with the prisoners he had freed and forgiven, the LORD could have been coming with an army of angels to destroy Zion once and for all. Instead of shouting for joy, Zion's watchmen could have been screaming, "take cover!" God's angry judgment is the only thing we sinners have coming to us. Even the voice of our conscience says so.

Troubles break out in our home, there is no peace; the bills pile up, we can't pay them; good health gives way to illness, we're sick all the time. Everyone else has friends, we have no one. Whatever our troubles may be, we'll ask the age-old question: "Why me?" But who are we fooling? We know the answer; at least we think we do. There's a voice in our head screaming it non-stop: "This is from God! You've got this coming to you and more! You're a hypocrite and God knows it. He sees right through you. You pretend to be his, but you're the biggest sinner on earth. Now God's paying you back."

We're just like Zion in our text, aren't we? Our sin has left us in ruins. We're battle-weary and shell-shocked. We know what we have coming to us, so we brace ourselves for a volley of wrath. God takes aim, and fires. His words begin to explode around us. But suddenly we realize, they're not angry words. Not at all. Do you hear them? They're beautiful, words like: "Good News! Peace! Salvation!" They are life-changing words from God to you. Friend, God isn't angry with you, not even a little. Nor is he torturing you, or paying you back, not even a bit. We know this, because Christmas is the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. God could have come to earth in anger; he had every reason and every right. Instead he came in love as the baby Jesus, God's Son in human flesh. He came to be with us, to grow up and experience life in this sinful world. He came to say, "I know what you're going through." and not just to say it, but to prove it. Jesus came to show us that we're not alone-no matter what's happening to us. He's been there. He's gone through it too, and more than that, he's overcome trouble - his and ours. It's with such thoughts of Christmas in mind that the writer to the Hebrews once wrote: "...we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have [Jesus] who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin. {16} Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Hebrews 4:15-16).

How easy it is, even for us long-time Christians, to peer into Bethlehem's manger and see nothing more than a human interest story, a baby born in such adverse conditions. But if that's all we see, we're missing the big news - Our Redeemer has come to comfort us sinners with comfort that will last forever!

Misery loves company. It's nice to know that we're not alone in our troubles. But if Jesus could do nothing more than sympathize, or even empathize with us, Christmas, in the long run, would prove quite meaningless. Christmas brings the comfort Isaiah talks about, because Christmas brings redemption. The writer to the Hebrews alluded to it; Isaiah comes right out and says it: "...the LORD has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem" (Isaiah 52:9). This truth is the source of our great Christmas joy, for Christmas is all about redemption. Friends, our Redeemer has come to save sinners like us.

When Isaiah's first listeners heard him use the word "redeem" their thoughts would immediately have been drawn to something Moses wrote about in Leviticus, chapter 25: "Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land. {25} "'If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold" (Leviticus 25:24-25). By God's own design, his Old Testament believers connected the land God gave them on earth, to the salvation he would give them in heaven. That connection gave God a very tangible way to show his people, then and now, what it means to have a Redeemer. If an Israelite's indebtedness caused him to forfeit his property, it was God's will that a close relative of the debtor would redeem, that is, buy back his land and return it to him. That relative became known as the man's kinsman redeemer.

Sin has put you and me in the spiritual poor-house. Just one sin would cost us our place in heaven. Think of the many sins we commit each day, each week, each year, millions of them over the course of a lifetime. We're so far in debt with sin, that we could never, ever bail ourselves of that eternal debtor's prison called hell. We needed a kinsman redeemer, a close relative to buy us back from sin's curse. But there was no one. The Bible says in Psalm 49:7-8: "No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him-- {8} the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough..." Sinners can't redeem sinners from God's punishment. So what did God do? He became our kinsman on that very first Christmas. Still God from all eternity, he became a human baby and our flesh and blood brother. But his journey to earth was not some sight-seeing tour. He came to do a job as Isaiah said he would in the last verse of our text: "The LORD will lay bare his holy arm in the sight of all the nations, and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God" (Isaiah 52:10). To lay bare his arm, means to roll up his sleeve and go to work in plain view of all people. As the God-man, our Redeemer was born without sin. He was born with the power to resist sin. So Jesus got busy living the holy life we need to enter heaven. Day in and day out he lived his life for us, in our stead, and when he had done that for 33 years, our Redeemer did the unimaginable, he laid down his holy life on the cross, took up our sin, and paid off our debt before God in hell - not just some of our debt - he canceled all of it. And so our Kinsman Redeemer has earned each of us and all other sinners a place in heaven; his salvation is meant for all nations. He has freed us from the sin that held all mankind captive. It's just like Isaiah's prophecy. Because our Redeemer has risen from the dead, he lives and reigns as our King, leading us former captives through the desert of this world to the new Jerusalem, the heavenly Zion.

We still have our troubles, but because Jesus is our Redeemer who has canceled our debt, we know that our troubles are not punishment from God; we know that they will not last forever; and we know that Jesus is with us to comfort us with the promise that even troubles must serve his plan to bless us. This is the truth we celebrate this happy day! Yes a baby is born, yes in a barn, but the story doesn't end there. It ends in heaven, for you and me, and for all who believe. Because here's the real news - this baby is God, our Kinsman Redeemer, who lived and died to earn us heaven, and who lives again to bring us safely there. To this glorious end, may God grant you and yours a very blessed Christmas, for Jesus' sake. Amen.