The Great Joy of Christmas.
When we hear an angel from heaven declaring good tidings of great joy, which should be to all people, the heart is straightway set on remembering how wondrous true this declaration of his has proved already; set on considering how infallibly true it will prove to the end. The fountain head of the river of our bliss is the manger at Bethlehem. Every separate stream of our rejoicing is to be traced back thither. The source and beginning of it all is in the Infant Saviour, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, and why?
I. Because He is the pledge of God's forgiveness and of God's love towards man. We were before at emnity with God. We lay under a curse. The sentence of death had been passed on all our race. Behold the beginning of the undoing of the curse, the dawn of light and life to a dead and benighted world. All saving mysteries were contained in Christ's Incarnation somewhat as a forest may be said to be contained in an acorn. And hence first it is that Christmas is the season of our greatest joy.
II. Immediately out of this flows our gratitude as a Church. For do let us consider what was the condition of the world till Christ was born. On one nation only, and that the smallest, had the dew of the Divine blessing as yet descended. What had we been in this far land, but for the substance of the angels' message to the shepherds?
III. As individuals, we find here our personal grounds of gratitude and rejoicing: for Christ's coming into the world it was which hallowed every relationship, and blessed every age and estate. By His precepts, His example, His grace, He has guided us through life's mazy path; planted in us high principles of action and the very divinest motives; sanctified affliction, and sweetened sorrow, and beatified poverty, and made infancy most precious, and old age most honourable.
IV. Then, lastly, consider how entirely from the coming of Christ in the flesh it comes to pass that the mourner learns to dry his tears. This privilege of Christian faith and hope was unknown to the heathen. But now the daystar arises in the darkest season of bereavement, and (as on summer nights) there is a token of the morning almost before the hour of sunset has quite passed away. And if the progress of decay in ourselves, and the prospect of death is not very terrible whence is it, but because as on this day was born to us a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord? In Him we know that we are more than conquerors. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me."
J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons,No. 11.
Reference: Luke 2:8-14. Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 439.