(Preached at Mt. Home Baptist, Morganton, NC, and FBC Pauls Valley, OK, December 2014)
C.S. Lewis wrote of an interesting experience that his brother had one Christmas season. He said Warnie was riding on a big English double-decker bus one day, and they passed a church with a manger scene outside of it. Warnie overhead an English lady exclaim: “’Lor’, they’re dragging religion into everything these days: look, they’re even dragging it into Christmas now!”
Well, as you and I know, we’re not “dragging” religion into Christmas; the true meaning of Christmas is about what God did for us in Jesus Christ, that baby in the manger. What did He come to do? We get the answer to that in our passage for this morning, Matthew 1:21, where the angel told Joseph: “You shall call His name ‘Jesus’, for He will save His people from their sins.”
What is the significance of this saying? The name “Jesus” (or “Yeshua”) means “Yahweh is salvation”; so in calling the baby “Jesus” they were saying that God was saving His people through Him. But the angel specifically said that He would save His people “from their sins.” What does this mean, “He will save His people from their sins”? All of us have sinned, the Bible says (Romans 3:23). We have done things that were wrong, said things that were wrong, thought things that were wrong, and had attitudes that were wrong. Sin has numerous destructive effects in our lives. Sin makes us guilty before God for the wrongs we have committed. Sin enslaves us in its power. And sin would separate us from God and His holy heaven forever. But when Jesus came “to save His people from their sins”, these things were reversed! Let’s look at what it means that Jesus came “to save His people from their sins”:
