(Applause) So we'll be looking at that passage for just a moment tonight, and this is a special night. It's a family celebration, so the kids are not heading downstairs. And so I felt like, just to reiterate, that their noises do not bother us, and we welcome them. I handed a six-year-old a microphone, and who knows what could happen. So it is okay if they get a little rambunctious, if you need to walk around, we are not worried. We welcome the opportunity to worship together. And so we're going to look for just a moment, hopefully for only a few minutes, at Luke 2, 8 through 11, and then we're going to head downstairs for a dessert reception. So stay after and join us for some fellowship downstairs. And so I'll try to make this quick enough so that we don't get too antsy, but I want to make this point clear today, that the good news of Jesus transforms our greatest fear into unshakable joy by solving our deepest problem. I'm not sure what you're afraid of. Many of us have fears. I have developed this fear in my old age of heights, called acrophobia. So you won't find me cleaning my gutters, but that's not to be confused with arachnophobia, the fear of spiders. My wife has that one, so I get called in for the spider-killing duty. Some of you are afraid of public speaking, that's called glossophobia. Others are afraid of long words, which is cruelly named hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia. I've been practicing that one. My kids have laconophobia, the fear of vegetables, and some of you just have phobophobia, the fear of fears. Now, these are silly, and there are many other silly ones out there, maybe some less silly than others, but fear is a reality for humans. All of us are afraid of something, and if we dig deep enough, we see fears that are much more terrifying than spiders or long words - the fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of loneliness, the fear of pain, the fear of the future, the fear of death, the fear of living a life of insignificance. Fear exposes something in us. It exposes our limitations. It stems from a recognition that we are finite and powerless over many aspects of life. As a result, we fear what we cannot control, and we long for safety and salvation, and so fear actually gives us the opportunity to look for that safety and that salvation. We see in the passage that was just quoted to us that there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night. I always find this interesting that God decided in His sovereign plan not to appear to kings or professors or pastors or celebrities or influencers, but to ordinary, everyday, hard-working shepherds. Not famous, not infamous, simply ordinary. I think many of us fear that more than anything else. Have you ever felt insignificant in a world of seven billion people? And maybe someone will tell you you're just one in a million, which means there's 7,000 other people just like you if you do the math. All the news is of big political, economic and social movements, newsmakers and policy shapers dominate the headlines, and you're over here seemingly insignificant. One theologian said, "As there are no little places in God's sight, so there are no insignificant people." And God continues to try to get that through my head and into my heart that He has come to save me, that the gospel is good news not just to the great ones, but to me. And we see that these shepherds, ordinary people out watching their flocks in the field, an angel of the Lord appears to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. That's the first thing I want to point out, great fear. In the face of God's messenger and God's glory, they are understandably and appropriately terrified. God's glory here is the physical manifestation of His presence and His power and His holiness. His glory is described in the book of Exodus as a devouring fire. His perfect holiness consumes all sin because sin cannot withstand the purity of God. His glory is the heaviest thing, the most powerful thing representing the most powerful being, and in that moment is displayed in some way to them. Accompanied by God's angel, His messenger. Now maybe, like me, you grew up thinking of angels. Honestly, when I think of angels, I think of precious moments. If you don't know what precious moments are, they're these chubby, harp-playing tchotchkes that grandmothers would collect. But if you read through Scripture, angels are described in much more terrifying terms. If you read books like Exodus, I mean books like Ezekiel, you'll see that angels are omni-faced, cow-hooved, bronze-legged, ox-eagle, torch-wielding, lightning-throwing, multi-winged warriors. Terrifying. You don't just experience the presence of an angel and shake its hand. You are shaking in fear. And so this inspires what we say, "Great fear, mega fear." You're just out with your sheep, and this comes to you. You should and will be afraid. This is the challenge when God shows up. When you truly experience God, it cannot be a casual moment. It is a terrifying moment because you recognize the distance between you and God is too great to be crossed by your own effort. God is too holy. He is too perfect for you just to waltz into His presence. He is not, as the shirt said, your homeboy. You don't just chill with God. He is God, and you are not. There is an infinite distance between you and Him. And a God who doesn't inspire fear is not a God you want to worship because He is then not powerful enough to save. You don't waltz into the presence of God nonchalantly any more than you take a casual stroll on the surface of the sun. The sun's power is awe-inspiring and life-giving, but it is not safe. Let me tell you, as a very pale bald-headed man, the sun is one of my greatest enemies. From 93 million miles away, it threatens me almost every day of my life. Imagine what it would do to you up close. And yet some of us think that we can enter the presence of the Creator of that sun as if it is no big deal. God rightly should inspire fear, and then everything changes. They are experiencing great fear, and this angel who terrifies them, and this glory that terrifies them, this angel says to them what? "Fear not." Fear not. See, fear is the normal, natural, appropriate response to God's glory and His messenger. Yet God, the all-powerful Creator, Sustainer of all things, tells them through His messenger, "You do not need to be afraid." The only one who we should fear, God, the one who judges the living and the dead, the one who created everything with the Word, tells us not to fear. The Bible says over and over, "Fear God, fear God, fear God." And then God says, "You don't have to fear." How does this work? The only person who you should fear has promised to love you and is for you. The one who rightfully should cause us to fear tells us to fear not. See, a person who rightly fears God has amazing power in this world because God is the only one that can truly make us not afraid. See, when we fear the right thing, God, we don't have to fear the wrong thing, everything else. And most of us walk around afraid of all of the wrong things. We're afraid we're not going to have enough money. We're afraid that person's not going to like us. We're afraid that we're going to fail. But the God who rightly commands our fear says He is for us, so we do not need to be afraid. Paul says in 2 Timothy, "For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control." In 1 John, the apostle says, "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." See, the love of Christ frees us from fear and allows us to follow Christ into otherwise scary risks. My favorite question I've been asking myself for the last few years, when I am in a situation where I am afraid to obey God, when I am doing something that I am afraid to do because I'm not sure how it is going to turn out, I asked myself this question that someone pointed to me. "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" See, if God is our strength, then we need not fear our weakness. What we need to accomplish can only be accomplished by the power of God, which means we need to walk into the truth that because we fear Him and we fear Him rightly, we need not fear anything else in this world. That because He is for us, nothing can come against us. That we are able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or imagine because we follow Him. Did you know that fear is actually a type of worship? That what you fear determines how you act? You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. You give authority to what you fear. Who holds the keys to your joy and your security and your significance? See, when you understand the great fear we should have in the presence of God, it actually opens you up to experience the good news of the gospel. So we see great fear and then we see good news. The angel comes and says, "I bring you good news." Now, I don't want to get too much into a language lesson, but some of you know that I'm a word nerd, but the words good news are literally the words in the Greek we get the term gospel. So it's saying there, "I evangelize you. I gospel you. I announce the gospel to you." Because the word gospel literally means good news. It's a type of news that brings joy, right? We always want to hear the good news. Tell me the good news first. Or maybe you're one of those gluttons for punishment and you want the bad news first. I don't know. This has become the term that we use to explain not just any good news, but the fundamental good news of Jesus, the ultimate life-altering announcement, the gospel. Now, I think it's important. We throw this word gospel around all the time. Every week at our church, you'll hear us say, "We are a gospel community on mission to Philadelphia and the world." And if we're not careful, we assume you understand the word gospel, but you hear gospel and you think of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Or you hear gospel and you think of a type of music that may tell you the gospel, but I want to tell you the content of the gospel. What is the gospel? The gospel is not self-help. It is not moral improvement. It's not even inner peace, though it may lead to those things. It is not simply good advice or a good strategy. The gospel is the news, the proclamation of what God has done for us in Christ. The gospel is the fundamental announcement that God has acted in Christ to reconcile sinners to himself, to close the distance that we couldn't close between God and us. It tells us that we were slaves to sin, unable to free ourselves, but Jesus has come to deliver us through his life, death, and resurrection. See, the gospel actually is good news precisely because of the bad news of sin. I mentioned fear earlier. Fear is our soul's recognition that we are not enough, that we are weak, that we are sinful, and we are in need of help. And you're like, "Hey, this is a Christmas service. Where's all the jolly good tidings, Pastor Mark? Shouldn't we be a little happier? Shouldn't we ponder twinkling lights and yuletide traditions? What is all this talk about sin?" I promise you, the good news isn't good until you feel the weight of the bad news. A doctor called his patient after a biopsy and said, "You have cancer." Does the patient hate the doctor for that? Does he say, "What an unloving doctor you are. I thought you liked me. Why did you give me that diagnosis?" He gave him the diagnosis because he does love him. See, the terrible diagnosis is necessary to see and seek the cure. The Gospel is the only message that cures what it diagnoses. See, the Gospel says you are a sinner, you are separated from God, but God has come to reunite you to himself. See, the Gospel tells us that God didn't ignore sin, he paid for it. See, I don't want to distract you from or minimize or dismiss sin. I want you to experience freedom, deliverance, and salvation from it. That is the heart of Christmas. Jesus came not to affirm our brokenness, but to rescue us from it. That we rightfully deserve the punishment of God, but we need not fear because he took that punishment on himself. We need a savior because we are sinful. That's the bad news that makes way for good news. And so we hear the identity of the Savior. The angel says, "For unto you," this isn't an abstract or impersonal message, it is "for you." It's not a general announcement, it's a personal invitation. "For unto you is born this day," in real, specific, historical moment, not a spiritualized myth or a metaphor, "unto you is born this day in the city of David." In a real place, in real time, Jesus comes to the king's city as promised in the Hebrew Bible, fulfilling every promise of God to come and save his people. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken. "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior." Jesus did not come simply to inspire, to unite, or teach, though he does those things, he came to save, to deliver us from sin and its consequences. The angel told Joseph, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, that Mary will bear a son and you will call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. "Unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is Christ, the Messiah, the chosen one, the anointed one, the long awaited deliverer, the king, the Lord." Now you might hear the word "Lord" and you think that's another one of those church words, just means someone special, but the word "Lord" is the word that they would use in Jewish culture when reading the Hebrew Bible in place of the name of God, Yahweh. Out of respect for God's name rather than say the name Yahweh when reading, they would say Adonai, the Lord. When this angel says that Jesus is coming as Christ the Lord, he is making an earth-shattering, history-altering statement that God the Lord himself is being born to save us from our sins. This is a unique and unmistakable thing, that God has offered a perfect gift according to his promised plan to meet our greatest need by saving us from our sins. And he has done this in the most personal way possible, by taking on flesh to share our humanity and give himself for us. Great fear meets good news, which leads us to great joy. Verse 10, "I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people." I think sin is like poor vision. We get used to the blurry world so that when you put on glasses, it takes time to adjust and often gives you a headache. But if you stick it out, you start to see life more vibrantly and experience more joy. I want you to think for a moment, back to a moment, when you had an announcement given to you. You received news that brought you great joy. You saw my six-year-old up here quoting Scripture. I remember the day when we got the phone call that his birth mother chose us to adopt him. I remember the joy, the tears, the excitement of the greatest news that we had waited for, we had longed for, we had hoped for, we had prayed for. In that moment, it came true. Infinitely more than that is this moment when Jesus comes. The problems we have experienced, the separation between God and us that we've experienced, the fear that we live with is overcome in this announcement that God himself has taken on flesh to save us from our sins. Jesus turns our mega fear into mega joy. See, the gospel doesn't just remove fear, it replaces it with great joy. One of the things that I've actually learned is that fear and joy can actually go together. Anyone a roller coaster fan here? Yes, I'm a big roller coaster fan. If you're not, it's okay, we all have our fears. A roller coaster without tracks would be full of fear. Imagine riding a roller coaster with a part of the track missing. That is not joy, that is fear. But when there is a designer, and there is trustworthy construction, and there is safety protocols, what should cause fear brings joy. That drop is real, that speed is intense. But you know you're safe on the tracks. When Jesus comes, we still experience the brokenness of the world, but part of the sovereign joyful plan of God. In Jesus, we can experience true joy. See, the Christmas story is infinitely more significant, infinitely more demanding, infinitely more wonderful than that which is generally understood and proclaimed. The danger of Christmas is that we'll domesticate it into a sentimental holiday and rob it of the life-altering salvation offering world-transforming event it truly is. We'll embrace the lights and the elves and the eggnog, but we'll miss the Savior of the world. Don't miss Jesus. You cannot experience true joy without first reckoning with the problem of your sin, but the good news is the Savior has come. He lived the life we couldn't live and died the death we deserved so we can have peace with God. So here's what I say, fear not, believe the good news, and experience great joy.