HE
CAME TO SAVE
A Sermon by
Dr. Walter A. Maier
“The Father sent the Son to be the Savior
of the world.” 1John 4:14
O
CHRIST CHILD, THOU MIRACLE OF THE MANGER; If only, singing with the power and purity
of angels, we could worthily proclaim the mystery and mercy of Thy
birth! If only here on this earth of sin and sorrow we could praise
Thee with the exalted strains of heavenly glory for Thine
incarnation at Bethlehem! Contritely we entreat Thee, our
Immanuel, Thou God of grace with us: let Thy renewing, regenerating
Spirit purify our minds and hearts and lips, so that on this day before
Christmas we may be guided to give ourselves wholly to Thee who didst
come to save us from our sins! Help us prepare to approach Thy manger
with the deep realization of our utter unworthiness, but with stronger
assurance of Thine endless compassion! In Thy limitless love remember
during this holiday season the poor, burdened, underprivileged, lonely,
deserted, the wounded and prisoners of war, the sick and dying! By the
Holy Spirit’s indwelling in their sorrow-filled hearts, show them that
by Thy coming into our flesh, afflictions are turned to joy for all who
humbly believe! Make us a deeply penitent nation! Bring America close
to Thee this Christmas! Keep Thy children in the armed forces from sin
and the sorrow of despair! Forgive our enemies their trespasses, as
Thou forgivest us ours, we beg, confessing our sins, but trusting in
Thy marvelous mercy! Hear us, Thou Son of the Almighty, as we, too,
sing, “Glory to God, peace on earth, good will to men!” Amen!
Tonight, on
Christmas Eve, when aging centuries ago angels sang, “Peace on earth,”
American boys and their German enemies will be killed on Belgian
battlefields; and tomorrow the saddest Christmas they have ever known
will dawn for millions in Europe and Asia. Refugees, only
recently returned to their ruined homes, will again trudge through
muddy roads on the Savior’s birthday, like Mary and Joseph, without the
warmth and shelter of their own dwelling. Throughout a weary world the
anniversary of Jesus’ birth will find more houses damaged and
destroyed, more children diseased and dead, more civilians maimed and
killed than in any previous year. God might have shortened these six
years of strife, spared the nations much misery and horror, if only
even those who call themselves Christians had humbled themselves and
turned trustingly to His mercy. For here is His promise: “If My people,
which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and
seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from
heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” Oh, that
in Berlin and other enemy centers masses had contritely turned to the
Lord in the repentance which kneels trustfully before the Christ Child!
Oh, that within our own gold-glutted borders multitudes of the
drink-dazed, lust-crazed, to whom the years of war have become a steady
spending spree, had learned of the Savior’s mercy and had worshiped at
the manger! Dictators and directors of international affairs, some of
them atheists and outspoken infidels, blindly claim that they are the
masters of their fate, cost what this boasting pride may in the
lifeblood and death agonies of their followers! Because in our world of
wanton killing and in this age of aching hearts it is still true and
always will be that “Jesus Christ…is our Hope”; because mankind as a
whole, including you and me as individuals, is lost without faith in
Bethlehem's Babe, I ask you to make today and tomorrow periods of
prayer in which with your whole hearts you plead: “Father, let this be
the last wartime Christmas! Spread the peace in the newborn Redeemer to
all men, for Jesus’ sake!”
During these
heavy
days Christmas dare not be a time of endless eating and drinking,
godless carnival and carousal. As I wish everyone, especially
you, the sick and incapacitated, and you, the fathers and mothers with
sons in distant lands, a God-blessed, Christ-centered holy day, not
holiday, I tell you in earnestness that this year Christmas should be
different, a festival of repentant rededication to the Redeemer, a time
of nationwide consecration of God’s Son and Mary’s. Therefore come,
America, join the soul pilgrimage to Bethlehem, kneel before the
cradled Infant, and learn this heaven-sent lesson of comfort for the
burdened, conviction for the doubting, courage for the fearful,
confidence for the uncertain, companionship for the lonely, compassion
for the heavy laden; the truth which gives this birthday its promise of
eternal peace in a world of war when, pointing to the Babe in the
manger, it declares:
HE
CAME TO SAVE
That is the pledge of our
Christmas
text, these twelve triumphant worlds recorded in First Saint John,
chapter four, verse fourteen, “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior
of the world.”
1- HE CAME TO SAVE FROM SIN
This
assurance, the
highest and holiest message that even angels can proclaim, is given us
in plain language. When you stand before the manger, you need no secret
rites, no concealed ceremonies, no mysterious initiations, no hard,
hidden truths which only masterminds can grasp. The creed which points
to the Christ Child is not a complicated, difficult system; it is
simplicity itself: “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the
world.” How utterly traitorous, then, for a church to advertise that
the Bible is a dark, concealed volume which only its leaders can
interpret; that Scripture in reality is a dangerous book from which you
had better keep your distance unless you are one of the favored few who
have the key to its understanding! When you hear clear passages of Holy
Writ like these, most of them in one-syllable words: “Christ Jesus came
into the world to save sinners”; again: “God sent His only-begotten Son
into the world that we might live through Him”; again” “He that
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”; again: “The Son of man is
come to seek and to save that which was lost”; again” “Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” do you fail to understand
these promises? It is not necessary to have a college diploma or a
divinity-school degree; indeed, you need not be able even to read or
write to recognize what our text means when it states this sacred sum
and substance of our creed: “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior.”
If you believe this with all your heart, you may be a Protestant, a
Catholic, or of Jewish birth; first of all, however, you are a
Christian. If, however, you deny this climax truth of the Nativity, you
may be a doctor of divinity, doctor of theology, a doctor of applied
religion; one thing is certain: you are not Christ’s. I would not be
true to the responsibility imposed by this mighty broadcast if I did
not ask you to cling to this truth as the foundation of your faith and
to drop everything men teach in opposition.
When we read
these
words at Christmas time, “The Father SENT the Son to be the Savior,”
they help us realize that there is a divine and perfect plan of
salvation, older than the ages, decreed before the beginning of human
history. Jesus’ advent was not by chance. It was not accidental that
Caesar Augustus issued the census decree for taxation. Bethlehem was
not the result of a haphazard guess. The manger was foreordained. Our
Lord was born at the right place, at the right time, under the right
circumstances, because all this was the Father’s loving will. Take
comfort in His divine government; for once you have entrusted your soul
to the Savior, every difficulty which crowds in upon you comes by His
sovereign permission and compassion. As Christ had to humble Himself
and suffer if mankind was to be rescued, so we who love Him must often
be brought to our knees if we are to be saved from ourselves, our
pride, our rejection of Heaven’s help. What glorious comfort can be
yours in knowing that through the incarnation God has a plan for your
life, a program, which even though it may take you down into the depths
of pain, always leads forward, onward, and upward to salvation! What
surpassing comfort to realize that wars, in which the Almighty inflicts
terrifying punishment on scoffers, are for believers cleansing,
purifying afflictions! The Holy Spirit grant that the price we have
paid for the struggle — $97,000,000,000 this year in the United States
alone, not counting the far greater, irreplaceable loss of life and of
souls — will not be expended in vain, but that millions in our country
will turn from evil to God! If this horrifying mass destruction does
not shake America into repentance and recognition of the Lord, how soon
may an even greater terror overtake us?
Now we come to
the
central fact of Christmas: “The Father sent the Son.” Who can measure
the mercy contained in these five words? I have never heard of an
American father who deliberately told his son to leave home and enlist
in the World War; yet if some fathers actually did this, they earnestly
hope that their boys will return unscathed. However, the Lord of Lords
sent His Son, knowing in advance that the hatred of hell and the
madness of sin-cursed men would be mobilized against Him: that He would
be despised more than any other figure in history; that He would be
crucified in the cruelest treachery the earth has ever witnessed; that
He would die the blackest of all deaths. Yet, with a love far too
overwhelming for our puny minds, the Father made that awful sacrifice.
He gave His Son for us, and the Savior deliberately descended into the
world of want, which had no room for Him when he was born and no room
for Him when He lived His life of atoning love.
How merciful,
too,
every aspect of His advent! He was born of Mary, to exalt womanhood and
show mothers that their best, most blessed influence is in their
family. He came as a child, to emphasize that babies are the gifts of
God, the most sacred earthly responsibilities parents can ever have. He
came to earth in a defeated, devastated country, to teach millions in
our war-blasted world that there can be opportunity and promise, even
despite reverse and calamity. He was born in a stable, to show the
poor, who will always be with us despite the promises of false
theorists, that He knows their suffering and can help them. He was
first worshiped by shepherds, and this is the guarantee to America’s
working man that He, Himself a laborer, is the Friend of the toiling
classes. Never has the world witnessed a humiliation such as that which
marked our Lord’s birth, when he exchanged heaven’s indescribable glory
for our pain and poverty.
There must
have
been a mighty purpose behind Jesus’ coming-and there was. Our text
explains, “The Father sent the Son TO BE THE SAVIOR.’ This is the heart
of the Bethlehem blessing, the center of the Bible, the prediction of
the Old Testament, the fulfillment of the New, the record of the
Gospels and the revelation of the Epistles. Prophets foretold it;
angels announced it; Apostles preached it; Christ Himself proclaimed
it: “The Father sent the Son to be the Savior.” Plainly, then, the
world had to be saved. Ten years ago Modernist preachers laughed at us
when with Scripture we insisted on the total depravity of the human
race, the utter sinfulness of all men; but they do not laugh now. After
American prisoners have been machine-gunned; after soldiers have been
instructed in the quickest method of gouging out enemies eyes; after
civilians by the tens of thousands have been bombed, and children,
often prematurely born, the innocent victims of invasion, defeat, and
civil war, have dropped dead from starvation, those who cried the
loudest that men are too good and kind to need rescue are quiet now as
they survey filth, vice, unnatural crimes and see the sacred pledges of
marriage mocked, girls raped in our national capital, seduced in every
city and town; women running around with other men while their husbands
serve the nation far across the Atlantic or the Pacific; headline
entertainers quarreling in court over illegitimate children. Think of
the people who profiteer by helping lead soldiers and sailors into sin!
List the merchants of death who heap up greater gains the longer war
lasts! Catalog the large company of those who glorify bloodshed,
promote racial hatred, champion militarism, endorse power politics,
justify imperialistic aggression! Even more, see how the Almighty has
been pushed aside, the Bible barred, Gospel truth outlawed by some
world leaders! Recall the unnumbered crimson battles from the dawn of
history until the present moment, arraying men against each other, who
if left to themselves would often have no disagreement! And in the face
of all this who can deny that humanity needs to be saved?
It is not
necessary
to search far afield for proof that the race had to be redeemed.
You and I have convincing evidence of that in our own souls. As you
behold Bethlehem’s Babe, I ask you, “Are there not within you dark
impulses, hate-filled motives, selfish yearnings, envious thoughts,
lustful longings, even during this joy-filled Christmas season? Has
your life not been marked by repeated transgressions, some hidden,
others public?” Orators may speak of mankind as noble, but I tell you
today that without the Savior men are foul and filthy, brutal and
bestial. Poets may praise the heart as the fountain of goodness; but I
insist that without the Son of God the heart is a source of vice, a
cesspool of iniquity.
Now if the
world
was to be saved, evil had to be conquered and removed from our lives.
Heaven’s Law had to be fulfilled, the demands of divine righteousness
met, the legions of hell defeated. And who could perform these
superhuman tasks? Name the acclaimed leaders of the nations, select the
most brilliant minds, choose the mightiest, most influential figures in
history, put them all together, and then know that their combined
efforts, plans, appeals, sacrifices could not cleanse their own lives,
let alone remove a single sin from your conscience! Men can kill and
cripple each other; or by grace from above they can rescue their fellow
men, as the heroic flier who last week came down near a burning tanker,
saved a score of sailors, and flew off without leaving his name. A
thrice-blessed Christmas to him! But no human being can save souls.
According to God’s perfect pattern for pardon, His own and only Son had
to do the humanly impossible, but the divinely assured. He had to
become man to take upon Himself the iniquity of us all, to unburden our
hearts from damning guilt and eternal punishment. And, praise His
mercy, Jesus did become as one of us to rescue us from ourselves, to
forgive each of our transgressions, especially those which even during
Christmastide stir us with unrest. An Iowa woman writes me that she is
torn by torment because her employer died without her ever having urged
him to accept the Redeemer. Now she feels that his soul is on her
conscience. Even if it were, I tell her, and all troubled by similar
sorrows, that God'’ Son accomplished full redemption; that He is not a
partial Deliverer who cancels some of your guilt and charges the rest
against you, not a selective Savior who chooses which of your
transgressions He wants to remove, but an all-atoning Substitute for
whom no evil is too big, black, blasphemous, or bloody. At Bethlehem
holy angels declared, “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a
Savior,” As you stand in spirit at the manger, will you place your
reason, fears, emotions over the divine word and the angelic assurance
to say, “Oh, yes, Jesus is a Redeemer, but my sins are too terrible”?
Humble yourself! Believe God! Trust the Gospel grace, and “the truth
shall make you free”!
He came to
save
surely, positively, certainly. Don’t conclude that the Blessing of
Bethlehem is merely a theory of wishful thinking! Don’t be a skeptic
satisfied to concede that the Christ Child may or may not be Savior,
Prophet, Priest, King! Human promises often exaggerate. Someone sent me
a Christmas card that had won a prize in a national artists’
competition. It bears the title” “A Star of Hope is Arisen,” and
pictures a weird, naked creature, certainly not an angel, floating over
the earth with the Four Freedoms. But to promise people today that
after this war will come a fear-free, wantless age for every human
being is a cruel mistake. Unless the Holy Spirit completely overrules
men’s wickedness, cringing terror, starvation, heartbreaking need will
reign over vast postwar areas. We learned last week that no formal
Atlantic Charter exists to guarantee those Four Freedoms; but be sure
of this: There is a Bethlehem Charter. Every one of you can find it in
your Bible, the Covenant witnessed by angels and men, more real than
the fact that I now speak to you. Wars will continue to be waged; but
the battle Jesus fought for our eternal freedom is over forever. It was
concluded when on the cross he cried, “It is finished,” and when He
rose triumphantly from the grave.
And here is
the
crown jewel in the diadem of our Christmas confidence: Our Lord came to
save us by grace, without demanding price or payment, condition or
qualifications, reward or recompense. It may be hard for some of you to
believe this when Christmas chocolates sell for $3.00 and more a pound,
Christmas handkerchiefs at $225, Christmas dressing robes at $500,
Christmas fur coats at $24,000; when a New York jeweler tells newspaper
readers of the “steady Christmas demand for the really expensive stuff
from $75,000 and up.” Thank the Lord on bended knees today that your
salvation is the gift of His grace; that His blood has paid the whole
price for your title to the prepared place in the heavenly mansions;
that though you may be poor and unnoticed, no prince, prime minister,
or president can have a costlier Christmas remembrance than you, once
the Savior is yours! To receive that gift, Heaven’s most blessed
bestowal, remember—and you can never hear anything more important than
this—you need only confess yourself a sinner and Christ your Redeemer.
Will you refuse? Dare you refuse?
God’s own Son
came
to save us from our enemies, from the legions of hell and their deadly
agencies on earth. A distracted Pittsburgh listener writes: “I have a
problem which I can’t get out of my mind, and I don’t know what to do.
If I don’t get some relief, I am going to kill myself. My wife left me
in October. Help me, I beg you.” While I appeal to you husbands and
wives, parents and children, separated this Christmas week through your
sin and selfishness, and ask you to overcome your pride and spend the
Savior’s birthday with your dear ones, or at least telephone or
telegraph them a word of reconciliation, I also assure you who suffer
deeply at this happy season when merrymaking reigns in other homes: the
Christ Child has come to share your burdens, remove your fears, wipe
away your tears, comfort your sorrowing heart, and bring His light into
the darkness of your grief. Don’t try to solve your problems without
Jesus! Take all your anguish to Him whose name is “Wonderful,
Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace”! Believe that because the angelic evangel announced: “Fear not;
for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,” you, with the
Savior’s strength, can defeat doubt, darkness, and disaster! As you
behold God incarnate in the manger, realize that no weight is too heavy
for His shoulders, which carry the government of the world, no pain too
agonizing to be removed by Him of whom it is written, “Surely he hath
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows,” You, the sick and afflicted,
you, the distressed and peace-robbed, you, the heavy laden and
bereaved, raise your hearts in rejoicing! Christmas has come for you,
to plead that you stop worrying yourself into nervous breakdowns. Take
the Almighty at His Word; through faith in this swaddled, outcast Babe
you can have heavenly peace amid earth’s encircling sorrows!
This calm in
Christ
holds especially for you, the gold star parents of America, whose souls
are bleeding because your sons lie in unmarked graves or in deep
oceans. Thank heaven with me today, you have Christmas; for if Jesus
had not come, you might well surrender to despair! Raise your sorrowing
spirits in reassurance as you behold the cradled Son of God and know
that because He became as one of us, through faith, after death, we
shall be “like Him” in the resurrection and the everlasting life. “Let
not your heart be troubled,” Jesus says. He offers you this promise of
eternal peace: “I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth
in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” God’s comfort sustain
you with the triumphant reassurance of a blessed reunion before the
heavenly throne!
“The Father
sent
the Son to be the Savior,” In that truth lies the hope of America on
this crisis Christmas when many hearts are heavy under the burden of
war. If only across the broad continent our countrymen would turn to
the newborn Redeemer and make the anniversary of His birth a time of
repentance and rededication! The deep-rooted trouble today, however, is
that America is feasting, not fasting, playing, not praying, resenting
God’s Law, not repenting of its transgressions. We still have had no
national day of repentance, with the sack-cloth-and-ashes humility of
true contrition. Ten thousands of churches have featured Christmas
plays, Christmas suppers, Christmas sales, but they have not summoned
their members to fall on their knees, earnestly, personally,
prayerfully, persistently to plead for the Father’s mercy and His Son’s
guidance. Must this war create the cause for a third world conflict—if
we go on without God, without repentance, but with reliance on
ourselves, our military machines, and production power—or shall we win
with God and reduce the prospects of further and savage slaughter? Part
of the answer to the question which should stir the heart of every
American lies in your attitude toward Jesus and His birth. The Holy
Spirit grant that many of you will, by turning contritely to the Christ
Child, stop increasing the nation’s guilt.
2- HE CAME TO SAVE YOU
One crown
jewel of
the Christmas faith still remains. Our promise reads, “The Father sent
the Son to be the Savior OF THE WORLD.” Thank heaven for that
all-inclusive promise which rules out forever the teachings of those
who insist that the Babe in the manger came to redeem only a selected
group, while the great mass of humanity is damned and rejected without
having a chance to be delivered. No, read these words again: “The
Father sent the Son to be the Savior OF THE WORLD” and praise God that
this includes everyone in history’s past, present, and future! It would
be marvelous mercy if the Savior were born to rescue one nation or
race; but words fail us when we read repeatedly in the unbreakable
Scriptures, “God so loved THE WORLD that he gave His only-begotten Son,
that WHOSOEVER believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting
life.” If the Bible would tell us, “The Father sent the Son to be the
Savior of many men, most men, all men except one,” not a person on
earth could have full assurance of salvation. You and I would think
that we were the exceptions, since we could not understand how the Lord
could be gracious to us with all our sins. Yet doubt and uncertainty
are removed when you believe these plain but powerful words: “The
Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world,” and therefore your
Redeemer.
See how this
radio
mission helps show Christ as the universal Savior when under the Holy
Spirit’s guidance it fathers men and women of different countries,
different languages, different stations in life! From Chile comes this
appeal: “I want to plead with you for Christ’s sake to allow me to
belong to your Church.” From Uruguay: “It was through the Lutheran Hour
that I received Jesus as my own true Savior.” From Cuba: “Your messages
are the doctrine I am teaching my children.” From Guatemala: “The tract
you sent me was enough to convince my daughter and to lead her to
accept the Lord.” From Colombia: “Through your broadcast some of us
have come to know the Savior.” From Costa Rica” “I was a fanatical
opponent of your Gospel, a manufacturer of images, but now I have
turned to the Lord, realizing that I am saved by His grace alone.” From
Ecuador: “I, who was once a singer in a cabaret, have now been brought
to Christ through your broadcast. I am working for the Lord.” From the
Dominican Republic: “Can you advise me how I, a former Buddhist, can
prepare myself to serve the Lord?” From Hawaii: “Your broadcast has
performed a miracle in my home, influencing my nephew and my two
neighbors to be your members.” From Panama: “As for me, I am now
convinced that we cannot live without Jesus any more.” In our own
country, Hollywood motion-picture actresses, soldiers, sailors,
airmen, officers, privates, college deans, governors, bank presidents,
industrialists, school teachers, white-collar clerks, day laborers,
factory and defense workers, businessmen, artists, musicians,
housewives, children, Negroes, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, patients in
hospitals, inmates of insane asylums, prisoners in jails, these and
many others have written me to express their faith in the Christ Child
as the all-embracing Redeemer whose plan of salvation pushes aside the
social, intellectual, racial and financial fences separating men from
their fellow men. If only in this age of plenty for everyone stifled
souls would be open to God’s Son, the horror, the hatred, the frequency
of war would be restricted, and ours would be a changed world! If only
you who greet this festival with resentment, bitterness of spirit,
rankling envy, and family quarrel would find in the Christ who loved
the world both the impulse and the power to love all men, including
your enemies, you would have a happiness never known before.
For every one
of
you, then, the most important of today’s and tomorrow’s questions is:
“Do I believe that ‘the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of my
soul? Have I earnestly, honestly, with my heart as well as my lips,
confessed that this Babe at Bethlehem came to save me?” It is not easy
to acclaim Jesus when half the people of the United States at this
wartime Christmas have no more room for Him than the Judean innkeeper
had; when some of the leaders who will write the peace and plan the
programs for the postwar world hate God’s incarnate Son as Herod did;
when those prominent in human affairs, moneyed, titled, applauded men,
have shut the door against the Christ Child; when even proud, costly,
powerful, imposing churches have cruelly contradicted the fact that he
alone can save; when, in that softer, mellowed feeling which this
holiday season brings even unbelievers, the world has room for everyone
and everything except for Jesus and His Gospel. Yet if you believe the
angels and kneel with the shepherds at the newborn Savior’s crib, I
promise you in His name—and thousands of you can prove that what I say
is true—this will be the most joyous and peace-blessed Christmas you
have ever known.
Therefore
earnestly
I plead with you who love God’s Son: Now that America needs all the
exalting righteousness which the faith of consecrated citizens can
furnish, help us bring the comfort and courage in Christ more
personally to the masses through daily worship! Keep our city churches
open for private meditation! Help introduce family devotions into many
American homes, and show parents and children how our households should
worship the Savior! Stretch the joy of His Nativity over every day,
Christians of America, and God will mightily bless you!
Many of you,
however, who hear these words are without Jesus. You just happened to
tune in this message, you say; but you are wrong there, for the Holy
Spirit placed you before your radio to give you the Infant Redeemer’s
invitation to light and salvation. Drop everything in the last-moment
holiday business and excitement, and pay close attention as I tell you
that Jesus Himself, your Savior, wants to make His birthday the birth
of faith, joy, peace, strength, in your soul! George Moore, British
financier, who had spent a Christmas Eve gambling, drinking, and
carousing, came home half-drunken but all-ashamed of himself and stole
upstairs without greeting anyone. Awakened by the carolers who sang the
heart-moving message of God's Son and the Virgin'’, he was seized by
repentance for his past wasted life. He remembered guiltily that he had
almost brought his gray-haired father down to the grave with sorrow; as
he heard of the newborn Redeemer's forgiving, restoring, rebuilding
love, the Spirit sent a new resolve into his heart. From that moment he
was a changed man. He went to night school and began to lay the
foundation for an eminent career. The same Holy Comforter and Guide can
work a similar change in you. Listen today, as the moving Christmas
music broadcasts your Savior's mercy, and say to yourself, "“those
songs sing Christ's love for me!” Listen tonight as the carolers raise
their anthems, believe, “their hymns are meant for me!” Listen tomorrow
as you hear the message of the manger in sermon or song—whatever else
you do, be sure to attend a true church on Christmas day—and casting
all doubt aside, let your soul rejoice, “Jesus came to save me!” Then,
O blessed gift from heaven itself! The angels who once wafted their
sacred chorus over Bethlehem below will sing celestial hymns of praise
in Paradise above, because at Christmas you, the lost, have been saved,
you, the strayed, have returned to your Redeemer. My beloved, the Holy
Spirit grant every one of you this glorious grace through the newborn
Savior! Amen!
Note: The preceding
Lutheran Hour
sermon first aired in December 1944 (From the book “Jesus Christ our
Hope”.)