Audio Transcript

Today’s episode is a meditation on Christmas. Christmas is Sunday. And in 1980, Pastor John was preaching a Christmas sermon on Luke 1:67–79, focused specifically on the idea that in Christ God “has raised up a horn of salvation for us” (Luke 1:69). That may seem to be an odd and remote way of saying it. We don’t tend to think of Christmas as the celebration of a horn cut off a bull. But it is. And it makes for exactly the Christmas that we needed. Here’s Pastor John to explain. And as a little footnote here as we begin, he has just invited his small church over to his house for an open house. Here’s Pastor John.

If someone had given me, last Christmas, a super-duper mouse trap, I would not have been very impressed at all. I never saw a mouse in six years at our old house. If somebody gave me a guaranteed-to-catch-them, super-duper mouse trap this Christmas, I would be very glad, because we have many mice, and I can’t catch them. Come to the open house anyway. I tried three different kinds.

If you offered me — late some night, after the evening service — a quick ride to the emergency room at the Metropolitan Medical Center, I’d kind of look at you funny. I’d think you were strange — unless I saw the big gash in my arm or felt a severe pain in my abdomen. If the police screeched up beside me on my way home one night there on 15th Street and said, “Get in the back,” I’d think they were putting me on — unless I saw, up around the corner, the armed gang waiting, hiding.

Deadly Disease, Great Enemy

That’s the way it is in all of life. We will not appreciate a gift that we don’t think meets any needs or fulfills any desires. We do not value or long for any help unless we know we’re sick or in great danger of some enemy. Vast numbers of people think that Jesus Christ and the story of Christmas is a Mickey Mouse trap and of no use whatsoever to them, a crazy trip to the emergency room, a bothersome pickup by the ornery police, because they don’t believe they’re sick to death with the disease of unforgiven sin. And they don’t think they have a massive enemy in Satan, who is against all God’s people. They just don’t believe it. And so, the horn of salvation is a toy to be played with at best.

“The horn of salvation for me is my only hope of recovery from this disease of my soul called sin.”

But not for me. The horn of salvation for me is my only hope of recovery from this disease of my soul called sin. And he’s the only hope of victory over my greatest enemy, Satan. And there is a real disease. There is a real disease. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). And “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

And there is a real enemy, isn’t there? “Your adversary the devil,” Peter says, “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith” (1 Peter 5:8–9). He is “the god of this world,” Paul says, that “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing . . . the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6).

So, there is a deadly disease, and there is a dangerous enemy. And every one of us will die of that disease, and we will be destroyed and devoured by that enemy, if we do not have a horn of salvation.

Horn of Hope

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
     for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
     in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we should be saved from our enemies
     and from the hand of all who hate us [including the greatest enemy of all]. . . .
And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
     for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
     in the forgiveness of their sins. (Luke 1:68–71, 76–77)

Those two things are what make Christmas good news and great joy to all the people who believe.

“Fear and guilt have been done away with by the coming of our horn of salvation.”

“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). “[Christ] has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). Fear and guilt, the two great spoilers of Christmas, the two great spoilers of life all through the year, have been done away with by the coming of our horn of salvation.

Hebrews 2:14–15 says that Jesus Christ took on a human nature in order that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” And through that same death, he paid the whole debt for sin so that we are freed from the evil one and we are freed from sin.

Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
     for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us . . .
     that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
     in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. (Luke 1:68–69, 74–75)