First, let’s enjoy this fun video from Southland Christian Church in Lexington Kentucky. This is Christmas according to kids in their congregation.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suowe2czxcA
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Comments……..
If you remember, two weeks ago we talked about the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus. He gave up so much. He did what needed to be done to rescue us from ourselves and our sins.
Because after all that IS what Jesus did, he came to RESCUE us, and boy do we need rescuing!
Jesus, who in the beginning already existed, who was with God and who was God stepped away from His fellowship with God the Father and the Holy Spirit to become man. We as humans really cannot fully grasp what that means, but I am pretty sure, as we talked about before, it was a huge sacrifice.
In the children’s moment two weeks ago we talked about what it would be like if the kids had some goldfish in a tank that they loved very much. We talked about how they would go about telling the fish that they loved them.
You could yell at them, jump up and down waving a sign near the tank, but really none of that would get your message across now would it?
How would we be able to tell the fish that we loved them?
To that as a human, and if it were possible, we would have to give up our humanness and become a fish so that we could get face to face with the fish and tell them how much we loved them in their own language.
This would require giving up much more than just walking around on two feet and being able to breathe outside of water. We would have to give up our friends, our families, as well as the ability to talk to them. We would give up our favorite foods, the beds we sleep in, going to school, playing sports and even getting presents at Christmas time.
That’s a lot to give up. And yet it pales in comparison to what Jesus had to give up to be born as a man to do the same for us.
Not only is it a lot to wrap our minds around, but how one could be both man and God at the same time is absolutely mind-boggling.
So, the fact that Jesus was both fully man and fully God remains at the same time, a truth and a mystery.
Scripture ALSO calls the fact that Jesus was of two natures God and man a mystery.
In 1 Timothy 3:16 we read…
16 Without question, this is the great mystery of our faith:
Christ was revealed in a human body
and vindicated by the Spirit.
He was seen by angels
and announced to the nations.
He was believed in throughout the world
and taken to heaven in glory.
The arrival of Jesus as the Messiah was such a big deal that, as we discovered last week, God chose John the Baptist to go ahead of Jesus heralding his arrival.
John was so special to God that he, John, was born to his mother in her old age and was already filled with the Holy Spirit. This is a pretty big deal as most of those in scripture who received the Holy Spirit did so after baptism.
The beginning of God’s plan for the rescue of His sinful and broken children was most certainly nothing short of miraculous.
Last week we looked at the conversation between the angel Gabriel and father of John the Baptist, Zechariah. It was quite the conversation. But it wasn’t the most amazing conversation that Gabriel would have. Next on his list was a conversation with Mary, a teenaged virgin.
In Luke chapter one the angel Gabriel explains to Mary that she will become pregnant and have a baby as a virgin. This event, if true, is huge.
Luke chapter 1:26-38
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, 27 to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. 28 Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”
29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!”
34 Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.”
35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. 36 What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. 37 For the word of God will never fail.”
38 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her.
Southern California pastor, Greg Laurie, made some great points when he talked about the virgin birth. Here is what he said…
Famed CNN interviewer, Larry King once said that if he could choose one person to interview from the course of human history, he would choose to interview Jesus Christ.
King said that he would like to ask Jesus "if He was indeed virgin-born." He added, "The answer to that question would define history for me." Larry King understands that the Virgin Birth is a big deal.
If you are a Bible-believing Christian, then you can't dismiss what the Scriptures teach on this topic. I would even take it further and say that if you don't believe that Jesus was supernaturally conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary, then you can't really be a Christian.
This is an essential part of Christian doctrine. If Christ was not conceived in the womb of Mary by the Holy Spirit, if His biological father was indeed Joseph, then He was a sinner. And if He was a sinner, then His death on the cross did not atone for my sins or yours.
The fact is that because Jesus was supernaturally conceived in Mary's womb, He was fully God, yet He was also fully man. Jesus said, "Unless you believe that I AM who I claim to be, you will die in your sins" (John 8:24). In other words, "If you don't believe that I am God, then you are not really a believer."
I AM is God's own statement about Himself. When Moses wanted to know what to say when people asked who had sent him, God told him, "I AM WHO I AM. Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you" (Exodus 3:14).
That is why the Virgin Birth is such an essential teaching. Christ was not God because He was virgin-born; He was virgin-born because He was God.
(That’s so important I want to say it again…..Christ was not God because He was virgin-born; He was virgin-born because He was God.)
That being said I would also say that the birth of our Savior happened just as it was supposed to.
God doesn’t leave things to chance. If He didn’t want things to go a certain way, they wouldn’t. Jesus was being sent on a rescue mission. He was coming to save all of us. God had a plan and I gotta say I doubt that it was a plan that you or I would have ever come up with.
But then again this is the God that has a history of doing some pretty amazing things in ways that we would never think of, like marching around a walled city 7 times with your army before stopping to blow horns and yell to bring the walls down, or parting the Red Sea providing an escape route from a pursuing army, or even closing the mouths of lions to keep your prophet from being eaten.
But I digress….
Let’s read what God did in Bethlehem…
The Birth of Jesus
Luke 2:1-20
2 At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.
6 And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
8 That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. 9 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,
14
“Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. 17 After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. 18 All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, 19 but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. 20 The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.
And there is more to the story. Wisemen came to worship Jesus and showed up more than likely a year or more after He was born. King Herod upon hearing of the birth of a baby who would be the King of the Jews ordered all children 2 years old and younger to be killed.
And there is more…but what I want to focus on is that Jesus came for a reason. What is that reason?
The reason is found in what arguably is the most widely quoted piece of scripture of all time. It is the Gospel all wrapped up into one verse.
I like the way the NIV version puts it…
John 3:16
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
I want you to read that with me.
Now I want you to read it one more time but this time let’s change it up. We’ll call it the NBT (the New Bryan Translation).
“For God so loved me that He gave His one and only Son, that if I believe in Him I will not die, but I will have eternal life.
And let me continue on in the NBT to read verse 17 as well.
17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn me, but to save me through Him.
This is the message of Christmas.
It is what God has given to us through His Son Jesus Christ. Jesus later shed some more light upon the reason that He came in John 10:10 once again in the NIV. He said, “10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
So when we read these two passages we see that God’s love for us is so great, sacrificially great, that He was willing to give His one and only Son to not only come and live among us but to die for us.
Sending Jesus to earth as a man was the greatest rescue operation of all time and the really cool thing about it is that it continues on even now more than 2,000 years after it first happened! Because of what Jesus did, people continue to be rescued each and everyday.
In 2006 a movie staring Kevin Costner came out and it continues to be one of my favorites it is called “The Guardian”. The movie also stars Iowa boy, Ashton Kutcher. In the movie Costner is a veteran Coast Guard rescue swimmer and Kutcher plays the self-absorbed newby that Costner has to train.
Now if you don’t know about what a Coast Guard rescue swimmer does, let me tell you. They climb into helicopters and fly out in the worst weather to jump into the ocean and rescue people from sinking and/or disabled boats and ships.
In this movie Kutcher as the new young ego-filled is obsessed by the numbers of people that swimmers have rescued. He sees how many people rescue swimmers who had gone before him had saved and believed that he would make a name for himself by setting a record for the number that he would save over his career.
Along these lines he then asked Costner’s character what his number was after several decades as a rescue swimmer. Costner kept putting him off and putting him off when he’d ask, then finally he said that his number was 22.
Kutcher’s character with a very confused look on his face says “22? You have only saved 22?” Where Costner then says, no… but that 22 was the number that he was unable to save over the years. That was the number that meant the most to him not the number that he did save.
I think that while we read in the Bible that all of heaven celebrates when even just one of us claims that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, God is devastated by the those that have been lost.
So when we look at the Christmas story we need to understand that God’s gift to the world is His Son and that this gift came at a great cost.
For it is what Jesus did on the cross for you and me that shows the value of this gift.
Approximately 700 years before the birth of Christ Isaiah foretold of His coming and what His value would be to all who believed.
Isaiah 53:2-6
2
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
Think of it like this.
One of the gifts that has become increasingly popular over the years is that of gift cards. I can give you a gift card and once you get it, it is up to you to actually go out and use it. You don’t use it you get no benefit from the gift card.
God’s gift of His only Son is like that. God has given us that gift and now it is up to each of us to decide if we are going to do what needs to be done to get the full value of this gift.
We can leave it alone and never cash it in …or we can get absolutely everything out of it possible and receive all that was given to us.
The difference between the two however, is that in the case of a gift card, you can partially use it’s value.That isn’t possible in our receiving the gift of salvation. We either take the full value of the gift or nothing at all. There is no part way, no way to partially use the gift, though many try to live as though there is.
So when we think about the gift that we have been given, the gift of a rescuer who brings eternal life, we need to remember also that He is our King and one that leads by example.
Jesus gave up a great deal for each of us and that is something we should keep in mind not only on Christmas morning but every day of the year.
Let’s do things a little different this year and let’s do our best to live every day of the coming year in the context of the Christmas story.
And why should we do that? Because we have been given the greatest gift of all time and we have the ability to share it every day of the year with others who don’t know anything about it. As a matter of fact, we are commanded to do just that.
Now, that kind of attitude will change us, our neighborhood, our town, our state, our country and our world if we let it.
Let’s let it.
Who knows, we may just be the answer to some else’s prayer.
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Watch this video....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VumKim-tWIk
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Comment on the video and a prayer….
Merry Christmas!
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