The Unthinkable Story of Christmas (2020 sermon series)

 

Part 1 – A Drama Unfolding

For this message, you’re going to have to do something for me, otherwise it is not going to land at all. If you simply look at this message the way we always do, and we look back at the entire story as it unfolds, I don’t think this message is going to hit home. I don’t think the concept of the Christmas story being unthinkable is going to resonate with you properly. So, what I’m asking you to do for this message as I walk us through where it first began, I want you to put yourself not at our space level looking down on the whole Christmas story as it unfolds, knowing the end of it when you look at the beginning. Today, really put yourself where those people were as we walk through it and then I think you’ll get what I’m talking about.

I don’t know, I think I do, but I don’t know if God has ever done anything in your life that you just totally didn’t see coming whatsoever. Maybe it’s a good thing, maybe it’s something that you don’t see the good in it at the time, but did later, or might later. For me, I’m going to be open and honest with you, and I’m going to open myself up to mockery and simply trust that when you all leave this place and you’re driving home and you’re sitting at the restaurant wherever you go that you will not be sitting there mocking me all day. When I was in college, my sophomore or junior year, I truly believed that the course and the direction of my life was headed towards being a professor. I really believed in my heart of hearts that God was going to put me on a path that would give me a room full of leather books, and sweater vests, and taking students on tours of Israel, and writing my own Bible commentaries, and maybe I wouldn’t end up exactly there, but I was going to get close. Whatever His plan, I must be bound for the world of academia. That’s where I was going as far as I knew. But God did not take me to the ivory tower of academia to write books and be “ Dr. know-it-all.” He took me to be a traveling missionary living in Apartment B in Atascadero, CA.

This dawned on me and really hit home what God had done that was totally unexpected. It wasn’t what I would have planned. Before I was going to be this esteemed professor, on December 7^th, 2010 I was enlisting in the U.S. Navy at the Los Angeles Military Entrance Processing Station, and I was going to ride a boat around the world, then I was going to come home and be a police officer, or find something interesting to study in college. Then they said, “oh, did you know you’re color blind?” And tossed my folder in the trash. Ok, back to the professor thing. . . I thought I was going to work in a library, now I’m driving kids to summer camp. The students I was going to lecture too turned out to be brothers and sisters listening to my sermons and letting me pray for them. All this to say, that God’s ways and plans for us might be very different than we imagined for ourselves. God’s plans for me have been far greater and sweeter than I could ever have imagined, and I wouldn’t trade following Him for anything, but I’d be very surprised watching my life unfold if I had made incorrect assumptions about where I thought the story was heading. So, again, I ask you to take yourself back and you put yourself in the shoes of these people as the Christmas story unfolds you will see why the concept of Christmas is unthinkable from the very beginning.

Let’s go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. If you remember Genesis 12 there’s this guy named Abram, he’ll become Abraham, and this is what God says to Abram, [Read Genesis 12:1]. So, God speaks to Abram and he says go do this. Now, I want you to look at what God has required of him; to leave his country, leave his people, leave even his own family. Now think about that, in their time and place, God is asking Abram to leave everything that brought him security, everything that made him comfortable that brought him peace, all of those things need to be left behind. And God tells him, if you leave, if you do this, if you trust me, I’ve got a promise for you.

Let’s check out this promise because it’s the promise of all promises, like president Trump would say, ‘this is the greatest promise that has ever been.’ This is the greatest promise that you could ever imagine happening. He said, [Read Genesis 12:1-3] look at that last verse for a second. Do you know how crazy that had to seem to Abram? Again, don’t think of it from our perspective think of it from Abraham’s perspective and where he is living at this point in time. This just sounds nutty. Nations in that era did not bless one another you know what nations did this is all they did; they conquered, they pillaged, they plundered, they ran off with the women, and they enslaved people. That’s what they did. If you remember reading about Israel, in their history Israel you will see that when they’re going to a certain place they will go up and around certain areas to avoid the people living there because that’s what nations did to one another and yet here’s this promise that you’re going to be a blessing to all of the people. Along with that, do you remember what Abraham’s problem was with he and Sarah? Remember from the last previous weeks from our study of Hebrews 11 that they couldn’t have children because she was infertile. If they could not have children how is God going to make them into a great nation? If you read this story from a distance looking down on it and put yourself in Abram’s shoes and you hear God telling you this there is one word to describe the promise that God is giving you and the word is unthinkable. I can’t even conceive how this could ever even happen and yet we know Abraham chose to believe he left all of that stuff behind and he goes because he trusts even though it’s unthinkable to him, yet he trusts that God will do it. Why does he do that? Well, it’s the very same thing that Jesus taught us; Mark 10:27, “With people it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God.” So, even the unthinkable to you is completely possible with God there is no notion to unthinkable when you’re talking about God.

Ok, this is the really exciting part for me. I’m going to walk you through Christmas history. We’ve got Abraham, and Abraham is married to Sarah and they struggle to have children and so Abraham and Sarah realize or think to themselves well if God’s going to make us into a great nation he needs our help because God always needs man’s help right? I hope you’re picking up on the sarcasm. . .  So, what do they do? Sarah says you need to go and you need to make a baby with my maidservant over there and I just love the image in my mind of Abraham said well if I got to do it, I’m just going to go do it, so he goes over there and he makes a baby with Hagar and that baby is Ishmael. And then later God fulfills the promise to Abraham and Sarah that they have a child, so now you’ve got two kids out of this; Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael went off into the wilderness and God takes care of him but he sent out into the wilderness because this promised blessing that was given to Abram that we just read this unthinkable promise is going to work its way through Isaac. So Isaac marries a lady named Rebecca, and Rebecca and Isaac have two kids Jacob and Esau. Esau is the daddy’s boy, he’s the wild hunter, he’s burly and tough. Then you’ve got Jacob, who’s the mama’s boy. He likes to cook stew with his mom, and Jacob is a wily little one he’s the one that when Esau comes home and he’s really hungry, Esau is not the brightest and so Jacob sells Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for some soup, which is not smart. Well, it gets even worse than that because Esau is out doing his thing and Rebekah who loves Jacob more than Esau comes and says to Jacob, listen your dad’s old he’s about to go and this blessing that is going to be passed down, this blessing that had been promised to Abraham, he’s going to hand that over to Esau so you need to go in and steal it. You need to deceive your dad and get the blessing yourself, and Jacob says ‘but I’m not hairy like my brother so he’ll figure out the rouse.’ And so she says, ‘all right we’re going to put goat hair on you to better play the part.  

So you’re going to put some goat hair on yourself and you’re going to go in, and you’re going to smell like Esau and he goes in and sure enough Isaac he can’t see anything because he’s blind as a bat and so he gives Jacob the blessing. Well, Esau comes home, finds out what Jacob has done, and, shockingly, Esau is not pleased with this turn of events. Esau now wants to kill Jacob and so Jacob has to flee. Do you remember where Jacob flees to escape Esau? He flees to his uncle Laban and there he meets a beautiful young lady named Rachel. He says says to Laban, ‘how much for Rachel? I want to marry her,’ and Laban says ‘work for me for seven years,’ so he works for seven years and Scripture says that it’s just like a day because she’s so beautiful it’s just like a day and then he has his wedding he wakes up the day after his wedding, and what has happened? Laban’s pulled the ol’ switcheroo. He didn’t give him Rachel, no he gave him Leah , Rachel’s older sister.  So Jacob, obviously, is not pleased about this and he says, ‘I still want Rachel,’ so Laban says, “well, work another seven years and you can marry Rachel also,’ and Jacob says okay so in the end Jacob ends up with Leah and Rachel and their two maid servants and he has a bunch of children. By the way, God who is going to be working this promise through Jacob has now changed Jacob’s name to Israel, so when the Bible refers to the person Israel, that’s Jacob. Then you have Joseph who is the one brother the firstborn of Rachel who was the wife he really wanted, she’s the favorite woman, so Joseph is the favorite son then you got the eleven others who decide to grab Joseph and sell him into slavery and he’s sent off into Egypt. They go home and they tell Jacob that he got killed by a wild animal, saying, ‘look at his coat here it’s got blood all over it.’ And just a side note, because this is one of those crazy ironic moments in the Bible because they used the blood of a goat, so Jacob is being tricked by the blood of a goat, while it was Jacob who tricked Isaac with a goatskin. This is Bible karma of the worst kind. So, anyway, now Joseph has been sold into slavery and he’s there as a slave in Egypt and slowly over time God continues to bless him and he ends up in prison and then the next thing you know he is second in command in all of Egypt because of God’s blessing. He is second to Pharaoh only and he’s the one that prepares Egypt for this coming famine that occurs. It’s a famine that just devastates the entire area and that area includes the place where Israel is living with his sons, the other 11 brothers place Rachel’s second son Benjamin, and when they’re starving they realize we’ve got to go to Egypt the only place that’s prepared for this famine and get food. So, the eleven brothers go and who do they have to confront? They have to go and they meet with Joseph, they don’t know it’s Joseph because its been like 20 years, and then when Joseph reveals himself the brothers are so apologetic they can’t believe God’s amazing providence and they go back and they get Jacob and there’s a wonderful reunion and now the children of Israel will live in the land of Egypt protected by Pharaoh and Joseph as basically royal guests. It’s a great story and now you start to think that it’s finally going to happen. This promise that was given to Abraham, this is how God’s going to work it right there, right here in Egypt they’re protected by the mightiest military that’s around, it’s a wealthy nation and their these blessed guests of the king, this is where it’s all going to unfold. They left the land God promised to Abraham, yes, but they’re living in Egypt having escaped the famine, so it’s good. Well, there’s a problem. Though they do become a large nation, generation after generation they keep making babies and Israel gets bigger and bigger and bigger but the problem is that when Joseph dies the favor that was there dies and you have multiple generations now and the new Pharaoh he doesn’t remember Joseph, doesn’t care about Joseph, but just sees that it’s become a bit of a problem to have all these royal guests. He doesn’t remember the promise to protect these people all he knows is there is this massive country and nation of people that’s right next to his.

Remember what I told you nations always did in that era? They pillage, they plundered, they enslave, and so the Pharaoh realizes this is trouble so the Egyptians and enslave the children of Israel and you remember the story of slavery at the end of a whip they’re building the Egyptian Empire. These temples and these pyramids to false gods that’s where God has brought his people to be a nation of slaves. Now, put yourself in their situation, out in the tar pits making bricks at the end of a whip, you’ve seen your family murdered, maybe your precious little baby was killed the moment your wife gave birth to it by Egyptian midwives, and you think back on God’s promise to Abraham to make you into a great nation and bless all other people on earth and you’ll be blessed, do you feel that way at that moment in time? You look back at those promises and you say it’s totally unthinkable how that could happen. Look at where we are! Well, you know where the story goes from there. God’s talks to his deliver, Moses, in the burning bush and he goes and brings about God’s judgment on Egypt, then once they’re let out of Egypt they go into the Promised Land and that’s where they encounter the Canaanites, these wicked people in the promised land who have moved in during the last 400 years since Jacob and his family left for Egypt, and God gives them commands to totally destroy everything that belongs to them do not spare them but put to death men and women children and infants cattle and sheep camels and donkeys. Is that God blessing the nations of the earth through them? City states are completely obliterated and destroyed burned to the ground.

For their time this is what’s totally ordinary, it’s weird to us to look back at some of this stuff in the Old Testament and see the brutality because you and I are operating with moral compasses that are calibrated to this side of Christmas. On that side of Christmas this is totally routine, yet this is what life was for them. But again, I don’t see the blessing that God was promising on the people of Israel. You’ve got all these kings and there’s Solomon and now you think, ‘okay here’s where it’s going to happen God’s going to fulfill the promise to Abraham with this brilliant wise King Solomon.’ Solomon built the temple for God and yet Solomon had one problem. It seems to be the problem a lot of godly men have; he had a problem with women. He couldn’t control his love for women and so all these foreign wives that he takes lead his heart towards foreign gods and he builds statues and worships these foreign gods and so God has had it. He says, ‘I’m done with you people I’m going to split this country in two I’m going to divide the nation and I’m going to bring about the destruction of that very temple you built for me. It’s going to be wiped out.” When you hear God’s judgement being placed on your people what do you think about? The promise that has been given to Abraham to bless all people and to bless you and to make you into a great nation and your name great, you don’t think it’s even a possibility anymore. Well, that’s exactly what God does. He takes Israel that used to be all of this, and he splits it into a northern and a southern kingdom, Israel up north and Judah down south. The kingdom is divided the people are in chaos Assyria comes in, and the Assyrians just totally wipe out Israel in the north and they’re threatening to do the exact same thing to Judah in the south. Israel is an utter state of turmoil they don’t know what’s happening it’s total chaos no way they’re going to be able to bless the world now, and there’s not a chance this promise is going to come true and in the middle of all of that, God sends a prophet to them carrying the message of God, and he takes that promise he had given to Abraham that seems so unthinkable and you know what he does, he adds to it. Isaiah tells them the word of the Lord, saying, “It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth.Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel and its Holy One. . .”

Now, don’t think about this from a 2020 viewpoint, from outer space looking back. Think about this being in utter turmoil waiting for Assyria to come and kill your whole family, they’re on the doorstep and God announces something like this that we’re going to be a light for the Gentiles, the people that are about to kill us. That the God of these conquered people is going to influence and reach the ends of the earth. How would these tortured people react to that kind of a prophecy? That idea is totally unthinkable it’s not even possible that this is going to occur. Well, sure enough, Judah gets totally crushed by Assyria, they took out the north now they’ve taken out the south, next comes Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon’s even rougher than Assyria was, and totally destroys Solomon’s Temple just like God promised. The people are in chaos and what does God do he sends him another prophet. This time it’s Malachi. Malachi shows up and says, ‘I have a word from the Lord,’ and what does Malachi say, God announces, Malachi 1:11, “‘For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering that is pure; for My name will be great among the nations,’ says the Lord of hosts.”

Everywhere on earth everybody’s going to know my name and they’re going to worship me among the nations. Would you buy it if you’re hearing this and the state where you are and where you’ve been nobody wants their God, then hears God’s saying my name is going to be great all people on earth are going to love me and Israel’s saying nobody wants you you’re a laughingstock just like us because in that era gods were valued based on how powerful the country was. If the country was powerful, everybody wanted that god but this country is getting conquered every time they turn around nobody wants to be on that team. So, this prophecy doesn’t even make any sense these just seem like more empty promises, and the whole concept is totally unthinkable. That’s the promise God is saying wherever people are on earth they will know my name because what I’m doing through you people of Abraham that’s just nuts to those people and doesn’t make sense.  

So, they’ve been defeated by Assyria we’ve been defeated by Babylon, Persia came in and crushes them, then the Greeks come in and just trample over them and then when we finally start to breathe again guess who shows up in 63 BC. General Pompey shows up from the Roman Empire, the mightiest military the world has ever known shows up in 63 BC and ravages Israel and enslaves them again. This is why I’m begging you understand from their perspective God makes this promise to Abraham and this is its fulfillment; enslaved, beaten, abused, tortured, trampled, and then enslaved again. It’s totally unthinkable to think that God’s promises fulfilled are even an option. How this is going to happen? The promise was impossible as impossible as it could possibly be. But, what nobody knows is that God is the master chess player and we’re all distracted by everything that’s happening around us, consumed in the moment and nobody notices the master chess player up there has put his chess pieces exactly where he wants them. God has brought a single kingdom to dominate the known world, that’s Rome, they dominate the entire world at that point in time that kingdom set up a highway system, a highway system that still exists today, their roads were so well constructed they’re still there and even in normal use now connecting distant regions and people in all different areas, Rome had the most impressive port system you could ever imagine carrying people and cargo to anywhere in the known world.

Do you see what he’s doing here? They had a common language, called the lingua franca. Rome said, ‘look if we’re going to have to be dealing with all these people in different places we can’t be trying to learn their languages, they’ll learn our language so now all of these people that are under their authority speak the same language, and they bring a peace that stops all warring nations on earth, nobody is going to war because Rome is in charge and rule with an iron fist. Historians call that the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. Now do you see what God has done?

If God is planning, think this through with me, if God is planning to export a message, if he’s going to send out a blessing, a light to all nations, isn’t what he’s done here absolutely critical? It’s a brilliant move to have something in place where your missionaries can go out from all of these ports where the roads can take you to people everywhere on earth where everybody speaks the same language and you can coordinate and speech and speak this truth to them in all of these places. The pieces have been put into place, the stage is set, and nobody notices. Nobody even pays attention that this is what God is doing and at that precise moment, Paul writes, “But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). When everything was set up just as God wanted, when the dominoes were in place, the chess pieces were where they needed to be, then God sent forth His son. At that precise moment everybody had given up on this promise, this unthinkable promise and it’s at that precise moment that God sends Gabriel to Nazareth to speak to a young girl named Mary and he said, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end” (Luke 1:30-33).

I imagine this in heaven everything set up just as he wanted and he turns and he says to Gabriel, “It’s time.”

The unthinkable promise that you thought it wasn’t possible, you thought it wasn’t going to happen, but with God all things all things are possible. That’s what Christmas is about; that God will keep all of his promises. I don’t know where you all are in life and I don’t know what you’re dealing with, some of you are dealing with frustrations, some of you are dealing with pain and sorrow and depression. I don’t know what burdens you’re carrying but it may well seem to you that the promises of God to redeem you to bring you into a place of peace you may be sitting there thinking there is no way anybody in the world could ever forgive me for the things that I have done, that may be your testimony today, but I am telling you, God is active, He is faithful, He is never silent, and He is good on His promises. That is the truth of Christmas and that sets the stage for much more to come.

Part 2 – A New Chapter

If you remember back to last week, we studied the unexpected ways that God set the stage for the promise that He had given to Abraham and how that was to be fulfilled in Jesus. The promise that God was going to fix everything and how crazy that seemed, and we left off with Paul’s words to the Galatians, that, “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under law. . .” (Galatians 4:4). And remember that we established what it means when it says when the fullness of time had come and I referred to God as the master chess player with everybody else is distracted with their own conditions and their own situations and missing the amazing way that the Lord set the stage for the arrival of the Messiah to make good on God’s promises, beginning with the one made to Abraham in Genesis 12. Everything that’s happening to them, mostly bad, and nobody is looking at it from the big picture of God’s redemptive plan. At the moment that they least expect it, God sends forth his son.

For today, I’m going to ask a question and I don’t think I’m alone in asking this, but have you ever asked the question ‘why does God have to become a human being?’ Why does he have to send his son to earth? Why does he have to reduce himself down into the form of a fetus and be born of a virgin? Why can’t he send a messenger or an angel, to proclaim to all of us and say something like, “hey, I just want to tell you that you are all free from your sins.” He’s God, he wrote the whole story, so why does he have to be born under the law? He’s not under the law, he’s God, he’s above every law you could ever imagine, so why did he chose to be born under the law? Maybe you’ve never asked these questions, but I’m telling you that the world that you deal with on a daily basis is asking those questions. They ask, ‘why would I believe such a fantastic story?’ ‘I don’t understand why it has to be this way.’

So, the best answer I can come up with is that God is doing something profoundly personal in His rescue plan for us. He is attempting to move us as people into relationship with him and if you’re wanting to move people into a relationship with you, this has to be a personal effort to demonstrate a personal interest in us. You don’t send somebody to go and say, ‘hey, Bob, over there is interested in you.” That’s like in elementary school when you have a crush on somebody, and you send the note through a friend. Maybe a check yes or no sort of thing. Anyway, if you want to be successful in building a relationship with someone, you don’t send a messenger, you don’t send a letter, you don’t just make a declaration, none of that is going to work if what you’re trying to do is something profoundly personal. So, God’s going to have to do something himself and when God does something himself, it’s going to be memorable. That’s a key here; it needs to be something we can document so that the people who don’t have it happening to them, like us 2,000 years later, can still feel the personal activity that God engaged in something that can be documented and remembered and still move people 2,000 years or however many thousand years later. Think about the promise that God made to Abraham, that is 4000 years ago, God shows up in a remote part of the world and he speaks to a guy and he tells him this incredible promise that’s going to take place. Now, around 4000 years later, in another part of the world, we’re still talking about it.

For a quick piece of history, Pope Gregory the 9th issued something called the Vox in Rama. In 1233, Pope Gregory comes out a says that Satanism is rampant in Germany, and among other things, he proclaims that black cats are spawn of Satan that they are messengers of the devil. And while I’m not going to debate that, having a cat of my own, the reason that this is so profound and important is because when the church pronounces something like that, people started getting rid of their cats. Nobody wants to have Satan as their pet, so they got rid of their cats. And the one major thing that was keeping the rat population of Europe at bay in the 13^th century were all of the cats, so when you get rid of all of the cats the rat population goes crazy and that starts and fuels the black death, the plague that wipes out over 50 million people in Europe (that is 60 percent of Europe’s population), and this is a huge event in world history and probably few if any of you know about the part that the papacy played in making the Black Death possible, and that happened 787 years-ago, and the event we’re talking about in Genesis 12 with God’s promise to Abraham happened 4000 years ago in a remote part of the world.

Anybody remember the Zimmerman Note? The Zimmerman Note was the proposal that Mexico got from Germany before WWI in January 1917. Germany was saying, ‘hey, if you invade the United States and keep them out of World War one, then we will come over and help you conquer the southwest United States. You can keep Arizona, New Mexico, and California. We’ll get it all back for you.” This is what prompts us, the United States, to enter into World War one. This is why we send our young men over there to fight a brutal war, and almost no one remembers the Zimmermann note. This is our country’s history, only one hundred and three years ago, and yet a poor Jewish baby boy born in a little village in some Roman-occupied backwater town you remember. You can tell me everything there is to know about that story, the Jesus story, or at least the majority of it. And it’s not just you that knows that. The world that doesn’t worship Jesus, they know the story of this too. And this is what I’m talking about.

When God does something, he does it in a way that will be remembered. This amazing moment of history, let’s look at these words that Paul writes, Romans 5:8; “. . .but God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners Christ died for us. . .” So, God puts on a demonstration. People are going to be aware of it, and he doesn’t tell us, rather he shows us. And what does he do? Christ died for us. And, there again, this question comes up; why die? Why does Jesus have to come and die and why does he have to die in such a terrible awful way like on the cross? Why doesn’t Jesus just come and announce ‘I’m the son of God and I’m now giving you an Emancipation Proclamation as the son of God I am declaring all of you free of your sins from henceforth that means from now on you are all free.’ Why doesn’t he do that? Why does it have to be death? Would the people have believed him if Jesus just came down and said ‘hey everybody I am the son of God and you are all free from your sins’?

Well, they didn’t believe him when he announced it. Let’s turn to Matthew chapter 9, verses 1 through 8. [Read Matthew 9:1-8]. So, what is Jesus doing here? He’s performing a miracle and the whole point of performing the miracle was to demonstrate that he had the authority to do something. They didn’t believe he had the authority to forgive sins. Remember, he always performs these miracles to demonstrate his authority. He performs these miracles, demonstrating who he is, and I can tell you that the cross is no different. The cross is a massive demonstration of the authority that God has to forgive sins. Mark 10 it tells us, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

That’s why we have Christmas. That right there is why Jesus came to earth, but the question then becomes, if it’s a ransom what is the debt that we owed? What did Jesus come to pay that you and I owed that he’s going to demonstrate his authority by paying for us. Well we read in Romans 5:12 that, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. . .” So, what is the punishment for sin? What is the price that he has to pay? Death is the price of sin, and you know that when you and I chose sin we brought this penalty on ourselves. We choose it for ourselves. God says, ‘there’s my way or there’s your way’ and the unregenerate heart always takes our own way. That’s what Isaiah says in chapter 53 verse 6, “All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. . .” Paul says, Philippians 2:21, “For they all seek after their own interests, not those of Christ Jesus.” We choose our own path and as a consequence of this rebellious choosing, death is the punishment. But what John 3:16 tells us that, God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, Jesus, into the world that whoever believes in him will not suffer that consequence. Why? Because he paid that ransom. The whole point of him coming was to demonstrate God’s love by dying in our place. It was to prove his authority and to do it in a way that would be remembered.

Now, as soon as that work is done and the crucifixion is over, look at what happens right after the resurrection. Jesus comes back from the dead and he gets the band back together, he reconvenes the assembly and brings all the disciples in and they have a powwow and Jesus gives his disciples their instructions and look at what these guys do. Jesus meets them all, tells them what he wants them to do and then did the disciples go off to Africa or some unknown part of the world to start proclaiming and telling the story of Jesus and that he resurrected and leading all of these people to belief in somebody that they had no knowledge of before? No, Jesus sends them right back into the city where he had been captured and crucified. These formerly scared little boys now walk straight back into the city where Jesus had been arrested and beaten – up to the very people that had arrested Jesus and had him beaten and wanted the disciples and that the disciples had run from, you remember that right when Jesus is arrested, all the disciples scatter. Peter is afraid of a little girl that’s questioning him and he runs away and now after the resurrection they walk right up to those people, and what do they do? They stare them down, they go toe to toe and look at their words; “Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power” (Acts 2:22-24).

Peter is telling them that God had the ability to raise Jesus all along, which means that if you killed him, you did it only with his permission that is the only way that you killed the author of life was with his permission. So, the question becomes, why would he permit it? Why does he allow it? Why does this have to happen the way that it happens? And the answer is; because God is putting on a demonstration, and this is going to be a demonstration that will make a name for God not just then, but so that 2,000 years later people still come together in the month of December and remember this event. They remember his coming. God is putting on a demonstration with the coming of Jesus, just as the death of Jesus demonstrated the magnitude of our sin. Why the violence of the cross? Why the bloodshed? It is a demonstration that we will never forget 2,000 years later. We can’t forget the magnitude of what we cost the Savior, the magnitude of our sin. But, just like God, the demonstration takes another step and with his resurrection, the death of Jesus demonstrates that the magnitude of God’s love is greater than the magnitude of our sin. Even though our sin was great look at the cross, and look at that empty tomb and see that the that the magnitude of God’s love is even greater.

So, how does God, who says that he loves the whole world, how does he show it? How does God, who has made you personally in His image, show you on a personal level and in such a way that it will be remembered even by those of us that 2,000 years later are looking back and reading about the account, and still feel it on a personal level. How does he do it? He makes a personal sacrifice so magnificent and so grand that we’re still talking about it long after we’ve forgotten about the Zimmermann note and the Vox in Rama and everything else that happened in human history. When the rest is forgotten or hidden away in books, we’re still talking about the first coming of Jesus. That’s why Paul says, Romans 5:7-8, “For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

To close, this is a season of gift giving and we give gifts, and that’s traditional part of Christmas, but it’s all built around the giving of the greatest gift. That’s the logic behind gift-giving at Christmas; God gave a gift to demonstrate his love for this rebellious race of humans, for you and I, those that had chosen death instead of life with him through our sinful rebellion. That’s what Christmas is all about, this amazing gift. Because how else would we have known the love that he has for us?

At the time when everybody had given up hope, nobody’s counting on God’s promise being fulfilled, nobody is looking for it, nobody pays attention to how God was setting the stage for the spreading of an incredible message, and at that precise moment a no-name Jewish carpenter finds out that his fiancée is pregnant and he’s shocked, he’s stunned, he’s confused, and hurt and then it happens an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Matthew 1:20-23, “‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.’ Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet:‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which translated means, ‘God with us.’”

That’s what happens right here in the Christmas story; God with us. This is no longer a distant God that we can’t know out there in space. This is now a God who is doing something profoundly personal. So personal that he takes off his crown, lays it down, folds himself into the tiniest most vulnerable form of human existence and is born of a virgin. This is now a personal God that we have relationship with. It’s a demonstration of godly love that is going to be remembered for all time, and once you understand what Christmas is, once you understand what his coming is about, once you embrace who Jesus actually is, the living embodiment of the love God has for all of humanity, the demonstration he makes, you will never question God’s love for you. After all of those years and all of that struggle the unbelievable promise we needed to know becomes real when God gave a demonstration and he wrote a new chapter and in the story of humanity when he scripted the Christmas story.

Part 3 – The Meaning of the Miracle

Last week we left off with this guy in a backwater Jewish community, this guy named Joseph, and he finds out something shocking. The angel tells him, “Joseph son of David don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. . .” Now, this is a sweet, innocent, religious, pious, faithful teenager, Mary, and nobody would expect her to do anything inappropriate, but now she’s pregnant, and so Joseph doesn’t know what to do and now the angel is saying, “Hey don’t worry about her behavior. What is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit, and she will give birth to a son and you’re to give him the name ‘Jesus’ because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet [this is the prophet Isaiah] that the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and they will call him Emmanuel.” What we established last week was that Emmanuel means, “God with us.”

Now, I want you to remember what I’ve stressed the last couple weeks; do not look at this story from our 2020 perspective, looking down on the story like we all know the end before the beginning, like we’ve all heard it before. Rather, look at it from their eyes and from their perspective. They’re trying to make sense of all of this as its unfolding. And what have the Jewish religious leaders made the Jewish faith into? They’d made faith into this legal system where you have this God who was distant, who was out there, and you do these sacrifices and follow these traditions to keep God satisfied and you can live happily, and now they’re being told that God, the God of eternity, the God that they’ve never been able to really know, is now with us. When you hold this baby that you are holding Almighty God in your hands – and you have to support his head. Now, there’s one word for that, just as with the rest of the Christmas story, it’s unthinkable. The idea that you are holding the God of eternity in your hands as these nobody Jewish parents, particularly this young virgin girl.

The Hebrew word for virgin, when Isaiah says that the Virgin will be with child and she’ll give birth to a son and they’ll call him Emmanuel, that Hebrew word for virgin can mean virgin like we’d think of it in the English, but it can also mean a young girl, or a maiden. Now, if you hear a prophecy like this today, if somebody tells you that one day a virgin will conceive or one day a young girl will conceive a baby, what are you going to naturally believe? You’re going to believe that what Isaiah is talking about is a young girl will be with child, because ‘virgins’ do not conceive. I don’t want to go into detail on this but you know what’s required for a woman to have a baby. So, therefore you would never believe if you hear this prophecy knowing that word can mean a young girl or maiden who would have a husband, you would never believe that it’s actually going to be a virgin with child. So, what does that mean? Probably nobody is awaiting a messiah that’s going to actually be born of a virgin. They are hearing that prophecy from Isaiah and awaiting a baby that will be born of a young girl and her husband, who will be risen up to be the Messiah. It was unthinkable to think that a virgin would ever have a child, and nobody’s going to believe that, so what does that mean? Matthew if he’s making this account up, would have no motivation and no reason to make the story literally have a virgin with child. Why? Because of his purpose, to get people to believe it. Why would you ever do that? By writing a virgin, a literal virgin is with child you make that story so much more unbelievable. Especially when nobody needs you to say that. The only reason Matthew wrote that a virgin conceived is because it happened. Because it’s true. Matthew isn’t writing something to try to get us to believe him. Matthew was writing something because it actually happened that way.

Now, look at this part. The angel tells Joseph that she will give birth to a son and that he is to give him the name Jesus. Now, we all know Jesus is Jesus. We’ve always said Jesus. Perhaps some of you know that if you take the Hebrew word for Jesus, the Hebrew word is Yeshua. Some people use that name and say, ‘I’m a follower of Yeshua’ and they say that to be cool. But, if you take the Hebrew word and translate it directly into English, the name isn’t exactly Jesus. Yeshua translated directly into English is Joshua. The Hebrew word for this Messiah, Yeshua, translated it into English is Joshua. So, why is it that we call the Messiah Jesus? It’s because the New Testament is written in Greek, so if you take the word Yeshua and translate it into Greek you get, Iēsous. If you translate Yeshua into Greek you get Iēsous, and if you translate that into English, you get the name English speakers use, which is Jesus.

 Now, what is my point in telling you all of this? It isn’t to get you to start calling Jesus Joshua, or Yeshua, or anything like that. The reason I’m pointing this out is because I’m asking you to remember from their perspective. If they hear that name, that to them signifies Joshua. What are their connections going to be and what are their expectations going to be? Well, their connections are going to be in the Old Testament. Joshua was this great warrior and he was the successor of Moses. He’s the one that took the children of Israel and led them across the Jordan River into the Promised Land and conquered all the Canaanites. So, that’s what these people are hearing when they hear this name. So, what are the expectations going to be for these people and their Messiah? Remember, where they are, the Jews are being occupied and are being oppressed by the Romans. They’re under the thumb of Rome. And now, they hear that the Messiah Joshua has arrived! What are they going to be anticipating? They are longing for a warrior Messiah who will rise up and put the Romans in their place and exalt the Jews just as God had done previously with the first Joshua. That’s their expectation. They don’t have any concept of what God is actually going to do, so when Joseph hears from the angel that Jesus is going to save the people he’s probably very excited. That makes total sense to him because he believes as all of the other Jews do that the Messiah is going to be a political or military Messiah that is going to deliver them from the hands of their earthly oppressors. But then the angel goes on, and I think Joseph had to be confused by this, when the angel says, ‘you’re going to call his name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. I don’t think Joseph was expecting that or understood what that meant. Save us from our sins? The people didn’t think they needed to be saved from their sins. Why? They were God’s chosen people, and they had a system in place. They had a way to take care of their sins. They knew that they would sacrifice an animal and that made everything good. They didn’t need to be saved from their sins because there was already a system in place that brought about restitution. What they wanted was salvation from Rome. So, Jesus comes along in his earthly ministry and challenged their assumptions. That’s one of the major reasons why a large number of them rejected and will reject Jesus as their Messiah. Because he doesn’t fit into the conception of who he’s supposed to be from their traditional perspective. I have to wonder if there’s not a number of us that reject Jesus for who he is because he’s not fitting the conception of who we want him to be and think he ought to be.

We think of Jesus as coming here and the gift of Christmas is Jesus coming to forgive us, but not really to save us. What would you say if I said that Christmas is not about Jesus coming to deliver you from the consequences of your sin? Let’s remember to be careful how we interpret what the consequences of sin are. Even as believers, we still deal with the consequences of sin. Jesus didn’t take those away from us. Let me give you some examples; if you commit the sin of adultery, what are the consequences of adultery? Well, you will probably lose your spouse, most likely you will have strained relationships with your children, and you could probably be contributing to the destruction of another family. And there’ll be awkwardness in relationships from that point forward. Becoming a Christian doesn’t take away the consequences of that sin. You will still have to deal with the consequences of your sin, and Jesus does not remove that from you. If you are a liar and you lie, what are the consequences of that sin? People are not going to trust you. They’re not going to put you in positions of trust or authority. You may sever relationships because of your deception, and becoming a Christian or being a Christian doesn’t remove from you the consequences of that sin.

Being a Christian doesn’t mean you’re relieved of all of the consequences of your sin. If you are a thief there are consequences for that. If you take something that isn’t yours there are legal punishments, and if you’re still struggling to understand the point that I’m making let me add another example to this see if this makes sense. Do you remember the thief on the cross? Jesus is being crucified and the guy right next to him is being crucified and he has a moment of repentance and he turns to Jesus and says “Jesus have mercy on me when you come into your kingdom” and what does Jesus do? Does he turn and say, ‘you know what, I can tell you got a repentant heart, so, boys take him down and let him go.’ No, the man is still crucified. Jesus does not remove the consequences of the sin that he committed. What Jesus does is he looks at him and says, “this day you will be with me in paradise.” In other words, Jesus doesn’t come to relieve the earthly consequences of our sin, rather he comes to do something much bigger. He destroys and delivers us from the power of sin. That’s what Christmas is about. That’s what Paul is writing to the Romans when he says, “sin shall no longer be your master” (Romans 6:14). You aren’t under that anymore, you are under his grace. He writes to the Colossians (1:13) that, “God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness he has brought us into the kingdom of the son.” He loves you, and you are no longer under the reign of sin because of what Jesus did. That’s what Christmas is about. Jesus does so much from the start of Christmas leading all the way to the cross and empty tomb. Jesus comes and says I’m not just here to even the score, I’m here to deal a death blow to the power of sin. He says, “I’ve come to give you life and you are no longer the slave to sin that you were before. That’s what Christmas is about. The author of life itself coming to bring us back from the darkness of sin and back to life for eternity with him.

When the Christmas story begins, nobody was looking for that. Nobody then even knew that they needed it, and they were totally oblivious to that. Everybody had given up. Hopelessness, corruption, and captivity was the norm for them, and then the unthinkable happens.

Remember that whenever we talk about the Christmas story and we sit down and read to our kids on Christmas Eve, you know the story starts in Luke 2, “in those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. . .”  That’s where we usually start the Christmas story, but that’s not where Luke starts it. In Chapter 1, he writes about this Jewish priest named Zachariah. At this time there are about 20,000 priests that are running around doing priestly things all over the country. Now, they would divide these priests up and each group would have a different responsibility but the whole purpose of what the priests were to do is to keep the temple of God up and running. That is the center of their religious life, and it’s the center of everything that was important to them. Every day the priests would go and they would make sacrifices on behalf of the people and on behalf of the people’s sins.

So, you got this priest, Zechariah, and one job that was so important to the priests was offering the sacrifice in the holy of holies, the spiritual presence of God, and one of them gets to go in and take incense into the most holy place, and its literally a once in a lifetime thing for a priest to be chosen for this one-day service. This is a huge job and it’s really important because the priest could die if they entered the presence of God in an inappropriate manner. So, Zechariah gets chosen and he goes in there and what happens? Luke 1:8-17; [Read Luke 1:8-17].

Zechariah probably thinks of that promise as totally utterly unthinkable. There’s no way it’s going to happen. They been trying to have a baby for years, and now they’re beyond those years, and it’s just not going to happen. And keep in mind that he is standing in the most holy place, he has faith, this is where God is present, and he is talking to an angel. If you’re going to believe anybody, wouldn’t it be an angel? And yet, this promise was such a wild, crazy, unthinkable thought that he couldn’t believe it. And so, the angel responds as you might expect, with a sign. [Read Luke 1:19-23].

Now, we know that God is not done with angel encounters because you know that in the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy God sends an angel and this time to Mary and this time the news is even more radical. It may be very, very difficult for an old man and an old woman to conceive a child, but it is far more difficult for a virgin to conceive a child. That is far more unbelievable, she’s a virgin and not only is she going to become pregnant with a child, this child is the son of God. But, how does Mary respond to this? I want you to put yourself in her shoes. You’re a young teenage girl, you’ve done your chores throughout the day in your little Jewish village, and you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, and then it happens. The angel makes his announcement to Mary in Luke 1:26-38. [Read Luke 1:26-37].

Mary gives a perfect response to this news. Verse 38; “And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servantof the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.’”

 Let’s go back 4,000 years to the promise that was given to Abraham, that all generations will be blessed because of what I’m going to do through you. Now look what Mary says in her awesome psalm of praise: [Luke 1:46-55]. She’s looking back on the promise and saying that all generations will call me blessed, why, because God is fulfilling what he promised 2,000 years ago. Right now, it’s finally happening. God’s long-awaited Messiah is coming, and he’s coming in the most unexpected way.

It’s a perfect God-honoring response, but I want you to understand that her response is not perfect because she understood the plan. Do you think that this young girl understood everything that was going to unfold around her? She had no concept of it whatsoever. That’s why we read over and over that Mary, for the next several years, ponders these things in her heart. She takes into account all of this stuff and she compares it to what she’s heard and read in the Old Testament Scriptures, and she’s trying to make sense of it. So, her response is not perfect because she understood what was going on, this whole thing was unthinkable, but her response was perfect because she trusted the source. She trusted God’s messenger. She said, ‘I may not get it. I may not understand fully what you are going to do, but I know you are good. I know you are faithful, and I will trust you.’ That’s exactly what Abraham did. He didn’t get it, he didn’t understand everything, but he did what God told him to do.

To close, don’t forget in this equation that Mary was a sinner and Zechariah was a sinner and Abraham and Jacob and Isaac and Judah and every single person that God will use along the way to fulfilling this promise made 4000 years ago, every single person was a sinner just like you and me. So, Christmas affirms to us that God will keep his word and he’ll do it no matter how flawed we are. He will do it no matter how confused you may be. He will do it no matter how unthinkable it may seem to us in man’s way of thinking that it is impossible, but in God, all things are possible.

What kind of promise do we have? Remember Jesus’s words when he says, “I’m going there into heaven to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I’m going to come back and take you to be with me, that you may also be where I am.” So, when I turn on the news and when I live as those people did in the moment surrounded by everything that’s going on and I see the utter hatred on social media and the way people treat each other, when we see the poverty and the suffering in the world, this promise from Jesus seems unthinkable. But, please, this Christmas, recognize that nothing is impossible when God makes the promise, he is faithful to see it fulfilled.  

Part 4 (conclusion) – Moving Beyond the Manger

This is now the final message in my series on the unthinkable unfolding of the Christmas story, and in each message of this series I have been striving to put all of us into the events and the moments of the Christmas story and feel what they felt and to see how they viewed what must have seemed to them at the time totally unthinkable. Matthew quotes the prophet Micah that Bethlehem would be the city from which the deliverer would come, in Micah chapter 5 – and Jesus was born in the City of David where King David had been born in Bethlehem of Judea. It was otherwise a rather insignificant little town six miles or five miles depending on which way you go south of Jerusalem. Jesus was born there, potentially in a sheltering cave, a stable where the animals would have been kept, and just three centuries later in 333 ad Emperor Constantine had a church built there to mark and to preserve that site. It’s called the Church of the Nativity and was also the place that Jerome wrote the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Scriptures.  And there’s a unique element in that building, the door and its significance is that when you enter into the church building that marks the birthplace of our Savior, the doorway is so short that you have to humbly bow to get in because you’re going into a sacred space.

So, today we’re traveling to Bethlehem back in time to the beginning of the first century, its the day after that Christmas night that we’ve been talking about for weeks. Mary has given birth to Jesus, Joseph is looking upon his son, Shepherds worshiped and returned to the night shift, the newlyweds awaken in the stable for the twentieth time and they just can’t take their eyes off their precious baby. So, imagine you’re there with them. You’re in a sheltering cave with the stench of the animals and I want you to get into the heart of it, and see what it’s like, and to feel what it’s like that the unthinkable has been conceived, God with humanity, and now lies in the feeding trough of the animals. The pungent barn smells of the stable are overtaken by the powerful truth of that transforming event that happened there, the most significant event in human history, God becoming a man. So here are Joseph and Mary. Mary and Joseph looking at their beautiful son, and wondering ‘where do we go next?’ ‘who do we go see?’ ‘what do we do?’ They prayed, they pondered, trying to get their heads around all these events, and we know what happens next.

The day after Joseph and Mary prepared to move from the stable to a house in Bethlehem and then months later away from the manger, these strange foreign visitors dressed in oriental garb enter into the scene. And the first point in the message we see the warning Matthew chapter 2. Beginning at verse 1, [Read Matthew 2:1-8].

So, this remarkable delegation of wealthy wise men in strange clothing with a strange accent come to the house; how many were there we don’t know. We don’t know their names, we don’t know how long they journeyed, but we do know that they came and we do know that when they heard King Herod they departed, verse 9, and “. . .behold the star which they had seen in the East went before them until it came and stood over where the young child was and when they saw the star they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy and when they had come into the house they saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down worshiped him and opened their treasures they presented to him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.” These Magi were a special group of astrologer/scientist/royal advisors from Persia, now modern-day Iran and Iraq, they were respected men of integrity and wisdom, and they come to worship this prophesized King. After they worship Him and give their gifts, and had gone away we now see an angel, the heavenly messenger who speaks to them this warning in verse 12. [Read Matthew 2:12].

 Then in the very next verse, we see another angel encounter. An angel comes to direct Joseph as the head of his family to protect them by fleeing to Egypt. So Joseph and Mary follow his instructions relocating their little family to Egypt across the Sinai desert, through the Sinai Mountains going to the populated regions of Egypt, which is over 75 miles away from Nazareth. So they had fled to Egypt outside of the reach of the government of Judea, but there’s a dark side to the Christmas story and the dark side revolves around one man and he is the murdering monster of a man in Herod. If you didn’t already know, Herod was only half Jewish, more of a puppet ruler placed by the Roman Empire. He was a brilliant builder whose works include the renovation of Temple in Jerusalem, the amphitheater and horse track in Caesarea Maritima, along with an amazing palace built into the Mediterranean Sea that was a favorite vacation spot of the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate, he designed the great palace fortress of Masada in the Negev dessert. And history remembers him as ‘Herod the Great.’ But, he was also insanely paranoid and fearful of losing his power. He was a ruthless ruler and a murderous old man. His victims included his wife, his mother, and several of his sons. Herod’s boss, Caesar Augustus, the Emperor, said it was more safe to be Herod’s pig than to be Herod’s son, , since they didn’t eat pork. So, upon hearing about Jesus from the Magi, his intentions were not to come and worship the child, but to destroy him. [Read Matthew 2:16-18].

So, while this little village is just being ravished and terrified by Herod’s men and grieving with broken hearts, Jesus is being safely protected by God and being whisked away to Egypt. And remember that these new parents, Mary and Joseph, had come from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census, a relatively short trip compared to relocating to a new country. They weren’t prepared for the trip, they’re a poor couple, they were probably ready to go home and show off their baby to family and friends, then the angel says you need to go and flee to Egypt.

Where are they going to have the money for that? Remember the royal gifts that are never again mentioned in Scripture? Gold, frankincense, myrrh. They were prepared by God and given all the resources that they’d need for this trip. God uses the Magi to give them these presents with huge practical value for this temporary exile in Egypt. [Read Matthew 2:14-15].

So, the instruction is explicit; stay there until God reveals the next step. Now it’s a short story in the gospels, only this short passage, but they stayed there for years. I don’t think they heard from an angel for months or years, they were just waiting there. There were Jews living in Egypt, so there’s the potential for some kind of community and friendships, but their families and livelihoods, any possessions are inaccessible to them and their just waiting trying to live this new life.   

And we can’t forget about the mothers of Bethlehem babies slaughtered for no other reason than their association with the birth of one who threatened Herod’s power. We think of them and they’re weeping laminating parents in this great mourning. I can imagine that throughout the village the sound of weeping could be heard everywhere as Herod sought to destroy the rightful King of the Jews, and Satan tried to prevent the day of the cross and God’s rescue plan from being carried out. And during all of this, God guided this special little family away from the manger, away from the danger, away from the reach of Herod into Egypt.

So, around three years later, finally, they’re back home at Nazareth. Matthew 2 verse 19, [Read Matthew 2:19-23]. See, Joseph was listening to the angel’s the messengers brining God’s direction to him and his family, just as he had trusted God’s messenger when taking Mary as his wife while pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and now already years later, he was still sensitive to the leading of God and how God opened and closed doors for the family.

 What’s your takeaway from this message and this series? Seeing the unthinkable ways that the Christmas story unfolds. Looking on at a new year, what is next beyond the manger? From the manger, if you will be open to him, if you will be sensitive to his will, he and his word will lead you going forward.

The Incarnation of Jesus is unthinkable, but it’s not fake news, it’s the good news, and it’s totally true. With the first Christmas, Jesus the divine only Son of God enters our disaster of a world and produces a good outcome. He turns our mess into a miracle. God sets aside his heavenly glory, take on human flesh, intervenes and steps into life with us, and transform us. He comes to make you a new creation, he saves us and keeps us, and now that Christmas is over, maybe it’s time to step into a new year and a new life of faith and hope and love that God has for you. In just a few days we will be in a new year, and if you follow him, day by day, step by step, into the new year, he will guide you. He will open doors and sometimes he will close them. God opens doors and God closes them and sometimes we don’t like it, or how it looks, but he is working behind the scenes and as Romans 8:28 says, is working all things together for good to those who love him and are called trust him. So, if you have not already, its time to turn from your sins, confess him as your Lord, as the only Son of God, to repent of the things that you have done to put a wedge between you and God and to claim his name as the Lord of your life. To be baptized into Christ and to follow him and start a brand-new life for a brand-new year.

With the first Christmas, the unthinkable happens as he comes to transform us and call us to himself. That’s why he’s so unique and that’s why the Christmas event is the most important thing in the world; the Incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us so we could see and know him, and receive eternal life through him.