We live in a world where increasingly mediocrity is the norm. Now that’s not to say that some people don’t work hard, of course they do. And it’s not to say that some people don’t achieve extraordinary things, of course they do. Some are brilliant. Some are bad. But have you noticed, the more choices we have the more complex our life becomes? And the more complex our life becomes, the more detached we become from one another.

I was in a hardware store recently buying some grout for the tiles in our bathroom, just a few dollars. And when I went to the checkout there was a young lady there to serve me. Now I use that term ‘serve’ very loosely. But the young woman at the next checkout she had no-one to serve so she was over here talking with this young lady.

And the whole time I was paying for my purchase these two just chatted away. I think they were a little shocked when I pulled them up because what was happening was that the customer was being treated like, like an interruption to their social life instead of as a customer whose patronage is what pays for their wages.

The more sophisticated our world becomes, the more entertainment options and purchasing options we have, the more detached we become. Not just in the affluent west but in societies where traditionally people have been much closer.

And we’re not just the ones on the receiving end of this mediocrity either. The great temptation is to become part of this culture of mediocrity. To be more concerned about fulfilling our own desires and our own needs and less focused on caring for and loving other people.

I mean, sadly Churches are full of mediocrity. Had an email from a man recently who’d been through some terrible tragedies in his life. As a young boy his parents and sisters had been killed in a car accident. He moved from one foster home to the next and when he grew up he finally got married and his wife and children were out one day and they were killed by a drunk driver.

I mean, can you imagine the pain and the anguish and the misery. The man lost his family twice. And so he ended up, for a time, in a mental health unit. And from there he went to one Church and then another and another and each time he was rejected because of where he lived, to the point where he now even struggles to believe that there is a God.

Come on, let’s examine our own lives. It so easy for us to be annoyed by the mediocrity that others dish up to us and yet it’s so easy for us to dish it up to others as well. See mediocrity begets mediocrity. It’s no more true than the lead up in Christmas, rushing around doing last minute things.

Down here in the southern hemisphere we’re getting ready not only for Christmas, presents and food and all those preparations for goodness knows what. But most of us will be heading off on our summer break. A few well earned weeks of sun, surf and sand. So these next couple of weeks, they’re a frenetic time. You rush around. Maybe in the northern hemisphere it’s not quite as mad but almost. It’s Christmas time after all – presents to buy, family get togethers to organise, lots to do.

So we go down the shops and there are crowds and they’re pushing and shoving and the sales assistant behind the counter, well they’re exhausted. I mean some of them have been working literally around the clock with stores open 24 x 7 in so many places.

So by the time Christmas arrives we kind of just fall over the line. ‘I’ve only just made it. I’m exhausted’. Too tired to think about Christmas; too exhausted to celebrate what Christmas is all about. Anyhow it’s all about spending money on our credit cards, money that most of us don’t have. If you’re living in a country similar to mine you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Mediocrity begets mediocrity. And so the whole idea of Christmas is so easily lost isn’t it? So what if I said to you that Christmas is about receiving the best of the best? The very best that God has to offer. Now it sounds like a great idea but it just doesn’t gel does it?

What if I said to you that Christmas is about a love so great that nothing is too much to give? Sounds wonderful in theory and maybe you’re even someone who believes that that’s what Christmas is all about. Let me ask you this, is that what you’re experience of Christmas actually is? Is that the sort of Christmas that you’ve lived out year after year in the past? Because the answer for 99% of people is, ‘no it’s not’.

And perhaps you’re someone who’s living in a place without the wealth that I’ve been talking about. You’re probably sitting there wondering, ‘man, how can these people live like that?’ Cause there are millions of people listening to this program today who are living in poverty, in war zones afraid of their lives, people who may even be persecuted for believing in Jesus. And you hear some guy from Australia talking about receiving the best of the best from God at Christmas time, a love so great that words can’t describe it. And you look around and you think to yourself, ‘What is he talking about?’

Well what I’m talking about is this. It comes straight from God’s Word, the Bible, and it tells us what Christmas is all about. It comes from 1 John, chapter 4 beginning at verse 9. Have a listen to this, it’s fabulous:

“God’s love was revealed among us in this way that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”

There it is! That is what Christmas is all about. Christmas is God telling us something but what’s He telling? Have another listen. It’s really straight forward.

“God’s love was revealed among us in this way that God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”

See Christmas … Christmas is God telling us how much He loves us. Gods love was revealed among us in this way. And He tells us of this infinite love that He has for us by what? By mere words? By giving me a tie or you a bottle of perfume all wrapped up nice under the tree? No, He tells us about His love in this way, by sending “His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” He tells us of His infinite love by giving us something or someone of infinite value; a gift so great that you can’t put a price on it – His one and only Son.

Now over these next few weeks heading up to Christmas we’re going to spend some time together, some time out from all the madness and carry on that we carry on with, unwrapping this Christmas present of great value. Because the problem with Christmas presents is this. Someone can give you a present but if you just leave it under the tree, if you never unwrap it, what use is it? It’s useless. It just gets thrown out. We need to open the present in order to receive it and the very first Christmas present, God’s one and only Son, is no different.

Because when we unwrap this present, the only Son that He sent into this world, we discover that we can live through Him; that we can have a new life through Jesus Christ.

See this whole Christmas thing has got nothing to do with religion. It’s got nothing to do with rituals. There were no rituals in that stable on that starry, starry night. There was just a baby. Just this baby born into the world who came to save me and came to save you.

And so I’ve called this series “Receiving The Best Of The Best”. It’s about Gods best. There is no better ‘best’ than this one. And my prayer is that as we share together some of the stories of this miraculous coming of God in the flesh, it would be kind of like, like unwrapping that present in our hearts.

And my prayer for you and for each one of us is that in doing that together we’ll be receiving the best of the best. God’s best – Gods one and only Son whom He sent into this world so that we might live through Him.

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One of the saddest sights I think I’ve ever seen is a forest of old growth trees cut down. These beautiful majestic old trees that began their lives as little seeds fallen to the forest floor, that grew through many decades of sun and wind and rain and storm to become majestic old trees: trees that provided homes for the birds and the animals; trees that breathe fresh oxygen into an atmosphere choking on co2; trees that provided shade and beauty and a rich organic fragrance. And then, in just a few hours, men with chainsaws can come along and fell this ancient forest.

What’s left are stumps. What remains are just these dead things where once there was life. All those stumps in the ground, they’re like tombstones marking the loss of life, that sense of desolation. An empty field with stumpy gravestones everywhere, where once there was life and majesty and beauty.

All to satisfy the cravings we have for stuff, things. Furniture that one day will be thrown out. Furniture made from the wood that belonged to these once majestic old trees. I look at one of those stumps and what I see is a life cut short. Brutal. Ugly. Sad. It’s truly one of the saddest of all sights.

I don’t know about you but I remember a time in my life where it felt like my life was one of those stumps. It felt as though my life had been cut off, that same feeling of brutal desolation and hopelessness. Because when a tree’s been cut down like that, well that’s it. It’s all over. There’s no hope. There’s no future, just a tombstone to mark the spot.

And so it was in the life of Israel. I mean amazing things happened to these people. From the first time God engaged with Abraham and gave him a son, Isaac, who had a son, Jacob, who had twelve sons that became the twelve tribes of Israel. And then for centuries they were slaves in Egypt and God brought them out through Moses through the Red Sea. The forty year exodus in the wilderness into the Promised Land that He’d originally promised to Abraham.

They had kings and judges and then they split north and south and they began to dishonour God and so God punished them. Babylon was the world power and they came and destroyed Israel, took the people, took them back into captivity for seventy years. And even when they came back for centuries they were under foreign occupation.

And God all the time was speaking to them through the prophets of old. But the people rejected Gods prophets. They killed most of them. And then they went through these brutal occupations because they’d turned their backs on their God. And now they were paying the price.

And then, then all of a sudden God stopped to talk to them. God stopped sending His prophets to call His people back to Him. There was a deafening silence from God. And that went on for four centuries. By that time the Romans had occupied the land and Caesar was a brutal dictator.

The people were heavily oppressed again here in their own land. All these promises that God had made to them – the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, being blessed, all hope they had for their future, gone. They needed a king. They needed a messiah like King David of old to lead them back to freedom the way David had done 1,000 years before.

But nothing. Just stumps, just dead promises, just tombstones where once there was freedom and vibrancy and blessing and life. Things looked completely lost and hopeless for the nation of Israel.

But centuries before God had spoken of this time. Centuries before the prophet Isaiah had foretold of what God would do amidst this desolation. Have a listen with me to what God said through Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 11 beginning at verse 1:

“A shoot shall come forth from the stump of Jesse. A branch shall grow out of his roots. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding and the spirit of counsel and might. The spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.”

“He shall not judge by what His eyes see or decide by what His ear hears but with righteousness He shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of this earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth and with the breath of His lips He shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around His waist and faithfulness the belt around His loins.”

What a fabulous picture. “A shoot shall come from the stump of Jesse.”

Jesse was King David’s father who lived 1,000 years before Jesus was born. David had been promised something by God. Around 1,000 BC David had had a victory over his enemies, he was feeling pretty chuffed with himself. You know, he was pretty pleased with himself. And he decided to build a house for God, a temple. ‘I’ll do this for God as my way of thanking God.’

But God turned that idea on its head with this promise in 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 12 to 16:

“When your days are fulfilled”, said God to David, “And you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up for you an offspring after you who shall come forth from your body and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever”

“I will be a father to him, he will be a son to me. When he commits inequity I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use with blows inflicted by human beings. But I will not take my steadfast love from him as I took it from Saul whom I put away from before you.”

“Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before Me. Your throne shall be established forever.”

See this is a great promise to David, king of Israel, 1,000 BC that he would have a kingdom forever. That’s why Isaiah talks of the stump of Jesse because it’s a promise, a grand majestic promise to rule forever but here we were, the beginning of the 1st century all those promises seemed dead. Israel was an occupied land.

What happened to God’s promise? It was cut off like a stump. For centuries just a dead desolate stump but then comes Jesus – a direct descendant from Jesse and then from David. One of David’s royal bloodline and He emerges, not with some great trumpet fanfare, He doesn’t burst onto the worlds stage in a blaze of media glory, some superstar.

He is born into a filthy stable somewhere in Bethlehem. And the picture of His birth is painted here by Isaiah centuries before. It’s a picture that emerges out of the desolation of Israel and out of the promise that God made to David many years before. Isaiah chapter 11, verse 1:

“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”

My friend, this is so often how Jesus chooses to come into our lives. Amidst the desolation and the loss and the sense of what should have been and what could have been. He doesn’t come with a great trumpet fanfare. He comes as a tender green shoot, a new shoot, a new life, so soft, so delicate, just a small green bud of life that bursts forth from a dead stump to grow a mighty tree.

That’s what was going on that night Jesus was born into this world. That’s what goes on in our lives when we accept Jesus Christ into our hearts. A shoot shall come forth and a branch shall grow out of its roots. He brings a tender new shoot, a small, soft, green, shoot of life.

That’s what Christmas is about. That’s what Jesus wants to do in my life and wants to do in your life. That’s the plan of God.

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Now I’m old enough to remember the days when having a child out of wedlock was a scandal. A young woman found herself pregnant and her parents would send her out of town to have her baby so that she would give it up for adoption so that the family would be spared of the shame and the embarrassment.

That’s the way things were. These days of course couples routinely just live together without being married. They have children without being married. So no-one seems to bat an eyelid when it happens. But it was a different thing back then, 30 or 40 years ago, it was a scandal.

So imagine what a scandal it was back in the time when Jesus was born, a time and a place where adultery was punishable by death. Imagine what a scandal it was when Mary fell pregnant while she was engaged to Joseph before they were married.

Joseph had planned to dismiss her because he knew that he wasn’t the father. And she came up with this crazy notion that God was the father. Not some man but God Himself. Oh please, it’s pretty original to be sure but who’s ever going to believe this peasant girl that God made her pregnant and that she’s carrying God’s Son and not Joseph’s son. I mean, really!

Kind of an odd thing for God to do wasn’t it? Why would God have His Son conceived in this way? And why would He allow His Son to be born into the world amidst the hint of scandal and innuendo? I don’t care what anyone says, this thing would have been dogging Jesus all of His life.

Everyone in Nazareth knew He was illegitimate, they just knew. They would have showed this disgust and distaste in their eyes and the way they spoke to Him. It’s a really weird thing for God to do it this way. To bring His one and only Son into the world amidst scandal instead of with a fanfare of glory, don’t you think?

But centuries before, centuries through the prophet Isaiah, this is something that God had predicted. That His Son would be born of a virgin. Have a listen. Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14:

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and we will call Him Immanuel.”

And that word ‘Immanuel’ literally means God is with us. That was written by the prophet Isaiah over 700 years before Jesus was born. God deliberately, very deliberately does something that is so miraculous and so subject to abuse by people lying that it was completely and utterly unbelievable.

You can just see Mary, this young peasant girl, red faced, ‘No, no, no, I didn’t sleep with anyone. God did it. God made me pregnant.’ Imagine if your daughter or my daughter came home pregnant with a tall tale like that. Please.

But this was God’s sovereign choice because He wasn’t concerned about what people had to say; about the rumour mongers and the opinions of men and women. God had a much bigger fish to fry. He wanted us to know something about Him that people, until then, hadn’t really realised.

And it can only be told through this story of Christmas. A child, a Son, Gods own Son, conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. God had something to say and we hear Him saying it for the first time out of the mouth of the young Jesus.

He was only twelve years old and His parents had temporarily misplaced Him. Imagine that. God entrusts His one and only Son to you and you lose Him. They’d left Jerusalem to return home after a festival. But Jesus, unbeknown to them, had remained behind in the Temple. When finally they found Him a few days later this is what Jesus said to Mary and Joseph. Luke chapter 2, verse 49, says this:

“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house.”

This was blasphemy. He was calling God his Father. See the name of God was so sacred to the Jews, Yahweh, that they rarely even uttered it on their lips. And here, here was this brat calling God, Dad, a casual, familiar term.

And so began one of the greatest revelations of God that we have ever had – God the Father, my Dad and your Dad. And Jesus spoke often of His Father as though the Father and Jesus were one of the same. John chapter 14, verse 23:

“Those who love me will keep my Word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

See, Dad and me. We’re going to do this. We talk about God the Father as a way of understanding our relationship with Him. God is my Father in heaven. And Jesus talked about Him that way too. But it also had a far different meaning for Jesus because quite literally, in a physical sense, God was His Father. It wasn’t Joseph, it was God because it was God who had made Mary to conceive. And so when Jesus talked about His Dad, I mean He meant it literally.

Up until then God had been seen as this mighty and powerful and distant God by His people. Sure, He’d done many, many good things for them. He blessed them many miracles, many victories over their enemy, many blessings. But He was the God in heaven. He was the distant God.

And when Jesus came to earth, when God came to be with us, Immanuel, to be one of us, He came to tell us, ‘God is our Dad’. He came to reveal God to us in a whole new way because He could. He was the one, the first one, able to call God, Dad, because God was His Dad.

Only the Son could reveal that to us. For God, that deep revelation that you and I now have, the scandal was worth it. In fact it was plainly obvious to Him. He wanted this message to ring down through the century’s right here and now to you and me. He wanted us to hear these words through His Son, ‘I am your Father’.

Many of the people listening today didn’t have such a wonderful relationship with their dads. Maybe you’re in that boat. But as we head towards yet another Christmas, my prayer is this gentle and beautiful and utterly wondrous truth would lay heart of your soul.

I pray that through Jesus you will hear God whispering, ‘I am your Dad’ with all that that means: a Father to love us and to guide us and to give us His wisdom and to protect us through His strength and sometimes, out of His great love for us, to discipline us. When Jesus came He revealed Himself. He revealed God Himself.

“If you have seen Me (said Jesus) you have seen My Father.”

This Jesus, this is exactly what God’s like – gentle and strong, powerful and loving.

I wonder if the next time that you and I are struggling with something, the next time we’re feeling down, the next time we feel like there’s no tomorrow, I wonder if we just remember in our hearts this wonderful truth that God’s our Dad. I wonder what that would do to change our world. I wonder how that would colour our perception.

I wonder how that would lift us up above the pain and the fear and the temptation and all that’s going on here on earth. Who’s the Father? God is.

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I have a bread shop near where I live and I’m absolutely positive that what they do is they have a secret electric fan that kind of blows the smell of fresh bread out into the street so that when I walk past I just can’t help myself. When I smell that wonderful smell of freshly baked bread I just have to go in and buy something.

In Australia our favourite starchy staple is bread. In other places like much of Asia it’s rice. Whatever it is, without it we never feel full. I know sometimes when I’m travelling in Asia it can be almost impossible to get a sandwich for lunch. And after a few weeks I’m absolutely craving for some fresh bread. Rice just doesn’t do it.

And for the Japanese, when they’re travelling and they can’t get rice for breakfast it’s the same thing. They just don’t feel full. As someone once said it’s like having two stomachs. One for rice and the other one for the food we eat. Unless you get the rice, or in my case the bread, you just don’t feel full.

Bread is one of the staples of life. It is today and it was back when Jesus was born. Not only is it a staple but well there’s nothing like the smell of freshly baked bread and the texture and the taste. It’s fabulous.

This week on the program and again next week we’re unwrapping that very first Christmas present, Jesus Himself. On Monday we saw how easy it is to miss God’s best, the best of the best in our mad rush, just to ‘fall over the line’ at Christmas time – shopping, preparations, family, so many things to do.

And we do Christmas and then it’s gone and no-one thinks much about the message of Christmas and what it means the day after. It’s like a birthday. Well it was a birthday wasn’t it? It’s gone, we’ve all moved on.

And yet Christmas is about God giving His very best to us, a gift of such great value – His Son, His one and only Son, given for you and for me. And so what we’re doing is taking some time in these weeks leading up to Christmas to unwrap that present, to receive it. And we’re doing that through just a few of the stories that surround Christmas, the events leading up to it. What was going on?

Today we’re going to look at it from yet another angle. It’s all about, well bread. Now most of us know the story. Mary was a young peasant girl. Joseph was a carpenter. The two were engaged and she fell pregnant and she claimed God had done it.

Now there was a census. The Romans were good at this sort of stuff and they had to travel to their ancestral home for the Roman census. For them that meant Bethlehem. These days we just sort names and things in the computer. But back then they actually had to do the physical sorting by travelling back to their ancestral home.

And so they had a donkey and they got to Bethlehem and there was no room in the inn and so they ended up out in the stable out the back and Jesus was born in a grubby, smelly, draughty stable. And on the story goes. Interesting place this Bethlehem.

Remember King Herod was all threatened by the news of another king being born. So he summons the Jewish religious leaders to ask them about it. You can read it in Matthew chapter 2, verses 1 to 6:

“In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the east came from Jerusalem asking, “Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews? For we observed His star at it’s rising and have come to pay Him homage.”

“When King Herod heard this he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him and calling together all the chief priests and the scribes of the people he enquired of them where the messiah was to be born. They told him in Bethlehem of Judah for so it has been written by the prophet, “And you O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah are by no means least amongst the rulers of Judah. For from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people, Israel.”

They were quoting the Old Testament prophet Micah chapter 5 which was written between 650 and 750 years before. And this word ‘Bethlehem’, this place where Jesus was to be born or He actually was born, it means literally this. Bethlehem means the house of bread.

And this of the man who later said to His disciples, “I am the bread of life.” I am the staple of your life. Without me you will always be hungry. Without me you’ll never be satisfied. That’s what He meant by saying, “I am the bread of life.”

And remember later, just before He was crucified, when He instituted the Lord’s Supper, what we call communion today. Let’s have a look at it, Luke chapter 22, verse 19:

“Jesus took a loaf of bread and when He had given thanks He broke it and gave it to them saying, “This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

So what was this fascination that God has with Jesus being like, well a loaf of bread? Born in the house of bread, the Bread of Life, and then taking a loaf of bread and saying:

“This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

What’s going on here? And the world, for the last 2,000 years, you know Christians have celebrated this bread thing through communion over and over and over again, millions of times. Can you imagine? A lot of Churches every Sunday, they do Holy Communion. They go through this ritual and the bread is broken and people consume the bread and they consume the wine and they do that in remembrance of Jesus.

What’s God saying to you and me, here and now about Jesus and this whole ‘bread’ thing? Born in Bethlehem, literally the house of bread.

“I am the bread of life.”

And then giving us a loaf of bread, breaking it and saying:

“This is my body.”

What’s this all about? Bread. Fresh bread is fantastic. It’s just the best thing. Jesus is like this bread. He is the staple of life and we’re meant to eat from this staple. John chapter 6, verse 51:

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Those who eat my flesh, those who drink my blood have eternal life and I will raise them up on the last day. For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them.”

And you know what happens straight after Jesus told the crowds that? A whole bunch of them went, ‘this is really weird’ and they just turned away and left Jesus. They didn’t want to know anything about this.

My friend, what this means is that Jesus gave His body for us and that brings life and unless we participate in this, unless we consume it and use it as our spiritual food, unless we bite into this, unless we have it as part of who we are, we can’t have eternal life. We can’t have life to the full here on earth.

Next time you walk past a bread shop and smell that wonderful smell let God speak this truth into your heart. That’s what’s going on here with Jesus. He saying, ‘Look you can’t keep me at a distance. You have to take Me in and eat and swallow and digest and let My death and resurrection become part of who you are ’cause that’s what was going on at the cross.’

You and I have eternal life and abundant life today because He put His body on the line. God is telling us a story here. Do you think it’s a coincidence that the prophet prophesized that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, the house of bread? Do you really think that?

God is revealing Himself to us in such a tangible way that the taste and the texture and the smell of bread, it’s just the best and that’s what Christmas is about. God’s best. The best of the best.

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I remember when I was a young man training to be an army officer at the Royal Military College Duntroon. Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia. It was a special occasion and we put on a parade for her, all 400 of us. It was a grand affair, pomp and ceremony, and we practised extra hard for that parade. I have to tell you our drill was just spot on.

We had an honour guard to line the entrance of the college and we were waiting three hours in the hot sun, standing to attention because she was running late. The cadet on my right collapsed in the heat. It was an amazing thing, so much effort for so many people. But after all, the Queen was visiting. That’s what you do for royalty; at least we did back then.

And that’s why, when I look back to the coming of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, that first Christmas a couple of thousand years ago, that’s why it’s such a strange affair.

It’s odd that if Jesus truly was and is the Son of God. How odd that He should enter this world, not with a fanfare of trumpets and a parade, not with a clear announcement and proclamation amongst God’s chosen people, Israel, but with His glory veiled, hidden. Strange that He should arrive in a stable, don’t you think?

Strange indeed. I know if I were God my son surely would have been born into a castle. No-one would have been in any doubt who he was or what he was there for. No, if I were God people would have been waiting on my son hands and feet. There would have been parades and honour guards and pomp and ceremony that’s for sure.

But fortunately for you, I guess, I’m not God. And God chose this rather odd way of bringing His Son into the world. Was it something He dreamed up on the spur of the moment or was it always His plan? Well if we go back to the prophet Isaiah who prophesised over 700 years before the birth of Jesus, it seems that God had always had a plan for His Son to be, well humble. Have a listen to this, Isaiah chapter 53, verses 1 to 3:

“Who has believed what we’ve heard and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground he had no formal majesty that we should look at him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised and we held him of no account.”

That’s what Isaiah said about the coming of Jesus. Just think about it a moment. Israel were God’s chosen people. They lived in the promises of God, God’s Promised Land which God gave them many, many years before. And they had blessing. It was a land flowing with milk and honey. It truly was a beautiful place.

But Gods people rejected God and so in 587 BC they were punished. The Babylonians rose up. They became the world power. They invaded the country. They destroyed everything including the Temple and they took the people into captivity, into slavery in Babylon for seventy years.

And after that, even though they got to return back to the Promised Land, they were always under foreign occupation: first the Persians, then the Greeks and now, just before Jesus is born, the Romans – the brutal Roman Empire occupation. So by the time Jesus was about to be born they were expecting a king to save them from this occupation. To set them free. To restore them back to the freedom that they’d known in the Promised Land under kings like David a thousand years before.

They were expecting a messiah all right but one like you and I would expect when someone says the word ‘king’. See, surely God would send them another king like David to sit on the throne in Jerusalem and kick those Romans out and restore Israel back to it’s former glory. Back to the blessings that God had promised Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Back to the things that God had promised King David.

But that didn’t happen. In fact the nation of Israel lived under one form of occupation or another until, well until when … 1948 when the modern state of Israel was declared. Almost 2,000 years later.

See, God wasn’t in the business back then of meeting the worldly expectations of His people and my hunch is, He’s still not in the business of meeting the worldly expectations of His people. He was doing something different, something new. And so He sends them His Son, the Messiah who, as Isaiah prophesised:

“He had no formal majesty that we should look at Him. Nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”

And what did the people do? Did they rejoice? Did they say, ‘wow, look at what Gods done. God’s done something so much better than what we ever expected. He didn’t send us an earthly king to establish our earthly kingdom, a kingdom that surely would one day have to pass away. No, no, God has sent us a heavenly king to establish the kingdom of heaven here on earth, a Kingdom that will never pass away.’

Is that the conclusion they came to? No! Again as Isaiah prophesised 700 years before and rightly predicted:

“He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised and we held him of no account.”

In fact, even after three and a half years as His disciples seeing all the amazing miracles Jesus did, hearing Him preach all those amazing sermons, even witnessing His death and His miraculous resurrection, after all of that here’s what His disciples asked Him. Acts chapter 1, verse 6:

“When they come together with Him they asked Him, “Lord, is this the time when you’ll restore the kingdom of Israel?”

See they couldn’t let go of their worldly world view. They still didn’t get it. They still thought that Jesus came to restore Israel back to its former glory. Jesus wasn’t born on that starry night in Bethlehem to fit in with our expectations and to dance to our tune. He didn’t come to establish something that, one day, would pass away. He came to establish an utterly different kind of kingdom, the Kingdom of God that reigns in our hearts; a Kingdom not of this world; a Kingdom that would last forever.

Let me ask you, what do you make of this rather strange sort of King, Jesus? What is His coming mean to you? What does Christmas mean to you? Is it still a child’s pantomime, this kind of ritual thing that you go through year after year? Or has this rather odd, rather radical, rather unconventional King established His Kingdom in your heart?

And if you’re struggling to answer that question, if you’re not quite sure whether He’s touched your heart then, my friend, you’re not alone. Many a man, many a woman struggles to know, how can I know if Jesus is the Lord of my life?

Well actually it’s much easier than you think. When you hear these words about Jesus, when you hear the story of Christmas, as you listen to someone telling you the story of Jesus, your heart aches to belong to Him. That’s how you know. You hear about Jesus and you think, ‘Yes, yes. That is what I want. That is what I want for the rest of my life. That is what I want for the rest of eternity. I want to know Jesus.’

My friend, if your heart aches like that then can I implore you, this Christmas live it differently. This Christmas live it for Jesus.

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