There’s an old Song by Sting called, “Message in a Bottle”. Maybe that’s what Christmas is – a message in a bottle. But who’s it for? You, me? … surely not!

IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE

I have to tell you it Is hard to believe that we are on the home straight again – just turned that corner into December again – the end of another year. The shops are full of Christmas decorations. You know, it seems like just yesterday it was January and here we are, another one over – it’s hard to believe.

As I sat down this year to think about messages for December, you know, the whole Christmas, New Year thing, I just felt that this year, we need to take some time and start looking and talking about Christmas just a bit early. You know this whole rush, rush, rush thing that many of us go through and then in the middle of it all, in this clamber and noise and busyness, the end of the year, you hear ministers talking about the “real meaning of Christmas” – yea, right! I just want to get over the line; I just want to finish the year.

Ever thought about this – the challenge for ministers and people like me is to talk about Christmas each year. In part there’s a sense of, “Well, what do I say? I mean, it’s Christmas – we all know the story; we all know the meaning.” Do we, really? Rush, rush, rush, buy the turkey, the Christmas pantomime and then it’s all over. And all the time you know, people are living lives that fall so short of, well, a full life; a satisfying life.

Now sometimes people criticise me for saying things like that. “You religious people are always telling us that our lives fall short; you tell us something is missing; you tell us this and that”. There’s a tension between what I call the advertising industry view of the world, on the one hand and, you know, the glossy images of success we are all trying to live up to and the reality on the other.

And it’s not just me – there’s a great song by Sting a few years ago called, “Message in a Bottle” – remember that one? This is how the lyrics start off:

Just a castaway, an island lost at sea.
Oh another lonely day and no one here but me.
Oh more loneliness than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair.
I’ll send you an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle.

And it finishes up like this:
Walked out this morning, don’t believe what I saw
Hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore.
Seems I’m not alone at being alone.
Hundred billion castaways looking for a home.
I’ll send an SOS to the world
I hope that someone gets my message in a bottle.

It’s a song that connected with a lot of people. It’s a song that tells it just the way things are for so many people. It flips under that thin veneer of so called “success” – all those glossy, successful images the advertising industry used to get us to buy their stuff. And somehow, this song, “Message in a Bottle”, speaks to the heart – it’s real.

So what are you saying, Berni, that we are all a bunch of losers? No, not that. Look around – there are so many people succeeding; doing amazing things: they’re talented; their able; their committed – there’s lots of good stuff happening in the world. Mixed up with lots of bad stuff too – it’s always been that way.

I guess though, I want to think for a moment about this whole “Message in a Bottle” thing. Is it true? Are there a whole bunch of lonely people out there? I was reading an article in the weekend newspaper the other day about the internet and blogging. The word ’blog’ is short for ’weblog’. It’s where people, mostly young, but plenty of not so young as well, get on line on the internet and they share their thoughts and their photos and their videos on this – it’s like a personal billboard – for the whole world to see.

How many people do you think there are on the internet, blogging – you know, people with their own personal blog sites? Over a hundred million! A hundred million – all sending out their ‘message in a bottle’ – all crying out to be noticed; all wanting to be significant.

I asked my daughter – “what’s it all about – I mean, you know, why do you do this blogging thing?” And she said it’s all about how many friends you can have subscribing to your blog – whether it’s on myspace.com or youtube or – it seems like this “message in a bottle” thing is happening in a way today, that Sting could never have imagined when he wrote that song a few years ago.

Maybe you’re not a blogger – I’m not – but you know what I’m talking about. There’s this search for significance; looking for that place where, finally “I’ve found myself. I’ve discovered who I am. There’s a deep sense of satisfaction about life and me and how I fit in.”

Well, often it’s not so much about our circumstances but just about finding who we are and connecting and knowing why we are here and what our future is and where we’re going. People are sending out their message in a bottle in the most amazing way. Sometimes it’s through crime – it’s about attention; about wanting to be noticed and needed. Yet the vast majority, I believe, live out life without ever really discovering who they are and why they’re here and where they are going.

Here we are at the beginning of December, hurtling towards Christmas. I know what you are thinking! ‘Isn’t it a bit too early for you to be talking about Christmas, Berni? Well not really – the shops have had their Christmas decorations up for weeks now. We are taking an early look at Christmas over these next few weeks because Christmas started well before Christmas; well before that starry night in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. The first Christmas started a long time before that.

We know that Christmas probably wasn’t in December because the shepherds were unlikely to be tending their flocks out by night in the middle of winter. And I guess, we all kind of know the Christmas story, the whole baby Jesus, born in a manger thing – Mary and Joseph and the donkey and the shepherds and the wise men from the East – all that stuff. But my hunch is the whole Christmas thing started well before that night in Bethlehem.

A RADICAL CONCEPT

I was saying before that the whole Christmas thing started well before that night in Bethlehem. In fact, we know that it did. If you look through the Old Testament – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it because we are going to go there in a minute – the old Hebrew Scriptures, thirty nine books, written by different people over many centuries before Jesus was born.

And the Old Testament contains a whole bunch of predictions or prophesies about Jesus – some are very, very specific, like: He would be born in Bethlehem, born of a virgin, of the tribe of Judah, the house of David – well over a hundred and that’s a conservative estimate. It predicted how He would die; it predicted there would be soldiers gambling away His clothes; all sorts of things, things that Jesus would have found pretty hard to arrange for Himself, unless of course, He was who He says He was.

Kind of a weird thing – what was God up to? Why are these predictions throughout the Old Testament about Jesus the Son of God? In fact, can I ask even a more direct question than that? Why Jesus at all? I mean why send Jesus His only Son to become a man and ultimately to die for you and me? Why not just forgive us and be done with it. I mean, I’m sorry to sound cynical, but why the theatrics? This is how I used to think. Not bad questions really.

One of these places in the Old Testament that points forward to Jesus and shows us the shepherd heart of God happens in the Book of Ezekiel, chapter 34. If you’ve got a Bible, open it up; let’s go to Ezekiel, chapter 34 and verse 11 – this is what it says:

I myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after My sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness.

And again in verse 16:

I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd My flock with justice.

There’s this sense of the heart of a shepherd and you see it right through the Old Testament, over and over again, God talking about His shepherd heart; His heart to be in our midst. What if God saw all our bottles lying on that beach, like we heard in that song; the lyrics from “Message in a Bottle”?

What if He heard the cry of our hearts? What if God always knew that the only way to still our hearts and satisfy our souls was for us to know Him? What if, well, what if Jesus is God’s “Message in a Bottle” to us; to you and me? For me the constant theme of the Bible, from beginning to end, is God’s heart to be in our midst. You see it over and over and over again.

Remember the Exodus, when God heard the cry of His people who were oppressed in Egypt as slaves and He sends Moses to Pharaoh to tell Pharaoh, “Let My people go.” And so eventually they flee and God protects them and they pass through the Red Sea and then they spend forty years in the wilderness. Let me ask you, where’s God in all of this? Where’s God in the wilderness?

Come with me to Exodus, chapter 40 – the last chapter in the Book of Exodus – we’ll have a look at verses 1 to 5. It says this:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Set up the Tabernacle or the Tent of the Meeting Place on the first day of the first month. Place the Ark of the Covenant in it and shield the Ark with a curtain. Bring in the table and set out what belongs on it, then bring in the lamp stand and set up its lamps. Place the gold alter of incense in front of the Ark of the Testimony and put the curtain at the entrance to the Tabernacle or the Tent. (The word “tabernacle” means “tent”.)

And again later in that chapter, beginning at verse 34, it says this:

Then, when Moses had done all of these things, a cloud covered the Tent of the Meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the Tabernacle, they would set out but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day that it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the Tabernacle by day and fire was in the cloud by night in the sight of all the House of Israel during all their travels.

See, all the other gods that the different nations worshipped were up on hills – they lived in temples. That’s why the Old Testament talks about and condemns the high places because people had to go to those tin-pot little gods and idols up on the temples on hills and worshipped them – the people went to the gods. But the real God; the God of Israel – God wanted to be in the midst of His people.

This notion was so radically different. I mean, we weren’t there and so it’s harder for us to appreciate how radically different God’s approach is. And He was the only God who was like this. When they camped, the Tabernacle – the Tent of the Meeting; the Tent where God’s presence resided – was right in the middle of them.

There were twelve tribes of Israel – they would camp three to the north, three to the south, three to the east and three to the west. God was smack, bang in the middle. And you notice what it says here:

In all the travels … (Exodus, chapter 40, verse 36)

Notice how God uses “all”:

In ‘all’ the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the Tabernacle, they would set out but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the Tabernacle by day, fire was in the cloud by night in the sight of ‘all’ the House of Israel during ‘all’ their travels.

That’s why again, over and over in the Scripture, you read these words and you can read them with me here in Leviticus, chapter 26, verses 11 and 12. God says:

I will put My dwelling place among you and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God and you will be My people.

Please understand with me, how radical this is – how totally contrary it is to people’s expectation about a god – how different the true God is from all the other gods that all the nations worship.

Their concept was by and large of appeasing the gods so they wouldn’t be punished. Here the God of Israel says, “I’m a God of relationship. I want to be with My people, on their journey, in their midst, all the time, where all the people can see Me.” And then the whole of the rest of the story of the Old Testament is about Israel’s struggle with God. That word “Israel” literally means “he struggles with God”.

Over and over again God sent His prophets to call the people back to Him and over and over again Israel rejects God and suffers the consequences. And for me the whole of the Old Testament is kind of screaming out, “IT AIN’T WORKING!” We can’t hold up our end of this bargain – we need a different approach – and so it was.

IN THE FLESH

Christmas is such a wondrous time and it’s true for so many of us, it’s easy to miss in the hurly burly of life. I wonder as you chew over the Scriptures we’ve looked at today how radical is it to you, this shepherd heart of God; this heart that God has to be in our midst? It’s one thing to read about it, as God expressed it back then, but here and now? I don’t know about you, but I find it easy to forget – to forget that God is on this journey with me.

Let’s look at Ezekiel’s words again. Ezekiel, chapter 34, verse 14:

I will tend them in a good pasture and on the mountain heights of Israel will be your grazing ground. There they will lie down in good grazing land and there they will feed in a rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I, Myself will tend My sheep and have them lie down’, declares the sovereign Lord.

What’s this “lying down” business? Have you ever asked that question? Well, it’s shepherd language. See a shepherd knows that sheep will only lie down when they feel safe and when they feel at peace. And often you see it, the shepherd walks in their midst and they start to lie down because they feel safe – they don’t feel like they’ve got to run away from danger. And for God in this language here in Ezekiel, He’s saying, “By putting Myself in the midst of the people, I want to bring them peace and rest and joy in a good pasture, in good grazing land where they can feed on rich pasture.”

So we see God with this amazing heart to be smack, bang in the middle of our lives. And the logical extension of that, as He talks about it in the Old Testament, is He becomes one of us – flesh and blood; human. It’s exactly what John writes – he called Jesus “The Word”, the expression of who God is; God talking to us and telling us who He is, through Jesus. And the beginning of John’s Gospel starts this way:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning and through Him all things were made. Without Him nothing was made that has been made.

But look just a bit further down in that same chapter – John, chapter 1, verse 14:

Then the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory; the glory of the One and only who came from the Father full of grace and truth.

See the next logical step is that God becomes man. And the word that John uses for “made His dwelling among us”, means “tabernacle or tent”. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us,” is what John writes here. He pitched His tent right in our midst. What does that remind you of? The Exodus story, we looked at just before on the programme – God on our journey with us.

It’s come back to the radicalness of this thing that God did. The Son of God becomes the Son of Man. We’ll look at that and what it says to us a bit more next week. But talk is cheap, right? Anyone can talk – God can talk but actions speak louder than words – that’s what Christmas is about.

Christmas is about the shepherd heart of God in action – it’s a radical step. God slips quietly into this world in a stable – humble but not unnoticed. At Christmas God slips quietly into our lives and on our journey. How different would our lives look if we truly came to grips with the fact that God is on this journey with us?

Maybe I’m thick, but whenever troubles or opposition or tension or temptation comes in my life, I find it very, very easy to forget that, through Jesus God is on this journey with me. Like all the other nations around Israel who had gods out there; gods that they had to go to; gods that they had to shout a distance to; gods that they had to appease, you and I when life gets hard, can be like them.

You know what; the only thing that stops me from living my life under the yolk of that terrible misconception is that I spend a lot of time in God’s Word. My Rock and my anchor – God is speaking to me every day, through His Word, saying to me, “I am on this journey with you. When I sent My Son to become a man, one of the prime things I was saying to you is that I have come to tabernacle in your midst – I have come to be in this place with you – I have come to walk the roads that you walk, to feel the pain that you feel, to deal with the temptations and the trials that you have to deal with.”

Jesus is God in our midst. That’s why in Isaiah it says:

Thou shall call Him Emmanuel – God is with us.

And as Jesus walks with us and we walk with Him and we build that relationship, His heart is for us to lie down in good pasture, to have peace.

My peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you.

“I know how you feel, not just because I’m God but because I’ve walked the road ahead of you. I’ve dealt with all the things you have to deal with.”

I don’t know about you, I wasn’t born in a stable, but my Saviour was. I didn’t have to flee King Herod as he tried to kill me, but my Saviour did.

Come on! How different would our lives be if we lived them in the certain knowledge that this radical God took this radical step at Christmas? He stepped out of the comfort of heaven onto the dusty roads of Israel, to walk them ahead of me, to be my God, to be with me on my journey, to be with us in our midst.

Messiah’s, back in Jesus’ day, were a dime a dozen. Really. There were lots of guys wandering around, claiming to be the Messiah, and on top of that, Jesus was a very common name. So, people must have been thinking to themselves, For Pete’s sake. Will the real Messiah please stand up!

WILL THE REAL MESSIAH PLEASE STAND UP?

Well, welcome to the second message in a series that I have called, “Message in a Bottle” – in these weeks leading up to Christmas. We are going to take a look at this most amazing night – this Christmas story. You know that wonderful Christmas carol, O Holy Night, the stars, the stars are shining – the shepherds and the angels and Mary and Joseph and that baby Jesus; God in the flesh. And for me, you know, when you strip away all the noise and the rubbish and the commercialism around Christmas, it is the most wonderful celebration.

But it struck me how the very beginning of the story of Christmas in the New Testament – if you have a Bible, go and grab it – we are going to Matthew, chapter 1 – it struck me how often we skim over the first dozen or so paragraphs of what God writes about Christmas.

If you open up the very first page of the first Book of the New Testament – it’s the Book of Matthew and it begins, of all things, with a genealogy; a boring list of names. Now I love doing things that surprise people and a few years ago I was sharing a message leading up to Christmas on this passage in the beginning of Matthew and I asked a lady, a friend of mine, Pamela, to do the Bible reading and I ask her to read through this genealogy. Now fortunately, I gave her a week’s notice, because some of the names are just a little bit difficult to get the old tongue around. And when she sat down everybody gave her a standing applause for managing to make it through the genealogy.

And I guess most of us haven’t heard a message on this genealogy in a long, long time, if ever. I know what you are thinking – genealogy? Berni, are you going to be talking about a genealogy? But listen, listen to what the Apostle Paul writes in Second Timothy, chapter 3, verse 16. He says:

Every Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness, so that – what? – so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work.

In other words when I read through this genealogy, and I probably like you, skip through genealogies in the Bible, you know, I kind of don’t like to read every word. But as I began to read through this particular genealogy I thought, hang on a minute, God decided to begin the New Testament with a genealogy. Why did He do that? What was going on? This Book of Matthew – “Matthew” literally means, “a gift from God” and it starts with an account of Jesus blood line; His birth line.

Jesus Christ – “Jesus” means “Yahweh saves”; God saves. “Christ” means “Messiah” – so you put all that together and this book is a gift from God about God’s anointed Saviour. So I’m thinking, I’ve actually got to get into this genealogy and say: why did God put it here? What does it mean that the Christmas story begins with a genealogy? What is God trying to say to you and me, here and now?

Now it’s probably not the way that you or I would start a biography of some great leader but genealogies were significant to the Jews. They were about purity of lineage – firstly remember that land was given to Israel by tribes. So your right to own land was affected by your genealogy. If you were a priest, your priestly authority came from your genealogy. And your legal standing – if you were in line for the throne, royal succession came through your genealogy. And the genealogies of people were kept on the public record. In the Sanhedrin and in the temple, you could go and verify that somebody was who they said they were.

So to the Jews it wasn’t just a boring list of names – it was fascinating. And have a look to see how Matthew, chapter 1 actually starts out. The first verse, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” – three main characters, Abraham, David and Jesus. And Abraham and David being referred to here, point back to some promises. We are going to look at those promises today because they have everything to do with Christmas.

People were expecting a Messiah – we are going to look at why a little bit later in the programme. But at this point in Israel’s history in the first century, they were definitely looking for a Messiah.

So God is the keeper of promises and let’s just have a quick look to see what the promise is. If you want to flick back to the promise that God made to Abraham, you go to Genesis, chapter 12, verses 1 to 3. Lets have a look at that – Genesis 12:1-3 says this:

The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you and I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.”

And if you flick over to Genesis, chapter 15, verse 5, it goes on to say that:

God brought Abram outside in his tent and He said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you can count them. And then God said to Abram, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed and the Lord reckoned this as righteousness to him.

So here is a promise to Abraham; the father of the whole nation of Israel, that Abraham would have many, many children. Remember he and Sarah were very old and they couldn’t have children, yet God was making a promise. So this very first verse of Matthew points back to those promises.

It also points back to the promise that God made to David. Lets have a look at that – flick on a little bit to Second Samuel, chapter 7, verse 12 – this is what it says: “When your days are fulfilled,” – this is a promise to David, remember; the King:

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your 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 his throne and his kingdom forever. Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before Me, your throne shall be established forever.

So here is the promise to David – that there would be a lineage that would go on forever – that the reign of the House of David would go on forever. David was the Messiah; he was the anointed King of Israel. That’s the actual word that they used for the King – the ‘Messiah’, and the promise of God was the offspring of David – there would be royal succession that would go on forever. So you bring this two promises together and the promise of God is that there will be a King who will rule forever, who will be a blessing to all the nations.

The question is what happens next? Well, just after this promise is given to David, David has a son called Solomon and Solomon is the last King of a united Israel. Israel splits in two; they begin to worship idols; God sends prophets; they reject God and ultimately, in 586/587 BC they are exiled to Babylon into slavery. The monarchy is destroyed and really, the whole thing falls apart for Israel because they rejected God. They just ran away from God; they ignored God and for four or five centuries there was no king.

I mean, to us, that’s like not having a democracy. And by the first century, the Emperor was Roman because they were under Roman rule. There was a governor there who was Roman; there was a false King; the Sanhedrin was corrupt. This was a messy, corrupt, religious, political environment. It was brutal – I mean the Roman oppression was brutal. And into this Matthew writes – God speaks through Matthew of the promise made to Abraham and made to David.

They were expecting Messiah. The question is what sort of Messiah were they going to get?

A HEAVEN FULL OF PROMISES

So Israel was expecting a Messiah, but what did he look like? Luke, chapter 3 and verse 15, we read about John the Baptist:

As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah.

Luke, chapter 3, verse 16, we see that John goes on and says:

Well, you know, “I baptise you with water but someone who is much more powerful than me is coming. I’m not fit to tie up His sandals and He’ll baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

We read Matthew, chapter 16, verse 13 and:

Jesus says to His disciples, “Who do the people say that I am? And they said, “Well, some say that You are John the Baptist, others say that You are Elijah, others say that You are Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

See, the people expected a Messiah; they expected God to send them someone; they desired one, but they were mixed up as to what He would look like.

There were lots of people called “Jesus” in those days. There were lots of people who claimed to be the Messiah – there was lots of hype. How were they going to pick the right one? And that’s what this genealogy is about. Matthew’s Gospel was written somewhere around sixty to seventy AD and at this point the Jews and the Christians were arguing about who Jesus was. The Jews said he’s not the Messiah; the Christians said yes, He is. No, He’s not, yes, He is, no, He’s not!

And Matthew is specifically writing to a Jewish audience here and he lists on the genealogy of Jesus, “Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac the father of Jacob and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar” – and on it goes, this long genealogy.

And what it is really saying is, “I know there are a lot of people out there claiming to be the Messiah; I know there are a lot of people claiming to be the one that God sent but here is the genealogy of the Man. Here as a matter of public record is His genealogy and His right to be the anointed King; the Messiah.”

See, genealogies, for the purposes of land and for the purposes of legal entitlement and for the purposes of royal blood line in this patriarchal society always went through the father. And what it shows here is that Jesus is in fact, a descendant of David and a descendant of Abraham and He is the rightful King.

If you don’t believe me, it’s a matter of public record. This was written at a time when the information was still in the public record in the temple and the Sanhedrin, so people could go and check. People could verify the link of Jesus back to God’s promises – back to God’s vast plan – they could identify that actually He is the One.

There were many prophesies about Jesus in the Old Testament – He will come from a woman’s womb; He’ll be born to a virgin, He’ll be born in Bethlehem; murder will surround His birth; He will be given the name Emmanuel; He will be given gifts; He will be taken back to Egypt – many, many prophesies that Jesus opened up in the Old Testament. But here the New Testament comes with, right at the beginning, a legal verification of Jesus entitlement to His claim to be the Messiah.

It is evidence that God keeps His promises. And when I look at Christmas through this boring genealogy – lets face it, that’s the way we would look at it these days – what I read is that God keeps His promises. Jesus was born on that holy night, the stars, the stars were shining; the very same stars that were shining over Abraham those many centuries before, when God made him a promise that he would be a blessing to many nations.

God is faithful – Christmas is about God’s faithfulness. This genealogy speaks of God’s faithfulness. See, if we just walk into Christmas saying, “I’ve got to buy some more presents and I’ve got to get some more food and I’ve got to do all this, Christmas ends up being meaningless. The New Testament begins with rock solid evidence of the faithfulness of God – that He has indeed fulfilled His promise to Abraham and His promise to David, to send His Son.

It’s a leap of faith, but it’s not a blind leap of faith. The evidence is laid out – it was laid out at a time when people could either verify it or disprove it on the public record. That’s why that genealogy is there. We are going look at what all that means for you and me, here and now, next.

HE’S ONE OF US

Alright, so we have been looking at this beginning of the Christmas story, this genealogy; this link between the Old Testament and the New; this link that points back to the fact that the whole idea of Christmas began a long, long time before that starry, starry night in Bethlehem.

And when you read through the genealogy – I’m not going to do that now – but when you read through the genealogy you find all sorts of people. There are people who were prophesied about; there were people who were totally unknown. There are sixteen names in that genealogy that are not mentioned anywhere in the Old Testament – there are Kings, there are paupers, there are Jews, there are Gentiles, there are good Kings – six of them, nineteen bad Kings.

We think of King David as one of the good guys but he committed adultery; he had someone murdered. And one of the really interesting things that we are going to look at right now is that there are five women in this genealogy. Now sadly, you go back to this time, two thousand years ago, in the first century and women had no rights; they were chattels; they had no legal rights – they couldn’t own land; they could inherit anything; they couldn’t testify in a court of law and they were never, I say again, never listed in genealogies.

But here in this genealogy we have five women. Now what’s that about? In this patriarchal society that never put women in genealogies, why are they there? What is God saying to us, to you and me, here and now about Christmas by putting them there? Well, the first one is in verse 3 – a woman by the name of Tamar. Now she was a temple prostitute; she was Judah’s daughter in law and she committed adultery. You can read about her in Genesis, chapter 38, verse 5.

The second woman is Rahab – now remember Rahab was a prostitute in Jericho. You can read about her in Joshua, chapter 2, verses 1 to 7. The third woman is a woman called Ruth – she has her own Book in the Old Testament. Now Ruth is a Moabite – the Moabites were enemies of the Jews. This is what the Old Testament, Deuteronomy, chapter 23, verse 3, says about Moabites:

An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the Lord, even to the tenth generation; none of his descendants shall enter the assembly of the Lord forever.

So we’ve got a Moabite! Verse 6, look at this:

And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah.

Now is that damning or what? Remember David committed adultery with Bathsheba – she was another man’s wife, his name was Uriah, and he, David, committed adultery with Bathsheba. David had Uriah murdered, their first child died, their second son was gift from God, his name was Solomon. You can read about that in Second Samuel, chapters 11 and 12.

So here in Jesus’ genealogy is not just a temple prostitute, not just a prostitute in Jericho, not just a Moabite who was an enemy of God but here is a woman who conceived one of Jesus ancestors in adultery. And then in verse 16, is the fifth woman – Mary – this woman who as far as the rest of society was concerned, had conceived a son out of wedlock, which brought enormous shame on her and on Joseph. And we are going to look at that next week in a message that I’ve called, “Jesus – the Illegitimate God”.

See, here are these five women – five very imperfect women – there are no paragons of virtue; there are no wonderful Israelite, Jewish women. What’s God saying to us in all that? I believe He is saying, ‘There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, because all are one in Christ Jesus.

Have you ever felt that you are just not good enough to be part of God’s family? That somehow you and I fall so far short of the glory of God that we could just never fit into God’s family? I believe that this genealogy is an invitation which says you don’t have to be good enough. This genealogy deliberately puts those imperfect women into the list to speak to you and me.

There are a whole bunch of Christians in God’s Kingdom who flounder; who are blown around by this doctrine and that; who don’t live in victory; who don’t bear fruit; who don’t impact other people’s lives with the love of Christ – Christians who are hurtling head on towards Christmas just trying to buy presents and just trying to finish off their work and just trying to get all this other stuff done without a deep foundation in their hearts to know what Christmas is about. Listen:

Every Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness so that everyone – everyone includes you and it includes me – everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work.

This genealogy is not just a boring list. This genealogy is how the Holy Spirit; God the Holy Spirit decided to begin the very first Book in the New Testament – the very first Book about the grace of Jesus Christ. He begins with a rock solid platform.

The intention of God is that you and I can stand on this rock solid platform. This platform that says at a time when this genealogy could be checked against the public record, it is legally established that Jesus is the Christ. Not just one way but the way, we can know that with certainty through this genealogy.

We look at this genealogy – an account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah; Son of David, Son of Abraham. And we can look at the promises God made to Abraham and David and say Matthew is pointing back to those because Jesus is the fulfilment of those promises. God keeps His promises.

We can pick this Jesus – this authentic Saviour – from all the other people that say, “I’ve got a way, try my way, follow me”. No! This Jesus is who He says He is. He is the Son of God and then through an amazing act of grace, God points out to us here in this genealogy, through listing these imperfect women; through listing people like David who committed adultery; through listing the good Kings and the bad Kings, that Jesus became one of us.

If you ask people who believe in Jesus, is He more like God or is He more like you and me? You know, most of us would answer; Jesus is more like God that He is like you and me. Jesus is fully God but He’s fully human too and that’s what this genealogy speaks to you and me.

It is time for us to have a rock solid place to stand, to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came for you and me – little old imperfect you and me.

And that is why Jesus begins His story about Himself this way. It’s food for the soul.

Christmas is a feast!

These days, having a child out of wedlock is pretty much a valid lifestyle choice in many cultures. I’m not saying that it’s right, just that that’s how it’s perceived. But back in Jesus’ day … man it was a huge scandal. Seriously.

A MISCONCEPTION

Well, here we are hurtling towards Christmas. You know, it’s interesting when you look at the candy cane – you know that simple little cane with the white and then the three small stripes and then the big stripe – and we think of it as a candy cane, but the confectioner who first created it, didn’t create it as a candy cane. He created it as a “J” for Jesus and the white was there to symbolise the holiness of God and the three small stripes were there to symbolise the stripes on His back when He was beaten and the one thick stripe, the red stripe was there to symbolise the blood of Jesus.

Isn’t it funny how we take symbols to do with Christmas and a whole bunch of other things and we change their meaning – we re-interpret them – and I think it’s really true of this thing that we call Christmas. You know, as I look at my four years studying at Bible College, the most profound thing that I learned was this – that theologians, and I can class myself as one of those – we love to take the stories of God in the Bible and snip them up and put them in little piles which we call doctrines. You know, the doctrine of the Trinity; the doctrine of original sin; the doctrine of the incarnation and so we think, “WOW, you know, I’ve sorted out God; I’ve got Him is little piles; I have a systematic theology and now I understand God.”

Well, in a sense that’s good, because it’s good to know what we believe and why we believe it and look at the whole council of God in His Word. But you know something, if that’s all we do, I think maybe, we missed the point because God’s chosen way of revealing Himself to us is mostly through stories. Stories throughout history of His engagement with His chosen people, Israel, and then in the New Testament, stories of His new promise; stories of His grace as the church grew out of a revelation of God through Jesus Christ.

God speaks to us through His story in history and to me that’s the most profound insight that I got after four years of Bible College. And no where is that more true than in Jesus. John in his Gospel calls Jesus the Word, “In the beginning was the Word.” Jesus is God talking to us saying, “This is what I’m like.” Jesus is a message in a bottle.

And Jesus is unique – He is the only person in history, as the Son of God, who could have chosen the place, the time and the circumstances of His birth. Let’s just think about that for a minute. It’s true isn’t it? If Jesus is who He says He is – the Son of God – He is the only person in history that could have chosen the circumstances of His birth.

Well, if that’s true; if it was a deliberate choice, what is God saying to us about Himself through the manner in which Jesus came into the world, through this story that we now call Christmas.

See, it’s not some neat doctrine; it’s not some neat theology of the incarnation. We learn about Christmas through the stories in Matthew and Mark and Luke and John and I guess, in a sense, many of us know them backwards. But Matthew begins, after the great, long genealogy that we looked at the other week – Matthew now begins with this story – if you’ve got a Bible, grab it, open it – we are going to Matthew, chapter 1, beginning at verse 18.

It says this: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” So in other words, here’s the story. “When His mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

But just when he decided to do that, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife for the child conceived in her is from God the Holy Spirit. She will bear you a son and you are to name Him Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “look the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and they shall name Him Emmanuel, which means “God is with us”.

When Joseph awoke from the sleep he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took her as his wife but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a Son and he named Him Jesus.”

So here’s Mary, pregnant from the Holy Spirit. How? Well, Luke tells us the angel appeared to her and said, “Fear not!” Have you ever seen a Christmas card with “Fear not!” plastered across the front? Not really! So how to you think Mary felt? She gets spoken to by an angel; she gets told not to be afraid, “you’re going to be pregnant because God the Holy Spirit is going to make you pregnant.”

Now how do you think it went when Mary told Joseph? Here’s this single teenage girl from this place called Nazareth; Nowheresville and she wanders in with her belly swollen and she says to her fiancee, “Well, Joe, it’s like this – I didn’t sleep with anyone – God did this!” WOW! Would you believe her?

Joseph didn’t – he planned to dismiss her quietly because this was a society where getting pregnant out of wedlock was a disgraceful thing. I mean, the Hebrew law commanded the women who were caught in adultery be stoned to death so the social context was that it wasn’t a life style choice; it was something that you stoned someone to death for.

But Joseph has a dream. Remember he doesn’t have a New Testament; he doesn’t know how it’s going to turn out. He has this subjective thing called a dream and even if it were true, what incredible pain. How many times would Mary have gone over the angel’s words? How many times do you think Joseph would be second guessing his dream? How breathtakingly reckless was God to allow the whole future of humanity to hang on the responses of these two poorly educated, hapless, rural teenagers? I mean, we know Him as Lord, the Christ, the Son of God but His parents and family friends; Mary’s little illegitimate baby; the bastard; the stigma.

Yet that’s what Jesus chose for Himself. That’s why I’ve called this message, “The Illegitimate God”. You and I, we read this story of Christmas with a sense of wander and awe and we know how it ended. Then, back then and there? Well, for them it was a scandal; it was a fantasy; it was, “Is God really doing this?”

SOME VISITORS

So here we are looking at this story of Christmas – firstly, the way that this baby was conceived – the sense of scandal that would have followed Him around when He was a little child – but then He was born into this brutal, political climate.

Let’s read on the story; this space and time and situation that God chose for His Son to be born into. We are going to pick it up in Matthew, chapter 2, beginning at verse 1:

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem asking, “Where is this child that has been born the King of the Jews, because we observed His star at it’s rising and we have come to pay homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him.

And calling together all the chief priests and the scribes and the people, he enquired of them, ‘where the Messiah was to be born?’ And they told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for so it has been written by the prophet, “And you Bethlehem in the land of Judea, are by no means the least amongst the rulers of Judea, for from you shall come a ruler who is to be the Shepherd of His people, Israel.”

And the story goes on that Herod secretly called for the wise men and he told them, “Go and find this Jesus and come and tell me”, because he wanted to kill Jesus. We look at the politics of Palestine and Israel today – the mess – there seems to be no solution – they just keep shooting each other and blowing each other up. Back then it wasn’t much different! You had a brutal Roman empire and the Roman Emperor ruled over a whole bunch of countries including this little country called Israel. And under him you had a despot; an Herodian King.

And then this Herodian dynasty – we know about Herod – they were sort of half breeds and they were illegitimate and they were in cahoots with the Romans – together they oppressed the people. The religious leaders were part of all that and there was this sense of hopelessness amongst the people. It was every bit as messy then as it is today.

And into this malaise is born Jesus, the Son of God and then these wise men – these Magi (a Magi was an astrologer; a sooth sayer). All of this was forbidden in the Old Testament – people who worshipped the stars were to be stoned to death. And they came from where? From the East; from Babylon – eighty kilometres south of what today is Baghdad. And remember, Babylon was a place of horror and evil for first century Israelites because that’s where in 587 and 586 BC they were exiled into slavery.

So God invites the Magi; these astrologers from hell to come to the birth of His Son and to worship Him. If you and I were God would we have invited them? I don’t think so. And yet God doesn’t just invite them but how does He go and get them from Babylon to Bethlehem? Does He send them a prophet? Does He send them John the Baptist? Does He send them a letter? Does He send them the Scriptures? He doesn’t do any of those, He sends them a star. You see, God chooses a symbol that they can understand and follow and brings them to worship this child.

Babylon who once destroyed the temple and exiled the chosen people is now worshipping the true God. God may well have hated their sin but He loved them much more that He hated their sin.

And then one night in a dream – if you flick over the page to Matthew, chapter 2, beginning at verse 13 – Joseph has another dream, it says this:

Now after the Magi had left, an angel of the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream and says: “Get up and take this child and His mother and flee to Egypt and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child and destroy Him. So Joseph got up, took the child and His mother by night and went to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord, through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I have called My Son.”

See, here we go again – Joseph is having another dream – this subjective thing. It’s not like he sits down and he reads the New Testament; he reads the Old Testament and God speaks to him through His Word. No, God spoke to Joseph through a dream and so Joseph and Mary and Jesus all became refugees. They had no rights; they had no land; they had no possessions; they were fleeing for their lives.

There are thirty two point nine million refugees in the world today. That’s grown by almost fifty percent in just twelve months. Jesus, the Son of God becomes a refugee. How long? What would they live on? Where would they live? Where would they go? Would they be safe? They had to endure hardship for the first few years of His little life.

Would you or I, if we were God, have put our son through this? And you read on in Matthew, chapter 2, verses 16 to 18. “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.

This massacre of the infants – have you ever seen a Christmas card about the massacre of the infants? See, we turn Christmas into this little pantomime, but the birth of Jesus into this world; the time when God stepped into this world and became man was a brutal time; it was a tough time and it was the time God chose for His Son.

I mean, today we see suicide bombers in the Middle East and the shelling of targets and the shooting by snipers – imagine if you added to that the slaughter of all the children under two in and around Bethlehem – you don’t see that on a Christmas card do you? What was God thinking by sending His Son into such a mess?

SO WHAT DO WE LEARN ABOUT GOD?

And then of course, after they returned from Egypt, Jesus and His family moved to Nazareth – you can read it in Matthew, chapter 2, beginning at verse 19.

When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up and take the child and His mother and go to the land of Israel for those who are seeking the child’s life are now dead. So Joseph got up, took the child and His mother and he went to the land of Israel.

But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea, in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there and after being warned in a dream, he went to the district of Galilee. There he made his home in a town called Nazareth so that what had been spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled: “He will be called a Nazarene.”

God allowed, indeed, constructed the circumstances so that the Son of God would grow up in the backblocks of nowhere – in Nazareth. Does anything good come out of Nazareth? And He became a carpenter; not the King; not the head of theology at Jerusalem seminary; not the chief grand whatever in the synagogue or the temple – a lowly carpenter.

So what do we learn about God? If God chose the circumstances into which Jesus would be born; if He chose these two young teenagers; if He chose the stable in Bethlehem; if He chose Herod and the persecution and the flight, what does that tells us about God? If Jesus came to reveal God to us, what do we learn about God from the first Christmas?

When you read through the Old Testament about God you see His sovereignty; His power; His hugeness; His transcendence. Isaiah says:

To whom will you compare Me? Who is My equal,” says the Holy One. Lift up your eyes and see who created all these stars.

See, God is great. Here at Christmas we see this greatness reduced to the size of the single fertilised egg – not even visible to the human eye. Born in the stable with the stench of cow dung and urine on the floor, hunted down, a refugee, the massacre of these infants around Him and then slinking back to Nazareth to eek out an ignominious existence as a carpenter, relying on two uneducated teenage bumpkins for safety and nurture – with always the hint of scandal – Mary’s little illegitimate child.

Well may God be great but hang on a minute, when you look at Christmas, my God is also small. My God is also humble. If you look at this theological doctrine of incarnation, Jesus the Son of God and the Son of Man – He’s different to us yet He’s the same as us.

But if we really ask ourselves the question, we would mostly conclude that Jesus was fundamentally different from you and me. But like Luther, I believe that if we are even to begin to understand what God is saying in Jesus, we have to draw the conclusion that Jesus is God, deep graven into the flesh.

Like the candy cane – on the one hand, white and pure and blameless and different, but with a red stripe; with the blood, suffering like us, He lived, He suffered, He cried, He struggled, like us. That’s the point of Christmas; that’s the point of Jesus being born into these brutal circumstances, in such humble surrounds.

This is God saying, “Jesus is like us”. We can have the best doctrine of the incarnation and completely miss the point. God is humble. He shows us that in a profound way at Christmas. He chose the time. He chose the circumstances. He chose the stable and the animals in it. He connects with us. That’s why Jesus says later in Matthew, chapter 11, verse 28:

Come to Me all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me for I am gentle and humble of heart and you will find rest in your souls.” And later in John, chapter 16, verse 33: “I’ve said these things to you that in Me you might have peace for in this world you will have tribulations but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”

What a contradiction! God, the sovereign God who created all the universe through Jesus, all things that were created were, in fact, created. And yet He calls Himself humble; He makes Himself low at Christmas time. But then everything about Jesus is a contradiction. On the one hand He’s the Lion of Judah; on the other hand He’s the Lamb of God.

When I look at the Christmas story – just the way it is, just plain and simple – look at the circumstances that Jesus was born into, you know what I see? I see something that rings true; I see an authenticity; I see a Jesus who comes humbly into this world and then says, “Come to Me because I’m gentle, I‘m humble of heart.” I see a Jesus who was prepared to be a refugee; who is prepared to be under threat of death.

It’s an amazing thing, Christmas and you know, if we just look at it as a pantomime; if we just sing the wonderful little songs and still look at it as children, I think we miss the point.

God chose an amazing time for Jesus to be born and we look at Christmas by knowing how it all ended up. We’ve read the whole New Testament; we have the benefit of knowing that He died and rose again and the church grew up out of that and two thousand years on, you know, we are living the life. So we look back at Christmas through a whole bunch of history and stuff that those people, at that time, simply didn’t have.

Philip Yancey sums it up this way – I love what he says. This is what he writes:

“He is the image of the invisible God; the first born over all creation,” an apostle would later write, “He is before all things and in Him all things hold together,”

But the few eye witnesses on Christmas night saw none of those things. They saw an infant struggling to work never before used lungs. It’s the story of a God who steps out of heaven, powerful, transcendent, able to choose anything He wants – He chooses Mary and Joseph; He chooses a stable; He chooses for His Son to become a refugee; He chooses for His Son to grow up in Nazareth as a carpenter.

God speaks to us through this Christmas story. God went to extraordinary lengths to say this: “I am humble of heart. I have come to be one of you. I have come to walk in your shoes, in your skin, to experience all the things that you experience.”

It’s the message of Christmas. A God who reaches out in the most amazing way; in the most startling way; in a way that we would never have done if we were God – and speaks to us His love and His desire to have a relationship with us.

That is what Christmas is about.

Big breath. Deep breath. Christmas. How have the past few weeks been for you? Hectic? Or lonely and quiet? So often it seems to be one extreme or the other. Well, let’s just sit back and take a bit of time to rest in the story, the love, the peace, the comfort that is … Christmas.

CHRISTMAS IN REVIEW

So how have you gone, in those busy weeks leading up to Christmas? Did you enjoy yourself or was the stress just too much? Was it a kind of rich experience or did the cares of this world; all that stuff, you know, that we do leading up to Christmas, did it rob you of the Christmas you think that you should have had?

Over these last few weeks on the programme we have been working our way through a series of messages that I’ve called ‘Message in a Bottle’. The whole Christmas story was born out of the shepherd heart of God; the heart of God to draw us into His arms.

Have a listen to the Scripture that we used in the first programme, three weeks ago, Ezekiel, chapter 34, verse 11. And by the way, if you have a Bible, grab it; open it up because we are going to spend some time in God’s Word today. This is what Ezekiel wrote; this is what God said:

I, Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after My sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on the day of clouds and darkness. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.

God has this heart like a shepherd does for his flock of sheep, to look after us and to care for us and to love us. And out of that is born this incredible story of Christmas. You know how it all came about: Joseph and Mary, these two young people, ordinary people; nobodies like you and me, called to bring Jesus into the world. Not a king and queen; a teenaged girl and a young carpenter.

Now all the stories of Christmas, I guess, are as familiar to all of us as breathing in and out everyday. I mean, we go through Christmas each year, but when you scratch underneath them, which is what we have been doing the last few weeks on the programme, I don’t know, there’s a gritty reality of life in the story of Christmas.

It’s a kind of a surprise, I mean, Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit; it’s a virgin birth. And there was a prophesy centuries before, that Jesus would be born to a virgin. The prophet Isaiah wrote in chapter 7, verse 14 of Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign – the virgin will be with a child and she will give birth to a son.

Great! You look at it from two thousand years on as we do and you think, “well, there’s a virgin birth and that’s what happened and that it was God’s story.” But back then, imagine the shame she went through when she had this pregnancy out of wedlock, at a time when that wasn’t an acceptable lifestyle choice as it might be in society today?

Even though God prophesied about that centuries before, who would of thought Mary, and who would have believed Mary going, “well, you know it was the Holy Spirit that did it?” Give me a break!

So Mary went around with this shame and Joseph was going to dismiss her quietly until God spoke to him in a dream. And then Jesus was born in a stable and not a palace, in this place, Bethlehem. Even that was prophesied about centuries before.

In Micah, chapter 5, verse 2, it says:

But you Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me, one who will be ruler of Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient times.

See, that’s a prophesy pointing forward to the birth of Jesus Christ, in Bethlehem.

And of course, Herod tried to kill Jesus – they had to flee to Egypt. Again that was prophesied about centuries before in Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15:

This is what the Lord says, “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning with great weeping; Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more.”

There’s a prophesy about the way that Herod slew all the young children under two years of age.

And so I guess we have been looking at all things the last few weeks on the programme and I remember the first time I began to take a cold, hard look at the Christmas story – you know, the realities, the history. I was a bit disappointed. I mean, somehow I wanted to keep that idealised pantomime view of Christmas; the cutesy Mary, Joseph, donkey, baby in a manger thing. I mean, we like to idealise things. You know when Hollywood makes a movie out of a true story, they embellish things. You know, we like to do that.

But Christmas isn’t a pantomime. The true story of Christmas – of Jesus’ birth – is about hardship, about pressure, about discomfort, about danger. I mean, Mary was on a donkey for a week or two, heading for Bethlehem for the census, in the last weeks of her pregnancy. That would have been fun! And then she gave birth to Jesus in a smelly, grotty stable, surrounded by animals. What a place to give birth to a child?

And then Herod massacred all these infants and Joseph and Mary and Jesus were fleeing for their lives down to Egypt. This is the Christmas that Jesus chose for Himself; the Son of God, who always exists. I mean, John tells us in the first verse of the first chapter of John’s Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” and then down in verse 14, “And then the Word became flesh.”

So here is Jesus, the Eternal Son, who could choose the time, the place and the circumstances for His birth on this earth and as much as I mourned the passing of the cute Christmas pantomime in my heart, when you start to get down and dirty with the reality of Christmas, for me, it was like opening up the message in a bottle.

It’s like God sent this message from heaven that washed up on a beach, I find the bottle, I stoop down, I open it, and I discover what’s really inside. See, for me, sticking with just the pantomime is like taking that bottle up off the beach and putting it on a shelf and looking at it with a warm glow saying, “yea, you know, I know what that message is. It’s a cute pantomime; I don’t have to open it.”

But opening the bottle, reading the message of Christmas; discovering the gritty reality for me, you know what it says in big letters? God became one of us! Your life, my life; they’re not pantomimes; they’re not some cutesy story – there’s a tough reality to life. Sure there are joys and delights but there’s also this gritty reality.

Most of us, we don’t live in a palace. Most of us, we are just ordinary, everyday people with ordinary, everyday lives with the challenges and the pressures and the losses and the hurts. So many people live scarred lives – so many people live lives where they’re lost – so many people live their lives wandering aimlessly around; “why am I here, where am I headed, what’s this life all about?”

And it’s one thing for God, from a distance, to say, “well, here are the answers”. That’s one thing but just at the right time, God becomes a man – the Message, the Word, becomes flesh; one of us. Theologians talk about the incarnation, me? For me, it’s just God became one of us, like you and me.

Christmas is a great time, but what of the Christmas story can we carry around in our hearts, every day of the year; 24/7? What of Christmas makes a real difference in our lives when Christmas is done and dust; when the season is over? Well for me, it’s the fact that God became one of us. We will unpack that a bit more next.

HE UNDERSTANDS

Let’s pick up for a moment on the reality and the normality of Jesus entry into this world. He was the Son of God, we saw that before. I mean, John in John’s Gospel makes it clear. Jesus just wasn’t created on the day He was born. Jesus is the Eternal Son of God and yet on that night in Bethlehem, He became the Son of Man, one of us. In fact, that’s how Jesus most frequently referred to Himself; He almost never said, “Son of God”; He mostly said, “Son of Man”. He was both.

But most people you ask, “was He more like God or more like us?” Most people would say, “well, I know that in Jesus, God became human, but at the end of the day, He’s still God, so really He’s not like us.” I guess that’s a natural reaction. Jesus is the Son of God; no, He didn’t sin; He was and remains perfect. And so if we look at Jesus like that, in a sense, it doesn‘t help us on our journey.

Jesus was perfect and He said some things about judging other people and loving our enemies and murder begins in the heart and you commit adultery if you just look at a woman the wrong way, all that stuff. And you can come to the conclusion, you know something, I can’t live up to all that stuff. So I feel condemned and therefore, Jesus isn’t good news at all. The fact that God became a man doesn’t help me at all.

A few weeks ago, at the beginning of this series, we looked a the shepherd heart of God and in particular the beautiful verses in Leviticus, chapter 26, verses 11 and 12, where God says to Israel:

I will put My dwelling place in your midst and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and I will be your God and you will be My people.

Please, understand how radical that is! It is totally contrary to all the other gods that all the other nations worshipped. Their concept was by and large, of appeasing the gods so that they wouldn’t be punished. You went and worshipped gods and idols in temples up on hills, but here the God of Israel is a God of relationship with His people, on their journey, in their midst. And as we saw before, in John, chapter 1, verse 14:

And then the Word became flesh and dwelt in our midst.

Literally, tabernacled among us, like God tabernacled, or had a tent, with Israel on the exodus, so John says: “God came and dwelt with us through Jesus.”

Christmas is Jesus getting on our journey with us and one of the most beautiful explanations of that for me is to be found in Hebrews, chapter 4. If you’ve got a Bible, flick it open, go to Hebrews, chapter 4, verse 14. The picture here the writer of Hebrews is using is of Jesus as our High Priest. You know, the High Priest used to go into the temple on one day of the year, right into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, and take a sacrifice for peoples’ sin. And so that’s why the writer used this term the “High Priest”. And he says:

Since we have a great High Priest, who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith that we profess.

For we don’t have a High Priest who can’t sympathise with our weaknesses but we have one who has been tempted and tested in every way, just as we are, yet He was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

See, it says here Jesus was not just in heaven, that’s natural, He’s the Son of God, but He is able to sympathise and empathise with all the stuff we go through. Why? Not just because He’s God but because He has been through every trial and every temptation, every hurt, every disappointment that we ever have been or we will ever travel through. He’s walked on those long dusty roads.

I challenge you to read one of the Gospel accounts – Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, end to end in one session, like a story. Not all chopped up like we sometimes do, but end to end – and just look at what He experienced, how people treated Him, what they said about Him. How often they misunderstood Him. It will only take you a couple of hours and it’s really worth doing. Curl up with a good cup of coffee and read a good book; the Good Book. And as you read about all the stuff He went through put yourself in His shoes and we begin to understand what He felt.

At Christmas God steps out of heaven and into history. That’s exactly what He does for us – He steps into our shoes, our reality, our experiences first hand, every trial, every temptation that we go through, He knows because He’s God; He knows because He’s man. And therefore, because of His humanity, because He’s been through it all, let us approach the throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Therefore, because He became a man, became He has experienced what we go through; we can go to Him with boldness and confidence, and approach the throne of grace. A boldness that arises, not of who we are or what we do, a boldness that arises out of the central fact of Christmas – the Son of God became the Son of Man. Because of that we can be confident that He understands and that we will find and receive mercy and grace, just at the right time in our need.

And the whole point of mercy and grace is that they can’t be mercy and grace unless we don’t deserve them. If we deserved them they wouldn’t be mercy and grace. But we can be bold about them anyway. Can I tell you something? That’s a Christmas message worth carrying around in my heart for everyday of the year, not just for the 25th of December. Jesus gets it not just because He’s God; He knows everything of course, but because He became one of us and walked a mile or two in our shoes. That is something to warm our hearts every day of the year.

But there’s one other thing – a really important thing about our future, about our inheritance that comes out of Christmas and I’m going to share that next.

OUR INHERITANCE

There’s this one other thing; a really important thing that I want to share with you about Christmas today. Again it’s a side of Christmas that you and I can carry around in our hearts every day of the year for the rest of our lives here on this earth.

Earlier we looked a Christmas where Jesus becomes one of us; the thing that the theologians call the “incarnation”. He gets it; He understands our circumstances because He’s walked in our shoes and God’s Word says that we should place our confidence in that. That when we are struggling; when we made a blunder; when we are just finding it hard, to come boldly before the throne of grace because Jesus has walked in our shoes and He understands

That’s fantastic and it’s for here and now. But there’s also a really important thing for the future that we get out of Christmas and that is “hope”. Hope is such an important thing, something to hope for in the future; a certain hope; not a kind of uncertain hope like “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow”, or “I hope I win the lotto”, or, you know what I mean? A certain hope, because without hope life if hopeless. We have all experienced that sense of lost-ness and hopelessness from time to time and for some people it’s a place where they seem to live almost permanently.

Well, it’s not meant to be that way. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans, chapter 8, beginning at verse 15. He’s writing about God’s love for us through Jesus Christ and if you have a Bible, go there, Romans, chapter 8, verse 15. He writes this:

For you didn’t receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you’ve received the spirit of adoption and by Him we cry, “Abba”, ‘Dad‘. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirits that we are God’s children. Now if we are His children, then we are His heirs; heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory.

See, Jesus became one of us. Yes, He’s the Son of God; God the Son but just as He is the Son of God, we are children of God, joint heirs with Jesus. That’s a hard idea to get our minds around because if we think, ‘well, Jesus is so different to us because He is the Son of God’, we miss the point.

Jesus was a little baby that came into this world just as you and I did. He slipped into this world, He cried and He was just like you and me. He was born, He lived, He struggled, He ministered, He died, He rose again and now He is with the Father in heaven and He has gone ahead of us and we inherit what He inherits. The Apostle Peter puts it like this in First Peter, chapter 1, verse 3:

Praise be to God and our Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, because in His great mercy He’s given us a new birth into a living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, kept in heaven for you, who through faith, are protected by God’s power.

It’s an inheritance that’s being kept for us and it comes from the fact that we are joint heirs with Jesus. Jesus was the one that went to the cross for us; He was the one that rose again and He purchased that inheritance for us on the cross. That inheritance is there waiting for us, safer than anything we can imagine.

The reason I have called this programme “Christianityworks” is because I believe that it does. I believe that faith in Jesus Christ changes our lives – it works – it makes our lives better. It means God gets in and deals with problems that we can’t deal with.

But you know what the risk of that is? The risk is we focus just on the here and now but God calls us to live with eternity in mind.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ because in His great mercy He has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, being kept in heaven for you.

God is saying, “Lift up your eyes. Look at eternity. Look at what I have prepared for you.” You are a joint heir with Jesus. Jesus is the first born among many and He has risen from the dead and we get to spend eternity with Him in delight and worship and rest and peace and no sickness or tears or poverty. We are co-heirs of that, in Christ. That’s all part of God’s plan for Christmas. Jesus became one of us to make us joint heirs with Him.

Christmas is an awesome message. It is like a message in a bottle when the Word became flesh; when Jesus was washed up on the sands of time as one of us. Jesus is God’s message; that’s why the Bible calls Him ‘the Word of God’. Jesus is God speaking to us in a language we can understand and what a wondrous message – help for today and hope for tomorrow – compassion and understanding and mercy and grace for today because Jesus has walked in our shoes. And so we can be confident in that because of the fact that He knows, first hand, but also joint heirs with Christ for all eternity.

Christmas – what an amazing message – a message in a bottle. And I want to encourage you, don’t take Christmas and put it back in the cupboard with the Christmas decorations, just to kind of trot it out in twelve months time – don’t do that.

The message of Christmas is that God the Son became one of us and He walked the dusty roads of the Holy Land and experienced every thing that you and I experience. He knows what we are going through and He has purchased an eternal hope.