Here we are … looking forward to Christmas … again. Can you believe it? But turn the clock back to that first Christmas. What were people looking forward to back then and what does that mean for us today? Let’s find out.

Well it’s that the time of year again. Here we are just a few weeks out looking forward to Christmas. Again. Can you believe it? They just seem to roll around so quickly.

Well what are we looking forward to when we look forward to Christmas? Maybe it’s a rest or a holiday. Maybe you’re looking forward to the family gathering or the presents or maybe there’s something more.

Looking forward to Christmas it’s kind of a funny thing. You know over the years as I’ve grown up we’re you’re a kid it’s different you look forward to the presents you look forward to the excitement you look forward to all that summer holidays stuff. But I guess for me as I’ve grown up and you’re in the work force you don’t get the sorts of holidays you used to get when you were a kid at school.

To tell you the truth as I look forward to Christmas of course living in the southern hemisphere it’s summer for us. As I look forward to Christmas the biggest thing that my body looks forward to quite frankly is a rest. You know, just the ability to stop producing and  stop doing and just have a time with my wife and my daughter and my family. Just to rest for a few weeks over that period.

Yet somehow in these weeks leading up to Christmas, we seem to race around and rack up bills on the credit cards busy preparing for what? My hunch is that we almost never stop and think what am I really looking forward to when it comes to Christmas?

Let’s be honest, I’m being honest with you. One of the biggest things I look forward to is that the notion of just having a rest. And that’s natural that, that’s ok. But I wonder in all he racing around, all the doing all the stuff that we’re involved in, I wonder whether sometimes it’s just not easy to miss what’s  happening at Christmas to miss what God always intended should happen at Christmas.

That whole issue of what are we looking forward to it is as valid a question today as it was back 2000 years ago at the first Christmas. Let’s just step back in time for a minute and look at what was happening for the nation of Israel when they were approaching whether the they knew it or not the very first Christmas. The 2000 years of the life Israel leading up to the birth of Jesus so that’s beginning about 4000 years ago when God first spoke to Abraham the Father of the Israelite nation.

Well that 2000 leading up to the birth of Christ it was a real rollercoaster ride. They had some big ups and some big downs. They’d began their lives as a nation in slavery in Egypt and then God released them from that and took them to the desert under Moses leadership for 40 years. Then he took them into the promised land, the land of Israel where they had to fight to take possession of the land. And over the next several hundred years they had some real blessing and abundances as they lived their lives for God as they lived their lives as God had always intended them to live those lives.

As I said it was the land flowing milk and honey. It was a nation blessed they had some great Kings. They had some lousy Kings too. And over the coming centuries God sent prophets to them. Men whose job it was to speak God’s will into the life of the nation of Israel. Often we think of a prophet as being someone who predicts the future and in part the prophets did that but only about 5% of the prophetic writings are about predicting the future. The other 95% are about speaking God’s love and God’s warnings and God’s encouragement into the lives of His chosen people, the nation of Israel.

Sometimes what the prophets on behalf of God was really encouraging. Things like, look there is a big battle coming up but let God fight this battle for you. This is God’s battle, let him fight just stand and watch and see what He will do for you. That’s pretty encouraging stuff.

But sometimes, sometimes the prophets had some dire warnings. So often the Kings of Israel or the people or the priests strayed away from God. They married into the nations around them. They ended up worshipping idols, they ended up doing all sorts of things that just weren’t God’s will for them. And so God often sent messages through his prophets when the people had strayed from God to warm them, to call them back.

Those were very difficult and tough messages and some of them were messages of judgment. But as well as the real prophets, those that were genuinely appointed by God, speaking into the life of Israel, there were also some self-styled false prophets. They were saying everything is ok just hang loose enjoy life do you what feels good. In fact we know that there were some false prophets when one of the greatest prophets Isaiah was prophesying God’s judgment to the nation of Israel because they were worshipping idols. These other prophets were saying ‘No, no, no everything’s fine.’ It’s a bit like today really.

Here we are in the West about 70% of people say they believe in God, a god of some sort and in this media generation that we have everyone and everything seems to be about talking at us. And some of them we know, we listen to that voice and they have genuine ring about them. You listen, you think man I think God is talking to me through that person or through that voice and others, others laugh and chortle at what God’s saying. They look at God’s people and say what a bunch of losers. Look really the answers out here buy that new car, spend the money, get the career, go on the fantastic holiday

None of those things are bad, none of those things in themselves are bad, until they displace our first love. That beautiful relationship that God wants us to have with Him. So in a sense, even though the society was different and the times were different there is a strong parallel between what was going on in Israel way back then in those hundreds and thousands of years leading up to the birth of Jesus and what’s going on in our society today.

In about 596 or 597 BC there was a really ugly thing that happened. A number of the prophets had been prophesying to Israel saying look if you don’t get your act together here, if you don’t start living the life God wants you to lead, if you don’t start honouring God first and seeing that justice is done in the land and loving the people around you, there is a terrible judgment that is going to fall on you. And we know historically that in 596 or 597 BC that the Babylonians came and they took over Israel, they took over Jerusalem they razed Jerusalem l to the ground they destroyed the temple and they took Israelites into captivity for 70 years as slaves in Babylon.

And in a sense from that point onwards it was downhill all the way. The last King that reigned, reigned just at that point and after that there was no more King for Israel. So here was Israel God’s chosen people, God lived in the temple he was doing wonderful things for them but he called judgment down upon them. And after the Babylonians sure they came back into Judea and back into Jerusalem they rebuilt the temple but they were never under self-rule again except for a brief period.

The Babylonians were the world power and then the Persians and then the Ptolemites and the Seleucids from 597 BC right through to 167 BC what 400 something years, Israel was an occupied territory.

It was an occupied country out of the occupation, out of the pain out of the oppression, God has appointed a number of prophets to speak about a Messiah, a king someone who would come and bring freedom and peace. A messiah means literally God’s anointed one. The kings of Israel were referred to as messiahs they were God’s anointed ruler.

And so the prophets time and time again were pointing at some ruler that would come and bring freedom back to the captives. That would set them free from all of this pain and occupation. And as we look through the Old Testament which was written over a period of about 1400 or 1500 years, there are no less than 120 predictions and prophecies pointing forward to this one messiah, to this thing that we now call Christmas. Let me just go through a few of those prophecies because they are really amazing. We’re just going to quickly skim through just a few of them. Next week, we’ll have a look at a couple of them in quite a bit of detail.

But listen to some of the prophecies. In Exodus Chapter 12 it was prophesied that when Jesus was crucified that none of his bones would be broken. That is so specific and it was true. That’s exactly what happened. There were prophecies that he would be a blessing to the Gentiles. Now that’s a really radical thing because Israel understood that God was the God of the Jews not the God of the Gentiles and yet there were multiple prophecies that this new Messiah would be a blessing to the Gentiles.

The throne David, the kingship would be established forever. That he would declared the son of God, that He would be raised again, that his hands and feet would be pierced, that he would be mocked and insulted that soldiers would cast lots for his coat. All those things actually happened. The prophecies that He would be betrayed by a friend, that he would speak in parables, that he would be born of a virgin, Isaiah 7:14, that he’s be full of wisdom and power, that he would reign in mercy that he’d be rejected, suffer that he’d be silent when accused, that he’d be crucified with transgressors with the other two criminals that were crucified with Jesus on that same day. Isaiah 53:12:

That he’d be buried among the rich

Which is exactly what happened. That is an incredible array of predictions, well over 120 of them, hundreds even thousands of years before Jesus was born in such detail. There was a prophecy there to that He would be born in Bethlehem. Now some people say well you know Jesus could read the scripture like anybody he could organize to make sure that all of these prophecies were fulfilled.

It’s pretty hard to organize what town you are going to born in, It’s just a little bit hard to organize how you are going to die, just a little bit hard when you are hanging on the cross to organize some soldiers to cast lots for your clothes. So these predictions are really amazing.

In Amos 8:9 said the sun would be dark he said on that day says God I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. Zechariah predicated that Jesus would be sold for 30 pieces of silver. This is remarkable stuff.

What has it got to do with Christmas though? Berni, what are you raving on about with all this Israeli history? Well, God was making promises. God is a God of promise. And God was making promises that maybe the people didn’t fully understand. But he was pointing forward to something and that something we today call Christmas. It’s the coming of the Messiah. But then after centuries of the prophets speaking to Israel, after literally centuries, all of a sudden, bang, they stopped speaking.

Malachi and Ezra and Nehemiah were actually the last of the prophets they stopped speaking on behalf of God in about 450 BC. After centuries God stops speaking. And there was Persian occupation and the Greeks and this brief period of independence and then the brutal Roman occupation from 40 BC onwards. So here are these people in the middle of the adversities of life in one sense just like you and me in their own context they had all this stuff going on, all this cacophony and noise. What were they looking forward to when this first Christmas was just around the corner.

They had the promises of the prophets ringing in their ears. A Messiah! An anointed one someone, who would come and bring peace, someone who would set them free. What are they looking forward to? What are they looking to get out of God’s promises through the prophets? What would you and I be looking forward to?

Freedom, safety, abundance, a good life. God promised that He would be their God, they would be his people. That they would be blessed and that they would have plenty and that they would have a good life.

But there was sense of confusion, they weren’t sure. They had seen this false promise of that brief period of freedom. They saw the Romans they knew they hadn’t had a king for half a millennium. What form would this salvation take? How would it come?

Let’s just wind the clock forward for a moment and just take a look at the confusion that reigned about how this salvation would come. Jesus was well through his public ministry he’d performed miracles, he’d walked on water, he’d healed the blind and the sick. He’d done amazing things. And here in Mathew’s gospel 16:13 if you have a bible open it up there. Jesus says this to his disciples:

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi he asks his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ And they said, ‘Well some say John the Baptist but others say Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ And he said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ And Simon also called said Peter answered ‘You’re the Messiah, you’re the Son of the living God’ And Jesus answered him ‘Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah because flesh and blood hasn’t revealed this to you but my Father in Heaven.’

See even after Jesus has been alive and doing these amazing things, there is this incredible confusion about whether Jesus is the Messiah or not. And here’s the crux of what they were thinking. They expected God to do something because the prophets had told them there would be a Messiah. But they thought of it in traditional terms. They were expecting a prophet. They were expecting maybe a King who was a warrior like David. Someone who would raise up an army and throw the Romans out and all of a sudden there would be freedom in the land again. But God wasn’t doing something traditional; God was doing a new thing.

When he sent his Son Jesus to come and be here with us on this earth he was doing a startling, surprising new thing. Listen Isaiah wrote 43:19:

God says see I’m doing a new thing. Now it’s springs it up don’t you see? I’m making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Jeremiah 31:21 writes this:

The Lord will create a new thing on earth. A woman will surround a man.

In other words, here Jeremiah pointing forward to the virgin birth. A again in 31:31 Jeremiah talks about a new covenant and new promise. God is going to do something new was the promise of the prophets but somehow the people married that up with the notion of having a Messiah a new king, someone that would lead them out of captivity into salvation and freedom. God was making a promise a fresh, new, exciting startling promise that was fulfilled on that Christmas. A promise would bring someone to be the saviour, to bring freedom to bring life but not in the way that people expected.

So here are these people looking forward to something, a promise from God but what? They were looking from within their condition, their lives. What they’d known of God’s promises, what they saw of the oppression of the Romans they were looking for a prophet, they were looking for a warrior king. And even after the miracles, the death, the resurrection his closest disciples still didn’t get it.

What about you and me? As we look forward to Christmas, how much is our present condition here and now cloud our expectations of what God is doing at Christmas. Maybe we are looking forward to a better life or a better job or some more money or some peace or some rest or some freedoms from the things that oppress us. There are so many people walking this world today who are as oppressed as the nation of Israel was under the rule of the Romans. We all have needs in our lives and there are people who have desperate needs in their lives to be free.

So here was Israel to looking forward to God’s promise from their perspective through their framework and here we are looking forward to God’s promise through what? Through our reality, through our human eyes through our life, through our needs, through the framework of all the things we see going on around us. And we look at God meeting those needs in traditional human terms.

Israel was looking for a prophet. Israel was looking for a warrior king like David to fight the Romans. God, God is doing a new thing. Because we people know matter what we believe are so often trapped in the reality of our circumstances. We’re myopic, our vision is clouded by the framework our frame of reference of here and now, of job and family and all those things we can see and touch and feel.

But Christmas, Christmas is about a new thing. Christmas isn’t a Santa Claus, Christmas is the coming of the Son of God. People sometimes say, ‘Berni you are such a wowser, you are trying rob us of the magic of Christmas. No, no, I’m here to tell you there is something better than the magic of Christmas. It’s the miracle of Christmas and the miracle of Christmas can only be found in that baby Jesus who was lying in that manger.

It’s surprising, it’s a new birth. Jesus later said when he was grown up he said to Nicodemus unless you are born again, you can’t see the kingdom of heaven. Christmas is about a new start in life.

There’s a sense in which faith isn’t enough, I mean Israel by and large believed in the promises of God but their judgment and their view and their understanding was clouded by their realities, their day-to-day realities. We need to go from believing to knowing. To knowing the surprise and the miracle of Christmas, to knowing this new thing. And by knowing I mean experiencing, tasting.

In my life, here and now circumstances will not stop Him. Look at the Israelites, they’d gone from occupation to occupation so many countries had rolled over the top of them and now it was the Roams. There was religions corruption going on at the time. The people were misguided but those things did not stop Jesus from coming. He came anyway. In fact He came because of them because in the middle of all of that there was hurt, there was need.

People didn’t get it straight away, people didn’t get it when they saw him walk on water and do miracles. The disciples didn’t even get it after living with him for three and a half years. But He still came. And no matter what our circumstances are, no matter how myopic our view is of Christmas, Jesus will break through.

Jesus will heal the broken-hearted He’ll heal the sick, He’ll touch us so that the weak can say I’m strong. The poor can say I’m rich. Jesus is the answer and that can be as much as a surprise to someone who is believed from a long time and never experienced, as it is to someone never heard the message of Jesus Christ before. It’s a surprise. Jesus came to bring us a new life.

But Berni you don’t understand, God’s stopped talking to me such a long time ago. I can’t believe as much as what you’re saying about Him. I just can’t. For fifteen hundred years God spoke to Israel through the prophets and then for 450 years there was silence. They were enslaved, their land was occupied. They had a brief period of peace and freedom and the Romans arrived again. And for 450 years there was dead silence. Where is God?

And that silence was only broken by cry of a baby in that stable in Bethlehem.  God’s speaking in a new way, a surprising way in an unexpected way, proclaiming freedom and healing and mercy and not rules. Not to re-establish the kingdom of Israel but to usher in the kingdom of God. Into my life, into your life, into our realities and to see that happen and to make that happen he allowed himself to be crucified to pay for our sins. It’s a new thing, it’s a surprising thing, it’s for you and for me.

So let me ask you something. As you look forward to this Christmas what are you looking forward to? What if there’s something more. What if this Jesus wants to break into your reality and touch your heart and set you free. What are you looking forward to?

The people who were there when Jesus was born were looking up at the stars. The shepherds were looking up at the stars. They were looking up, and back to the promise that God had made to Abraham: That through him, God would bless all the nations.

Christmas Night is, I think, the most amazing night. You know we sing that song, ‘O holy night, the stars, the stars are shining’, and you think of the shepherds and the angels and Mary and Joseph and that baby, Jesus, God in the flesh. Part of me wishes I were there. I wish I was there and could see it and be part of it, and yet there’s another part of me that’s glad I know Jesus the way He always intended me to know Him – that is through the presence of God, the Holy Spirit in me.

When we strip away all the rubbish of Christmas, and please; I don’t mean to denigrate the whole giving presents, families getting together, celebration, holiday – they are all good things. But there’s this dimension to Christmas which is a Santa Claus, which is trying to fool our kids into thinking that these presents were brought by a guy in a red suit and reindeer and down a chimney that we don’t have, and … you know … there’s that sort of big con thing, and all the big department stores, all the shops are on the bandwagon to make money and the whole success of Christmas is measured by the retail sales figures … Give me a break! That’s the part of Christmas that I think: Aren’t we missing the point here? When we strip away all of that rubbish, Christmas itself is the most wonderful of all celebrations.

But it’s struck me how often we skip over the beginning of the New Testament, the very first chapter, the first verses in the first chapter. It begins like this:

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David and the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac was the father of Jacob and Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.

And it just goes on, and it goes that Uzziah was the father of Jotham and Jotham was the father of Ahaz and on and on and on. And Eliud was the father of Eleazar, and I think, ‘Hang on a minute. If I was going to write the first chapter in the first book of the New Testament, which is about the story of the coming of the Saviour – of Jesus, would I have picked that?’ I mean, excuse me, but it’s pretty boring, isn’t it? You and I look at it and we go, ‘Hang on. Why is it that You start the New Testament – this wonderful story about the coming of Your Son – with a long, tedious list of Perez and Zerah and Tamar and Hezron and … Why do You do that God?’ I mean, when was the last time (if you happen to be a churchgoer) you went to church (you know how they have the Bible-reading before the guy or the woman get up and preach), when was the last time you heard someone read through a genealogy?

So here we have it. If we put Matthew and Jesus and Christ together, this is kind of what God I think is saying in this opening chapter. Here’s a gift from God – His anointed Saviour, Jesus, and that got me to thinking: Why a genealogy? What is God saying to us when He talks about Christmas through this long, tedious genealogy? It’s the bit that you and I want to rush over. When you get to a genealogy in the Bible, and there are a few of them throughout the Bible, I mean, I know I don’t tend to read them word for word.. I say, ‘Ok. There’s a genealogy; are there any interesting people there that I know? Ok, let’s move on’, but God chose a genealogy to open up the book of Matthew – the first book of the New Testament. What was He saying?

Genealogies, it turns out, were significant to the Jews. They were about the purity of lineage. There were three things that were important: Firstly, land and residency. They wanted to know that a Jew was a Jew; they wanted to know that this person had a right to be a resident and to own land. The second thing they needed to know was where there were priests involved because there were some people in the Jewish nation who were set aside to be priests, and their priestly authority came from their lineage (their heritage), and the third where it was really important was legal standing. Where there was a claim to royal succession, they wanted to know legally that a person was entitled to be the king if that’s what he claimed, and the public records were kept by the Sanhedrin, the sort of quasi-religious/secular ruling body, in the temple in Jerusalem.

So this isn’t just a boring list of names to the Jews, but this lineage is quite fascinating and there are three main characters in the lineage. It begins with Abraham. Abraham is the father of the Israelite nation. Halfway through, it talks about King David – the greatest king that Israel ever had, and then right at the end it comes to Jesus – the son of God. And in the case of Abraham and David, I believe what Matthew is doing is pointing back to the promises that God made to Abraham and David. We’re going to specifically go and have a look at those promises today. Let’s flick back and have a look at what God said to Abraham. If you have a Bible, open it at Genesis 12:1. This is what God said to Abraham:

The LORD said to Abraham, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse’.

And here’s the blessing in the tail of the blessing:

And in you, all families of the earth shall be blessed.

So, about 1,950 years before Jesus was born, God makes this initial blessing to Abraham – that in him, through his lineage, through his seed, all of the nations in the world will be blessed. Man! You know, Abraham was an old man. He was seventy-five when that promise happened; he didn’t have his first kid until he was a hundred years old. Here was this man: His heart was aching for the land that God had promised him and the son that God had promised him, and … he was just aching. And just a few pages on, if you go to Genesis 15:5, God brings Abraham outside and says:

’Look towards the heaven and count the stars if you’re able to count them.’ Then He said to Abraham, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And Abraham believed the LORD, and the LORD accounted that to him as righteousness.

What a beautiful picture! What a beautiful, tender encounter with God. Here’s this man Abraham who got a promise from God that he cannot begin to understand how it will be fulfilled, and he’s standing under the same sky, the same stars that were shining on that night two thousand years later in Bethlehem, and the Jews knew about that promise. It was the beginning of their belief in a Messiah, someone that God would send to set them free.

There was another key promise. Halfway through that genealogy in Matthew, he talks about King David who is part of Jesus’ lineage, and the crux of that promise happens in 2 Samuel 7:12-16. This is what it says:

 ‘When your days are fulfilled’ (says God to David) ‘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’ (so here God is promising him a son; that son was Solomon). ‘He shall build a house for My name’ (which Solomon did; he built the temple, but have a listen to this) ‘And I will establish the throne of his kingdom for ever’ and ever and ever – for all eternity. ‘I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to Me. When he commits iniquity’ (which Solomon did), ‘I will punish him with a rod such as mortals use’ (with blows inflicted by a human being) ‘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 for ever before Me; your throne will be established for ever.’

That is an eternal promise, and remember: When Israel was looking forward to the first Christmas (which they didn’t really know was coming), they had just spent half a millennium without a king; without the promised king, so they were looking for this promise to be fulfilled. They were looking for their king back – God’s anointed Messiah, which is how kings were referred to in Israel.

So here are two promises together: A king who will rule forever, who will be a blessing to all the nations. So, what happens next? Well, we talked about it. We talked about it last week if you were with me. Solomon was a good king, but he went off the rails, and after him, Israel split in two. There was the north, which was called Israel; there were ten tribes. There was the south, which was Judah and Benjamin, and they worshipped idols and they did things that were wrong and God sent prophets to call them back – to warn them of a coming judgment. They gave Israel this message: Come back to your God. Remember the covenant (the promise): I’ll be your God; you’ll be My people. I will establish your throne for ever and ever … Do they listen? No. You look around the world today, and God is calling people back to Him; a lot of them, do they listen? No.

So, as we talked about last week, in 586 BC, the Babylonians came (the world-power); they destroyed Jerusalem; they took the two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, into exile; they virtually annihilated the north Israel, and the monarchy was destroyed – this line, this line of kingship, where there had been a promise to David that his son Solomon will have a line that is established for ever. Well, Zedekiah was the last king. The Davidic line was broken. What happened to the promise? There was a lot of confusion and fear. ‘Has God failed? Has He left us? What’s going on?’ and 70 years later they come back.

But after the Babylonians, the Ptolemaits and the Seleucids, and then a brief period in 167 BC. After Antioch had desecrated the temple by sacrificing pigs, there was a Maccabean revolt, and for 127 years they were free – free for the last time until 1945. The Romans rolled in, 40 BC; Herod the Great was there till 4 BC, then Herod Antipas in Galilee … I mean, all these other people were ruling this free nation of Israel that were God’s people. They were supposed to be living in the promised land. For a half a millennium they have no king. For us, that’d be like having no democracy. They have a Roman emperor; they have a false king Herod; they have the Sanhedrin, which is a corrupt body of religious leaders that are in bed with the Romans; they have a governor, and this messy corrupt Malay, full of religious political corruption.

We see it when Jesus was ultimately put on trial. He went first to the chief priest; then to the Sanhedrin; then to Pilate; then to Herod Antipas; then back to Pilate again. Brutal, corrupt regime.

God’s people who were meant to be free, who were brought out of Egypt to be free, are oppressed, but they remembered God’s promises to Abraham and to David. They remembered the Red Sea; they remembered the freedom they were supposed to have, so what do you think they were looking for? They were waiting for the promised Messiah. What did He look like? Well, John the Baptist tells us in Luke 3:15:

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John whether he might be the Messiah (so, John the Baptist who came before Jesus, people were thinking maybe he’s the one, and John said no, hang on) ‘I baptise you with water, but there is One more powerful coming after me, one whose sandals I’m not fit to tie. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit, and with fire.’

And again as we looked at last week:

Jesus said to His disciples, ‘Who do people say I am?’

And some said, ‘Well, John the Baptist. Maybe you’re Elijah. Maybe you’re Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.’

The people expected a Messiah! They desired one! They were waiting for one! They were hoping for one, but it’s a bit like the end of the world today; it was kind of mixed up. What would He look like? How would He come? There were lots of Jesuses wandering round. There were lots of people wandering round at the time, claiming to be the Messiah. There was a lot of hype. Pick the right one. Which one is the one that God has chosen for us? And then, then we have Matthew’s gospel, written about 60 or 70 years AD, after Jesus, and there was a whole tussle between Jews and Christians. He wasn’t the Messiah; yes He was, no He wasn’t, yes He was … So Matthew is writing into this situation, 60 or 70 years AD, and he decides to begin with a genealogy – a genealogy that establishes that Jesus is descended from Abraham, down through David, down through Mary, and Jesus.

‘So you don’t believe me?’ says Matthew, ‘Go and check it out. Go to the temple; go and check the archives; look at what’s on the public record’, because it was a matter of public record. The record of generation to generation to generation was stored by the Sanhedrin in the temple.

So here, Matthew is writing down this genealogy to a bunch of people who could have gone to the temple and disproven him, and interestingly, while Matthew writes the genealogy of Jesus through His mother Mary (we’ll talk about that specifically in a minute), Luke writes His legal or royal succession entitlement. He writes it through His father Joseph. Now, we know that Jesus wasn’t fathered by Joseph, but legally in that society, it was a patriarchal society, so if Jesus claimed a right as a king, then that right had to be established through His patriarchal line – through His father which, to people, was Joseph.

So the genealogy is about establishing on the reliability of the public record that Jesus is descended from Abraham, through David, through Solomon, and has a right to claim to be the Messiah. The genealogy links Jesus back to God’s promises – God’s vast plan. God is saying to us through the genealogy: ‘He is the One that I chose; that I predicted through My prophets; He is the One’!

Well, so what? So what for you and me, here today? There are a couple of answers to the so-what question. The first one is this: God keeps His promises, but not always the way we expect. In this huge historical sweep, as we read the list of prophecies – you know, all the prophecies that were made; I read a few of them out last week, here are a few of them: That He will come from a woman’s womb; that He will be born to a virgin; that He will be born in Bethlehem; that murder will surround His birth; that He will be given the name God is with us; that He will be given gifts; that He will be taken to Egypt and that.

All of these things were prophesied centuries before His birth, just like the promises to Abraham and to David, and all of these things came to pass. O holy night, the stars, the stars are shining … As the people who were there when Jesus was born were looking up at the stars, as the shepherds were looking up at the stars, they were looking up, back to the promise that God made to Abraham 1,950 years before: That through him, God would bless all the nations, and here we are two thousand years after the birth of Christ, four thousand years after that promise was made to Abraham, and we are the ones who are being blessed through Abraham – through his lineage; through his Jesus who came to die for you and me, to give us eternal life.

The promise is fulfilled in Jesus here and now, to you and to me, and God makes some more promises. He promises that if we believe in this Jesus, we will have eternal life. We’ll be marked with a seal of His Holy Spirit; with the presence of God in us; with God’s power; with a God who is with us. He will never leave us. He will never, never leave us, and He will come again – Jesus. They are all the promises that are yet to come, and we can look back through this lineage, back to the promises made through the prophets; through Abraham; through David, and say, ‘Hang on a minute. God is a God who fulfills His promises. God is a faithful God’!

This isn’t blind faith; yes it’s a leap; yes, ultimately we have to take a step of faith, but we can take that step of faith by looking at the promises that God delivered on … through this genealogy; through what He began the New Testament with, and when the devil comes to accuse you and me, we can say to the devil, ‘Read this and weep, because I am standing on the promises of God in Jesus Christ’. There are so many things that cry out and say, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and by beginning Matthew’s gospel with this genealogy, God is saying, ‘No you’re not. This is My Messiah. This Jesus is My Messiah’.

And the other part of this genealogy that is really profound is that, as you look back in the names in this genealogy, there are some people in there that were prophesied about. There were some people who were even unknown – sixteen of them. There are kings, there are paupers; there are Jews, there are Gentiles; there are good, there are bad, but there is no distinction because all sin and fall short of the glory of God. I mean David, King David was a good guy, but he committed adultery and murder.

Interestingly there are five women in this genealogy. Now women were never, never listed in genealogies. You and I know that the most reliable form of genealogy is the matriarchal genealogy because you always know who someone’s mother was, but you may not always know who someone’s father is, but Israel was a patriarchal society, so genealogies were always expressed in terms of men. Women were almost considered to be chattels. It’s sad, but it’s true. They had no legal rights; they couldn’t own land; they couldn’t inherit anything; they couldn’t testify in a court of law, and they were never, never listed in genealogies, and yet, Matthew lists five women in the genealogy of Jesus, and they are remarkable for what they weren’t. The first one in verse 3 is Tamar. Well, she pretended to be a temple prostitute. She was Judah’s daughter-in-law, and she went to bed with him. She committed adultery with him. You can read about it in Genesis 38.

The second is Rahab (in verse 5). Well, she was a prostitute from Jericho. You can read about her in Joshua 2:1-7.

The third one (in verse 5 here in Matthew) is Ruth. Well, she was a Moabite. She was an enemy. Have a listen to what the Old Testament says about Moabites. Deuteronomy 23:3:

An Ammonite or a Moabite shall not enter the assembly of the LORD. Even to the tenth generation, none of his descendants shall ever enter the assembly of the LORD for ever.

So Ruth was an enemy of the state, and she’s in Jesus’ genealogy.

Verse 6: The next one is the wife of Uriah, who was Bathsheba. Bathsheba was notable because King David committed adultery with her. He had Uriah murdered; his first child with Bathsheba died; David’s second child with Bathsheba was Solomon – the next king of Israel. It’s a testimony of God’s grace. You can read about it in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.

And the last woman is Mary in verse 16 – this woman who has conceived a son out of wedlock. I believe, firmly, that that child was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but in that society, that brought enormous shame and scandal on her.

So here are these five women – women of immorality, women of scandal each one of them, and yet they’re in Jesus’ genealogy. Jesus is the only person who could choose His ancestors, who could choose when He would be born and how He would be born, and He chooses these five women in His genealogy. What is God saying to us in all of that? I believe He’s saying this: There is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, no black or white, because all are one in Jesus Christ.

Have you ever felt as though you are not good enough to be part of Christ’s family? I have. We need to think again. This genealogy is not only a genealogy of authenticity – of who Jesus is; it is a genealogy of grace. It is a genealogy of inclusion. It says to us that Christmas is for everyone; for each one of us, for you and for me. Listen to me:

Every Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God (listen again). So that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient and equipped for every good work.

This genealogy is far from boring; this genealogy is food for my soul. This genealogy is Christmas brought alive! This genealogy is a feast for my heart, because it says to me that Jesus is the Christ. You and I can stand on the historical record and know He is the Christ.

This genealogy says that God keeps His promises – to Abraham, to David, to you and to me, over millennia, and this genealogy lets us tell the difference between false Messiahs and our Jesus. Ain’t boring is it? Pretty exciting. It’s a message about Christmas. It’s a message about the exciting new thing that God has done in the person of Jesus Christ. My prayer for you is that this genealogy will be a message that sets your heart on fire for God. I pray that in Jesus Christ’s name.

Most people believe in God but don’t acknowledge it. Most people have a sense of God’s goodness but they don’t live in that goodness and then we wonder why are things going so bad. We wonder why we’re hurting.

It’s amazing here we are in another Christmas week with the whole year gone and we’re about to do that whole Christmas thing. A few years ago I was sharing a Christmas message in July with the church in Sydney. And we were singing some Christmas carols and we were having Christmas in July and after the service some people said to me, ‘You know, it felt really weird singing Christmas carols in the middle of the year.’

It’s a bit funny isn’t it we’re some how conditioned to do the Christmas thing at Christmas time in December. In the same way that people that who live in the Northern Hemisphere can’t conceive Australian’s like me having Christmas in the middle of summer. Sitting on a beach somewhere maybe eating prawns or having a BBQ while the snow coming down in the Northern Hemisphere.

Actually, it’s quite natural for us to have seasons and festivals. The whole festivals and traditions that surround the things that we do throughout the year, actually to turn out to be very, very important to society. Back in early civilisation sociologists tell us, that the whole issue of regular festivals created some stability, created a heartbeat and a cycle and a sense of celebration periodically which was quite important to the development of a society.

Well, what about Christmas? Let’s have a look at, just quickly, at the history of Christmas because it’s a strange history. The early church celebrated the death of Christ that’s Easter and the death of the martyrs of the church but not the birth of people and certainly not the birth of Jesus.

The first mention of a Christ’s mass on the Roman calendar was 336 AD. Almost well, three centuries after Christ was alive. And the reason that they had this thing called a Christ’s mass was because there was a huge controversy raging in the church at the time over the nature of the person of Jesus. Was he truly God, that is God become man in the flesh or was he somehow a created being? And so the Christ’s mass was argument against that heresy. It is was an urgency to proclaim the reality of the incarnation of God becoming man. And it spread right across the church by about the end of the fourth century.

So why did they pick December 25^th? Was that Jesus’ birthday? Well actually we don’t have any evidence to suggest that it was but there was ample evidence to suggest that it wasn’t because the story of Jesus birth says that there were shepherds out tending their flocks by night. Now of course December is the middle of winter and it would be very unlikely for the shepherds to have been out in the middle winter tending their flocks because generally in winter they bought the flocks into a central area within villages and they weren’t grazing out the pastures by night because it was just too cold. So the chances are that Jesus wasn’t born on 25^th December.

Actually the reason we have Christmas on 25^th December is because it was a Roman winter solstice festival, a pagan festival. And Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire so they decided to transform this pagan festival which was about the sun, into a Christian festival about the Son.

So instead of suppressing this pagan festival what happened was it was transformed into a Christian festival. And there were many parallel European festivals in the middle of December. It was the end of the harvest season, people prepared special foods, they decorated their homes with greenery, there was gift giving. So by about the 1100’s this pagan festival and this social festival and the Christian thing converged and St Nicholas had become a symbol of gift giving.

It wasn’t though until the Middle Ages that it was first called Christmas. And it’s popularity grew until the Reformation, until that time when Martin Luther stood up against some of the excesses that were happening in the Catholic church. And Christmas was then considered to be pagan. The non-religious elements were seen to be wrong so in the 1600’s Christmas was actually outlawed in both England and America.

It wasn’t until the 1800’s that two more customs become popular, the Christmas tree and the sending of Christmas cards and of course by the 1900’s commerce and retail had taken over and Christmas became quite commercialised. So this celebration that we hold as sacred is really a conglomeration of pagan and cultural festivals, historically reinterpreted. And the Christian dimension is only there to the extent that it was required to argue against a heresy in the early church.

Well, so what? I mean 2000 years on, ok we celebrate this thing and it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, primarily it’s about shopping it would seem. What does that whole incarnation thing mean to us today? Is it just a festival or does it have a meaning?

I suspect that in answering that question of what’s the relevance of the birth of Jesus today we have problem or two. Let’s just think about it for a minute, here’s this baby and this baby Jesus was born in Bethlehem in a stable and laid in a manger. And the purpose ultimately of Jesus coming to the earth as a man was for Him to die on the cross, for Him to die and rise again so that our sins could be forgiven. That’s the theological answer.

But you know, Jesus actually spent 30 something years on this earth. He was a baby, he grew up, he became a man, he had a public ministry and then he went to the cross. I mean if the only reason for Jesus to come onto this earth was to die to pay for your sins and mine if that’s the only theological reason, whey didn’t they just kill he baby? Why didn’t they just sacrifice the baby, why wasn’t that God’s plan? It certainly would have been more spectacular.

But no, no Jesus had a life. He grew up. We see a story about his birth, we see that circumcised when he was eight days old, we see him in the temple in Jerusalem when he was 12 years old. We know that he grew up as an apprentice carpenter working in Joseph’s carpenter shop and it wasn’t until he was in his early 30’s that he began his public ministry and then he had a three and half ministry before he was tried, crucified buried and rose again.

So there must be a little bit more to this whole thing of Jesus coming from God to be a man to live on this earth. John the apostle puts it this way:

The word became flesh. Jesus, God’s expression of his love became a human being.

That’s the one thing that Christians celebrate at Christmas time. The question is what does it mean? How does it impact? How is it relevant to you and to me?

To me there are three key elements to this. I’d like to start, if you have a bible grab it, we’re going to have a look at Hebrews. That’s a book in the New Testament towards the end, Chapter 1:1-4. have a listen to what it says:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets. But in these last days he’s spoken to us by His Son whom he appointed heir of all things through whom he also created the worlds. Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he made purification for his sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having becoming as much superior to angels as the name as he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Isn’t it interesting? This book to the Hebrews to the Jews, it’s a letter about Jesus to the Jews begins by saying long, long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets. This is the old Eden language; it’s the Eden language of love. It’s the language where God when He created Adam and Eve walked with them in the garden in the cool of the night.

Adam and Eve spoke with God. God spoke with Adam and Eve. We were made to be in God’s presence. And then through Adam and Eve’s rebellion, through their decision to disobey God in just the one little thing that God said don’t do. Don’t eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong. Humanity emigrated out of God’s presence. Adam and Even emigrated out of the garden of Eden into a tough, tough world. And whenever a language leaves it’s Mother land it becomes distorted.

It’s interesting I come form a German background and when I grew up as a child in our household I learned to speak German. But when I went back to Europe as a child, what I discovered is that the version of German that we spoke here was kind of bastardised version it was bits of English thrown in the dialect was different.

When a language leaves the Mother land it becomes distorted. And when we as humanity left the place that we were all always intended to be, God’s presence, through our rebellion then that language of love became distorted. And the writer of Hebrews says here, that God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets and we see through the history of Israel right through the Old Testament that God sent prophet after prophet after prophet to tell, to tell the people what? To say God loves you. God wants you to come back to Him. You don’t have to have dishonesty, injustice in the land you don’t have to go and worship other idols you don’t and to go and do all these silly things that are going to hurt you. There’s a better way. Come back to God. Live in relationship with Him.

And prophet and prophet after prophet spoke light and the people chose darkness, spoke good and the people chose evil. Spoke sweetness and the people chose bitterness. And then we wonder why things are going badly. Then we wonder why we’re struggling we wonder why there are wars. We wonder why we are hurt.

The prophets came to God’s people Israel over centuries and God spoke through them but the people rejected the prophets and so what we now celebrate to be Christmas, God took a decisive step. God decided to speak in way that we couldn’t miss. God sent his Son, Jesus.

One of the three persons of the trinity the Godhead, one God, three person, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. What a mystery. And God chose to make one of those persons who had dwelled with Him and in Him as God for all eternity into a man.

As I said before John’s gospel begins by saying:

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

The word is Jesus and then the word become flesh and lived amongst us. And we’ve seen this glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son full of grace and truth. God wants to speak a language of love. The same language He spoke in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. The same language that He spoke through his prophets but was rejected by his people. And so He sent his Son. And here in the beginning in the book of Hebrews Chapter 1, verse 3:

That Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.

Now that word the exact imprint only appears once. It’s a Greek word, it only appears once in the New Testament and it literally means like you know how a coin is created, they have the blank coin and then they have a dye like a metal imprinter and they bang the dye into the coin and what comes out on the coin is the exact imprint from the dye. The picture, the words exactly the same and that’s what the writer of Hebrews is saying here, Jesus is exactly the same. He is the spirit of God imprinted in the flesh of a man.

Martin Luther spoke about God being deep graven in the flesh. Jesus is God’s spilling out the old Eden language of love from A to Z in words that you and I can understand. Why is that important as we look at Christmas, why is that important? Let’s look at three examples. Again if you have a bible flick back go to the gospel of Luke Chapter 18, verse 35. It’s about Jesus healing a blind beggar near Jericho:

As he approached a blind man was sitting by the road side begging. When he heard the crowd going by he’d ask what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ Then he shouted, ‘Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.’ Those who were in front sternly ordered the man to be quiet but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David have mercy on me.’

Jesus stood still and ordered the man be brought to him. And when he came near he asked, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And the man said, ‘Lord let me see.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight because faith has saved you.’ And immediately the man regained his sight and followed Jesus and glorified God and all the people when they saw it, the praised God.

So when you and I look at that story, this nobody, this beggar, smelly, poor, blind beggar on the side of the road and here is Jesus he’s got crowds following him he’s like a rock star. He’s a celebrity because he’s doing amazing things. And some where in the midst of all that crowd Jesus hears this blind beggar cry out and he stops. He stops the crowd and says to the crowd, ‘Bring me that blind beggar.’ And he heals the man. This nobody.

And when you and I look at that story about Jesus and all the other stories about Jesus, when we look at that we can say that’s what God is like. The exact image. Jesus is exactly like God. That tenderness for the nobodies, that tenderness for the least, that deep respect and love that Jesus has for those flotsam and jetsam people on the outside of society.

The reason that the incarnation, that theological term again, the reason that Christmas is so important is that it gives us God in the flesh. It gives us a God that we can understand. Jesus is God saying ‘I love you’ in a language that we understand. And when we sometimes think of God being an old man with a big stick, you know all we have to do is look at Jesus and see the love that God has for us. Unless Jesus came, God as a man, we could never hear language we can really understand.

The second thing that Jesus becoming a man does for us is confers value on you and me. Flick back to the book of Hebrews Chapter 2, verses 10-11:

It what was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one brother. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

And look down at verse 14:

Since therefore the children share flesh and blood he himself likewise shared the same things.

And again verse 17:

Therefore he had to come like his brothers and sisters in every respect so that he might be merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.

He came to be one of us. God is saying something to us.

Let me share a story with you. Back on 26^th August 1910 a woman by the name of Agnes Bojaxhiu was born. Her family belonged to the Albanian community, her Father was a businessman, he owned a building company and he was connected to a food shop. He travelled a lot and was multi-lingual and very interested in politics.

Totally unexpectedly when Agnes was nine her Father died. It was 1919 and her mother had to raise the three children alone. To meet their needs she sewed wedding dresses, did embroidery and worked hard. In spite of all of this, she made time for the education of her children.

When Agnes grew up she moved to Calcutta. We know her by another name, Mother Teresa. This is what Mother Teresa wrote:

The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and picked up four people from the street. One of them was in the most terrible condition and I told the other sisters you look after the other three and I’ll take care of this one that looks worse. So I did for her all that my love could do. I put her in a bed and there was such a beautiful smile on her face, she took hold of my hand and said only one word ‘Thank you.’ And she died, and she died with a smile on her face.

Like that man that we picked up from the drain, half-eaten with worms and we bought him home. He said, ‘I lived like an animal on the street but I’m going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.’ And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die without blaming, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel, this is the greatness of the poor people.

And she went on to say it hurt Jesus to love us. It hurt him.

Imagine what Agnes Bojaxhiu gave up to be Mother Teresa. She went and became one of them. And she was with them as they died in their poverty. She confers such great value and dignity on those people by being there and being one of them. And it’s the same with God becoming man and coming here and being one of us and suffering. And knowing what it’s like to struggle going through everything you and I go through. He confers such enormous value on you and me. And He’s prepared to call us brothers and sisters even though He’s God.

So they’re the first two things that great language of love spoken in a way that we can understand. Secondly, becoming one of us conferring value on you and me and thirdly let me read you the last thing that I’d like to talk about the suffering, the incredible suffering of Jesus. Chapter 2, verse 10 of Hebrews:

It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through his sufferings.

Chapter 5, verse 8:

Although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered.

We sometimes think that the only suffering that Jesus did was on the cross but that first reading I gave you in Hebrews 2:10 talks about sufferings – plural. His life was hard. His ministry was hard. You see in Luke chapter 9 when he’s talking to his disciples he says, ‘You faithless and perverse generation how long must I be with you and bear with you?’

The people he dealt with in ministry they were hard. He was tired some days, he was rejected some days. He was misunderstood and he healed people and they persecuted him. He had to deal with tough and hard issues. He was accompanied by women in his ministry. Don’t you think that was difficult, as a man who never married? As a leader with no peer, he had no-one else to talk to on this earth. Only God his Father. Again and again and again we see that Jesus suffered. And look at what it says in Hebrews 4 beginning at verse 14. He says:

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession because we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Therefore is such an important word. Why should we approach the throne of grace with boldness? Because Jesus has been here. He’s been through it. He understands it. He’s experienced the pain. He knows what we are going through.

Christmas is an amazing time because we celebrate a God who doesn’t sit in the air-conditioned comfort of heaven. We celebrate a God who becomes man. To walk like us, to struggle like us, to be misunderstood like us, to pain feel pain like us, to feel pain like us to suffer like us and to die.

Why should we come to this throne of grace with boldness? Because He knows. ‘Come to me freely’ He says, ‘Express your pain, express your need because I understand.’ And why should we come there? So that we may receive mercy, something good that we don’t deserve. When we deserve a curse we can boldly go into the throne room of God and ask for blessing. Mercy is only mercy when it’s undeserved and grace to grace help when we really need it, when we really need it.

Sometimes we think of the throne room of God as this cold, hard place with all this black marble and this big throne and this big judge sitting on the throne and you get what you deserve. No, no. Jesus is that throne of grace running towards us. Jesus is God saying ‘I love you so much’ in language that we can understand. Jesus is God saying ‘I value you so much’. Jesus is God saying ‘I understand what you are going through’.

It’s great for us to have a Christmas celebration; it’s wonderful but every day’s Christmas. Every day is the day when God loves us in Christ, every day is the day when God values us in Christ. Every day is the day that God wants to run towards us with his grace through his Son Jesus Christ. That’s Christmas. Let’s have Christmas every day.

Jesus came to have a relationship with us, and a huge part of having that relationship is spending time with Him.

Well, the year’s over, we’re looking forward to another year, new year’s about to happen … I don’t know about you, but I often get to this time of year, and I think: ‘Where has that year gone? It just seems to have gone so quickly’ and what I do know is that I’ll just blink and turn around and it’ll be March, April, May, June again and the next year will be half-over.

There’s something about the new year. You know, as we look forward to that next year, we have some hopes and some dreams. We think: ‘I really want this to happen. I really want that to happen. I’d like this to get better or that to get better’ … We have these kind of idealised things that we’d like to see happen, and that’s great; that’s good; that’s ok, but what is it that I could share in this week? What’s the really important thing, looking forward to this new year?

Anybody who believes in Jesus, anybody who halfway acknowledges God as God, knows that we should put God first – that we should put God first in our lives in all sorts of different ways: In spending some time with Him, in learning, in just honouring Him in our everyday lives, but it’s a struggle. Right? It’s a struggle.

We live in a busy kind of world – you know, E-mail, mobile phone, SMS, work, family, all the modern conveniences, all the distractions, all these hindrances, and somehow right now at this time of the year, we take a little break from that. You know, we kind of just veg out a little bit and have a bit of a rest, and it’s just such a good time to think about this year looking forward, and think: ‘Why am I so busy, and why is it that I don’t have time sometimes for the important things – for my relationships; for my relationship with God, my relationship with my family, my relationship with friends and work-colleagues and acquaintances?’

People who believe in Jesus know they should spend time with Him. We know that in our heads. We know we should pray more. I often ask when I’m speaking to groups of people: ‘Does anyone feel that they pray too much? Has anybody got a problem with thinking I spend far too much time in prayer?’ I’ve yet to find one. We all have a sense we should spend more time. You know? We all know we should open that book – the Bible, and read and see what God’s saying to us, but so many people who believe in Jesus just don’t, and in not doing that, we feel more and more guilty. We feel a sense of: ‘I’m just not good enough; I’m not close to God; I’m not this; I’m not that’ … We pedal hard; we do things for God, but underneath, something’s missing. There’s this nagging suspicion something’s not right

We have an outer life (the thing that other people see), and an inner life (which is the things that we experience on the inside), and so often we focus on the outer life – pedalling hard; doing stuff, and deep inside we’re screaming for something that’s just not there. I meet so many people who say: ‘I am a Christian, and that’s how I feel’.

One of my favourite pictures that I have, and I use it on slides when I’m speaking (that’s one of the limitations of radio; I’d love to hold it up to the microphone; that’s pretty useless huh?), is this basset hound. It’s a picture of this long basset hound. You know basset hounds? They have the big droopy ears and that sort of sad, stodgy look and it’s a basset hound with a rocket strapped to his back.

It’s just a beautiful picture, and to me it’s a picture of how Christians sometimes try and lead their lives. Inside life’s a dog, but outside we want life to be a rocket – you know, we want life to fly through … We’re always concentrating on the outside; on getting ahead in our careers or having a better this or having more that. We want life to be a rocket, but inside life is a dog, and you know something? The outside might fly for a bit like a rocket, but life is still a dog. That’s the moral of my basset hound picture.

So, when life’s not going so well, we tinker with the rocket. We tinker with the things on the outside. We try and change our behaviour. A good friend of mine, Peter Watson, who’s also a minister and preacher, I heard him say once: ‘Christianity is not primarily about behaviour modification’. Some people think, whether they are Christians or whether they are people looking at this whole Christianity thing from the outside, that it’s about a bunch of rules. It’s about being a better person. It’s about doing things on the outside that make us look better. If I change these things on the outside, surely the things on the inside will get better.

Well I hate to disappoint you, but that is not what following Jesus is all about. That is called legalism, and in fact in the New Testament it’s referred to as the doctrine of demons. That’s tough language, so what is life about? What does minister to that deep thing inside each one of us. Well, Jesus said I am the life. I’m the truth, I’m the life. I’ve come to give you peace. I’ve come to give you joy. I’ve come to give you an abundant life.

When He prayed, just before He was crucified, He said: ‘Father, I desire that those whom You’ve given Me may be with Me where I am, so that they can share in My glory’. It’s about relationship. Let me ask you a question. Can a man and a woman have a sensational marriage without having an intimate relationship? Of course not. So what makes us think that we can have a great life as a Christian – you know, one of those Christian walks that flies like a rocket, when our relationship with Jesus is like a dog? Wake up! Jesus came to have a relationship with us, and a huge part of having that relationship is spending time with Him.

Our chief purpose on this earth is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That is not optional. Enjoying God is not an optional extra. You ignore that part, and your relationship with Jesus falls apart. The Bible says the joy of the LORD is my strength. The thing that makes us strong in walking with Jesus is enjoying the relationship with Him. We want to walk in the Spirit; we want to walk in the power of God; then the outside comes from the inside. The things we see on the outside of our lives, the visible things, they’re manifestations of a fantastic relationship with Jesus, just like a happy marriage is a manifestation of a close relationship between husband and wife.

Jesus was really big on this. He said: ‘Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks’. In other words, out of what’s happening inside you, the inner life, if you’re getting that right, if you’re having a rich fulfilling relationship with Jesus Christ, that’s the bit that’s going to transform the outside, not the other way round.

Jesus also said murder begins in the heart. The bad stuff we do comes from some rotten stuff happening in our hearts. If you have a Bible, open it and we’re going to go to Psalm 91. I love the way that this Psalm opens up and begins. It says:

The person who dwells in the secret place of the Most High God, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the LORD: ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust’.

Let me ask you a question. Do you believe in Jesus, and if you do, are you able to say that day after day? My refuge and my God! My fortress in whom I trust! Are we able to say that, or do we live under stress and live amongst people and the dirt and the tough life, and run around and get angry with people, or do we come into this kind of … this safe-haven, this dwelling-place, this secret place of the Most High?

I see both sorts of Christians. I see some people who say: ‘I’m a Christian’ and they are running around in a flap, and living in the flesh and complaining and struggling and grumbling and lashing out at the other people, and they are ugly people. People like that are difficult and painful to be around. We’ve got to say it the way it is, and yet you meet other people who say: ‘I believe in Jesus’ and there’s this kind of … this joy coming out of their pores. You know, there’s this something – peace; this love that’s happening.

Often Christians are like Jonah. You know, he spent three days in the belly of that fish before he finally figured it out: Go to God. The Psalmist here says those who dwell in the secret place of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty. What does that mean, dwell? What does that mean, abide, and what do they look like? I think they’re a decision.

Jesus said if you abide in Me, and My Word abides in you, you can ask for whatever you like. Isaiah wrote: Put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Clothe yourself with Christ, wrote Paul the apostle. Be filled with the Spirit. Put on the full armour of God. Look at verse 9 of this Psalm. It says:

If you make the Most High your dwelling-place …

He’s talking to us, people. God is talking to us. He’s saying you have a choice. You can either decide to dwell in Me, in My presence; you can choose a relationship that is as abiding and as close and as intimate as any relationship between a husband and wife. Or you can just decide to go out there and live in that busy noisy stressful world, and make decision after decision after decision without Me, and just not hang out quietly with Me. Abide and dwell speak of an unhurried long-term relationship; of a talk; of a chat; of an intimacy; of an enjoyment; of a permanence.

In my work, the things that I do, I’m very blessed in that my office is a study in my house. It’s well-equipped. It’s just a really good place to work, and so it’s very easy. I get up early in the morning; I go downstairs; I’m able to work from early; it’s peaceful; it’s quiet; I can do so many things; there’s phones and E-mail, sure.

Another part of my life is out in meetings or hopping on planes and flying and talking to people, and I enjoy that too, but do you know if I only ever worked at home in the study, truly I think I’d go stir-crazy because I need to interact with people. It’s nice to have those quiet times as I’m preparing these messages that I do on radio, and writing and doing all those things, it’s wonderful to have the peace and the quiet and the privacy to do those things. But it’s also great to be out there, interacting in the cut and thrust of life – getting on a plane and flying to somewhere, and meeting and doing things for God’s glory, and ultimately my work-life is a balance between those two.

If I could never withdraw into the sanctuary of my study, I’d never be able to put these programmes together. If I was always out there meeting with people, I’d never have that quiet time to do what I have to do, and the opposite is true too. If I spent all my time in the study and never out with people, that would be a bad thing too. It’s a balance, and the same is true in our relationship with God. God calls us to dwell with Him, but also to walk with Him.

Jesus talked about coming in and going out. There are two sorts of worship spoken about in the New Testament – the sort of worship when we’re one on one with God and we’re just going for it and praying or singing or enjoying Him; that’s the inner worship (the inner life). And then there’s a worship of service; of doing; of living; of getting out there and doing the things that we do, for the glory of God, and if we spend all of our time out there, we end up burning out. We end up being a man-pleaser. We need to spend some time in the sanctuary. We need to spend some time with Jesus, becoming a God-pleaser.

Why bother with this inner life? Why are you rambling on? Here we are; we’re looking at new year; we’re looking at all the things that we could have ahead of us; why are you talking about the inner life? Because God’s Word promises some amazing things when we dwell in Him in our inner life. Let’s just have a read of Psalm 91. Let’s just read it through. It’s just a beautiful Psalm:

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the LORD: ‘My refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust’, because He will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. He’ll cover you with His pinions and under His wings you’ll find refuge; His faithfulness is a shield. You won’t fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day or the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it won’t come near you. You’ll only look with your eyes to see the punishment of the wicked. Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling-place, no evil will befall you; no scourge will come near your tent. For He will command His angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways; on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample under your foot.

‘Those who love me,’ says God, ‘I will deliver; I will protect those who know My name. When they call Me, I’ll answer them. I’ll be with them in trouble; I’ll rescue them; I’ll honour them. With long life I will satisfy them, and I will show them My salvation’.

See, I believe that as we look forward to this next year, we’ve got to stop focusing on the outer life, and start focusing on the inner life. The promises that God makes in this Psalm are amazing. He promises those who dwell with Him, who abide with Him, that He will deliver us. He will stop us from being afraid. Look at it (verse 5):

You will not fear the terror of the night or the arrow that flies by day or the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

He promises in verse 9 to keep us from evil. He promises us in verse 11 He will command His angels concerning us! In other words, we are protected by the presence of God, and yet there’s something else. There’s something else that’ll happen. Look at verse 1 of the Psalm again (Psalm 91):

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, you will say to the LORD: ‘My refuge, my fortress, my God in whom I trust’.

The thing that happens when we dwell in the presence of God is that we change. God does something in us, and He gives us a confidence and a strength, and a joy to keep going.

Let me share a little story with you. It was just the other day. So many good things had been happening in my life and in the ministry, and we’d had phone calls from countries all over the world wanting to take our radio-programmes, and God was really blessing us, but I had a long day. It was one day; I had a board meeting and it was a twenty-hour day, and the next day, I had to get up and prepare radio-programs, and I tell you when I got up, I had such a heaviness on me. You know how sometimes, God does some really good things and the next day, it’s as though there’s this heaviness?

I believe what’s happening is that when good things happen, the devil comes and attacks us. The devil comes and sits on our shoulder and says: ‘You can’t do this. You haven’t got what it takes. God’s not really doing anything’. That’s the sort of sense that I had, and I got up early in the morning, as I always do. I needed to prepare some messages for radio-programs. I had so much to do.

You know, the temptation was just to race on and do all the work that I had to do – you know, to do the outer life stuff; the stuff that you end up seeing. I didn’t have time to stop and pray; I just was too busy, but I just felt that I should stop and pray, and so I did. I spent an hour with the Lord, and the prayer was really simple. ‘Father, I feel so down today. I feel so I’m struggling with all the load that I have. I need You. I need Your presence. I want Your Holy Spirit to fill my space, to fill my heart, to fill my mind, to fill my body. I want You, Lord’, and we spent the most magnificent hour together, God and I. And at the end of it, the two messages that I needed to prepare that normally would take me several hours, they went so quickly.

I can’t begin to tell you how God stepped into my space, and He was my strength. The sense of being down, the sense of being attacked, the sense of uncertainty … God dealt with all of that by just being there for me. God shows up when we ask Him, and we sometimes have this silly notion we’ve got to get all dressed-up and we’ve got to get all in the right attitude and we’ve got to get all right before we go to God, but the opposite is true. Those who live in the shelter of Almighty, those who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, they are the ones that will discover that God is their refuge, their fortress, their strength, the One who takes those things away.

Let me tell you something. Unless we’re living in the presence of God, unless God is our shelter and our refuge, we can’t feel blessed at those times. Unless our heart transfers into the presence of God, unless hearing God’s voice and feeling His touch and knowing His healing, unless that becomes a reality to us, we can’t front up to a world where people misunderstand us and give us a hard time. Unless we’re prepared to admit our need, we can never inherit the blessings of God. Sometimes we think of this old man in a stained-glass window as being God, but David had it right in Psalm 27. David said this. He said:

One thing have I asked of the LORD and that will I seek after: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of God.

The presence of God is so wonderful. It’s so beautiful, and as we look at Jesus, that changes us. As we hang around with Him, we start to look and sound and act and behave like Him; we can’t help it, because being with Him changes us.

Imagine if you have an ambassador from another country come to your country. If you had let’s say the Italian ambassador come to your country, would you expect him to look and sound like an Italian? My hunch is you would. If the Swedish ambassador were to come to your country, or the American ambassador or the Fijian ambassador, or the South African ambassador, would you expect those people to look and sound like Americans, Swedes, Fijians, South Africans? Of course we would. If we call ourselves by Jesus’ name, if we say we are Christians, then my goodness we’d better look like Him. We’d better look like ambassadors of Christ. The only way we end up looking like Him, the only way we end up loving people like Him, the only way we end up with that sweet, beautiful and gracious countenance that smacks of Jesus is by spending time with Him.

The most important thing I can share with you, looking forward to this new year, is this: If you believe in Jesus, then spend some time with Him, for Christ’s sake, because that changes the outer life. Listen to what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:18:

And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory.

From glory to glory to glory. The more we spend time with Him, the more the outside life changes. God can do so much more with our lives than we can ever do on our own.

I was out for a walk just the other day, and I was walking around my suburb, which is a suburb where there are lots of nineteenth-century terraced houses, and the thing that people are doing with those terraced houses now is renovating them. A lot of people are spending money, and I was just walking past one terraced house. It was about 7:30 in the morning, and there I saw the tradesman scraping the old paint off that house, and scraping the old paint off the fence, and the carpenter was working inside, and over a period of months I know that this beautiful old house, in a sense it’ll still look the same, but in a sense it will be thoroughly, thoroughly new on the inside.

That’s what God wants to do with our lives. It’s like restoring a painting that’s become dirty and faded, and little bit by little bit, the Restorer peels back the dirt and peels back and touches up this and then we stand back after the restoration and we think: ‘My goodness, what a beautiful painting’. It’s been restored back into the original image that it was always intended to look like. You and I were always intended to look like God – not to be God, but to look like Him, because we were made in the image of God. And through our lives, and through the things that we’ve done wrong, and through the hurts that we get from others, we’ve been soiled. Our lives have become dysfunctional.

Every day, people throw mud at us and it sticks. Every day, the devil throws mud at us and it sticks, and the only thing that makes us clean, the only thing that makes us whole on the inside, the only thing that brings that joy and that peace and that laughter and that abundance that God wants us to have, is spending time with Jesus.

‘I’m too busy; I haven’t got time to read the Bible’ … We can come up with every excuse that we want, but He wants to hold us close. He wants to change our life. He wants you and me to see for ourselves the glory and the beauty and the wonder that is God. That’s the most important thing I can share with you, looking forward to this year.