Christmas 2016
Transcript
Well, Merry Christmas. Turn to Matthew chapter 1. We will be spending our time there this morning. It's going to be on page 471 if you're in one of the white Bibles. If you don't own a Bible, don't have one at your house, Merry Christmas. That Bible that you're holding is a gift to you from us.
We want you to own a Bible. We want you to read it regularly. So we'd like for you to have one. So our goal today is pretty simple. We usually, when we talk about stuff, we talk about what God has done. We talk about what Jesus has accomplished for us, that the gospel is good news about what he's accomplished and that we respond.
And today we're not going to have so much of a here's what we need to go do. Here's how we're going to respond. We're just in our time this morning. We're trying to kind of do what Faye was just reading about, where the shepherds, I love that the shepherds look at each other and they say, let's go see this thing. Let's go see this thing that the angels just told us about.
And that's kind of what we want to do this morning. We just want to look at the Christmas story and we just kind of want to see it. We just want to take some time to consider this mind-shattering, world history-changing event where God becomes a human. We just want to take a minute to consider it. And then we want to respond maybe in the way that Mary does, where it says she just pondered these things in her heart. We really just want to take this and look at it as best we can, begin to see some of the realities of God becoming a human, some of the realities of what we get to celebrate at Christmas.
And then we just want to hold on to those as we go through the rest of this week. And it's going to be busy for many of us. You're going to have a lot going on that you have to try to get done and accomplish. And you can get so caught up in everything that's on your to-do list. And then Christmas will be here a week from today. And then it's almost like it's just over with.
And I just want to take a minute this morning for us to just pause, let's just see this thing, and then hopefully be able to kind of ponder it in our hearts throughout the rest of the week. And as we go into Christmas day next Sunday, and just kind of be able to reflect on and remember and roll around inside this truth that is actually a little bit too big to consider and too big to get into view. And we're going to spend some time looking at it this morning. So pray with me that we'll be able to do that. And then we're going to start reading some of the text. God, we thank you.
We thank you for what Christmas is and what it means. We pray that you'd be at work in us this morning, that we would be able to take it into view, that your Holy Spirit would be active as we read your word. We love you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. Jump down to verse 18. We'll pick up there, Matthew 1, verse 18.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, okay, so she's going to marry a guy named Joseph. That's what betrothed means, they're engaged. But in this culture, in this society, they would have been fairly young. I read something this week that said Mary's probably no more than about 15 years old. And a betrothal worked similarly to marriage.
Basically, parents would be involved. They would say, okay, your child's going to marry my child. It was a very strict kind of agreement. And in order to break a betrothal, you had to actually go through a legal proceeding to get a divorce. It wasn't, so it was like an engagement, but it was more intense than our engagements. So she's betrothed to Joseph before they had come together.
So that means they're engaged, they're betrothed, but nothing's happened. They're not married yet. There's no consummation of anything. Before they had come together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Okay, so that's, we get more of her story in Luke chapter 1. An angel comes to her and says, oh, favored one.
And she's like, that's a weird way to talk to me. And she's kind of, I'm talking to an angel. She feels uncomfortable. He says, you're going to give birth to a child. And her response to him is, okay, how? Because she knew where babies come from.
I think sometimes when we read stuff that happened a long time ago, we just kind of arrogantly and maybe a little bit snobbishly assume that we're more intelligent. Like because it happened a long time ago, their IQs are lower. Like because I have Google and could drive a car and have electricity, I'm somehow smarter than them. But even if you looked at my Google history, you'd know it wasn't because of how many times Google had to say, did you mean this? Because I couldn't even spell the thing I was Googling. Were you trying to type this?
Yes, Google, I was. But for some reason, when I read something that happened in history, I just assume they were gullible. They believed everything that someone told them, that they all were just kind of dumber than me. And actually, I think that probably the amount of television I watched and the amount of time I spent on Google and how much I can ask Siri things and I don't have to remember anything actually means it's likely they were more intelligent than I am because they actually had to use their brain more. I don't know. But Google makes me seem way smarter.
You remember before Google existed when you thought, I wonder about this. And then you had no way. You're watching a movie and you thought, what else has that person been in? And then you had to think about it and remember. Maybe you had that one family member you could ask. And I was going to pause it.
That guy, what else was he in? And they knew. But otherwise, you couldn't figure it out. Like, we just assume because of the technology we have, we're more intelligent. But she basically, we're going to see that both Mary and Joseph kind of respond in a, okay, wait, how's this going to work?
So Mary says, how's that going to work? And he says, God's going to do it. Through his power, through the Holy Spirit, you're going to give birth to a son and he'll be the son of God. And Mary's response is, I'm your servant. Let it be that way. Since you're big and you're God and you're good, I'll just trust you.
It's not like she doesn't seem very excited, but she basically just says, okay, I'm your servant. So just think about this for a second. She's betrothed in a shame and honor culture to be married to a guy named Joseph. We don't know how well they know each other, but it's a small town. They probably knew each other. She's probably looking forward to her wedding day, to her life.
And she's thinking, I'm going to start my life with Joseph. We're going to begin to have, and an angel comes up and says, hey, God has decided to ruin this for you. You're going to get pregnant out of wedlock. Talk, people can do math. They know how long it takes for a baby to be. So even if he still agrees to marry you, they'll know when the baby was born and when y'all are married.
It's not going to work out well for you. Most likely, your betrothal is off. And she says, okay, I submit, I surrender, I'm Jesus, I'm God's servant, whatever he says. So here's what we get. Before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And I love that Matthew includes, it was from the Holy Spirit.
He says, she's found to be with child, but we know it's from the Holy Spirit. And her husband, Joseph, so he already calls her his husband, even though they haven't really been officially married. But that's how intense betrothal is. So she comes to Joseph and says, Joseph, I'm pregnant. He says, how did that happen? She says, it's God's baby.
He says, okay, we're not getting married. At best, you're lying. At worst, you're crazy. And it says he's a just man. He cares about her. He's not mad at her.
He's not trying to put her to shame. He's just going to as quietly as he can break this betrothal. It's a small town, not make a big deal out of it. But he also knows how children are made. And he says, no, no, God doesn't get, no, that's not how that works. So we're not, no, they're not getting married.
Can you imagine how much pain is involved in this story for Mary, for Joseph, what they thought life was going to look like? Jesus shows up and just derails it. How many tears are shed in that few verses we just read? How much they had to wrestle with God and his plans? But, verse 20, as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife. For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son. You should call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him. He took his wife, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.
So Joseph does the same thing. He obeys what God says, even though he also realizes, okay, at best they'll think we kind of sinned together prior, so this child will be born in kind of a shame situation. At worst, the people who are close to me who already knew I was trying to work out a divorce, I'm going to have to go seem crazy too. I'm going to have to act like I actually believe what she said, that God is the father of this child, and they're going to either think that I'm crazy or just the most gullible fool they've ever met. But okay.
That's the situation that Jesus is born in. And then Matthew, as he's beginning to tell this story, he kind of gets to the point here and he says, okay, here's Jesus. Jesus is going to save his people from their sins, and he's going to be Emmanuel, God with us. So Matthew, right off the bat, says, here's the point of my story, here's where we're going. Christmas, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. As Christians, we believe not that Jesus was just a really good guy, not that he was just a prophet.
We don't just believe that God's spirit was on him. We don't just believe that God worked through him or that he shows us kind of what divine status looks like. We don't just believe that he was a really good man who became a God. We believe that he is God who became a man. We believe that he's the eternal creator God who became a human, that God is with us. That's what we celebrate at Christmas.
That Jesus is God who became a man, that he's fully God and fully man. From the time he's born, that he's God with us. That's Christmas, that God became a baby. And so Matthew says it's Emmanuel, God with us, and that he's Jesus. He's going to save people from their sins. So Matthew, right off the bat, says, we're talking about Christmas and we're talking about Easter.
This is the point of the book he's writing, that Jesus is going to grow up. He's going to live a perfect, sinless life. He's going to die on a cross. He's going to atone for sin. He's going to be buried. He's going to rise again.
He's going to save his people from their sins. Now, if the point of the Bible was just you need to be a good person, it's just about morality, we wouldn't have Christmas. God wouldn't have to join us. If the point of the Bible was just that God loves everybody and he forgives everybody, we wouldn't have Christmas. God wouldn't have to join us. He wouldn't have to come in.
But see, it's a God of both morality and love that joins us at Christmas to save us from our sins. And I love that he's come to save us from our sins. You know, that could say, and I think people sometimes try to act like what this should say is that Jesus came to save his people from sinners. And that would be a really sad thing for it to say. He says he's going to be Jesus because he's going to save his people from their sins. But if it said he's going to save his people from sinners, that would mean there are good people and bad people.
And then we'd have to work really hard to try to figure out whether we were the good people or we were the bad people. But what does it say? He's going to save his people from their sins. Jesus is the hero who came to rescue the bad people. Now that's worth celebrating Christmas over.
I'll raise some eggnog to that. That sounds amazing. That Jesus is going to come save sinners. That's us. You see, at Christmas, we're kind of, we're almost bombarded with this over optimism. It's like collectively, culturally, we come together and say, we can do it, you guys.
If we just believe in belief, if we just open our hearts and our minds, we can love everybody and we can eradicate poverty and hatred. That's what the Christmas spirit is. If we just come together, everything can be beautiful and bright and work out well. And that is beautiful, but it's not the Christmas spirit. The Christmas spirit is we're in trouble. The world is dark.
There is no hope. Humanity cannot save itself. Humanity is the problem. So getting more of us together collectively just causes more of a problem. Christmas is the celebration that Jesus entered the world. That a savior came to rescue us.
And that he's ultimately going to live a perfect, sinless life and die to save us. That's the Christmas story. That's what Matthew's getting at. That's the point of the story he's about to tell. So he's going to tell us this epic, unbelievable, history-altering story.
That's what, he's got all this to write. He's got to tell us that God became a baby. And then he's got to tell us that he lived a perfect, sinless life. And that hope has entered the world. That where it was dark and bleak and sin reigned, God enters the world. And it's almost like a light, a little candle is lit in the dark.
So if it was pitch black and there's just one little candle, everybody's eyes come to this place and it says there's hope, there's light in darkness. That's Christmas. And then he's going to tell the story about how at Easter, after Jesus has healed blind people, has taken people who've never walked before and let them walk, how he's walked on water and fed 5,000 people and he's healed everywhere in towns he went. And he's proclaimed the good news that at Easter, that little candle is going to be snuffed out. It's going to be a few wisps of smoke and darkness. That death is going to defeat life.
Hatred is going to defeat love. Fear is going to win. And that this God that we celebrate who's going to be born is going to be a God that we mourn because he's going to die. But that three days later, of atonability, that candle lights itself again. And it doesn't just become a candle. It becomes what was just a hint of a dawn in Christmas becomes full noonday sun at Easter.
We get the full and complete picture of what God's come to do, that he's Emmanuel, God with us, and he's Jesus who saves us from our sins. That's the story Matthew's going to tell. And so Matthew has this epic, earth-shattering, world-changing story to tell. And he's got to put pen to paper. And you can almost feel like the ink is trying to jump out of his writing utensil here. He's got to write this down.
And what's the first thing he's going to put on paper? What's the first thing he needs us to see as he begins to tell this story? Matthew chapter 1, verse 1. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 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 Perez, the father of Hezron. And Hezron, the father of Ram. Ram, the father of Amminadab. And Amminadab, the father of nation.
Oh my goodness. He does this for 17 verses. He's got this epic, life-changing, earth-shattering story to tell us. And he starts off by the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And it's almost, almost as if he wanted to bore us before he told us the good stuff. He's going to, at the end of the chapter, he's going to get into what Jesus came for and who he is.
But he starts off with 17 verses of this person was the father of this person, was the father of this person. Now, we're distant from this because we're Americans to a Jewish audience. This meant a lot. Because he's telling, he's telling them that he comes in the line of prophecy. He's telling them that he comes in the line of, but Luke includes this. He doesn't start with it.
It's important. Luke says, that's not the way you start a book, though. You ever been to a movie and they run the credits first? Like all of them? You'd be like, what the heck? Show me the movie.
That's what he's doing. He's showing you this. What's the point? Why does he do this? Why does he think this is so absolutely essential for us to get right off the bat? Do you know who has genealogies?
Humans. Real, live, flesh and blood humans have a family line. My wife and I, a couple years ago, learned we were going to have a son. So we got on Ancestry.com and we just started looking up our family. Some people in our family had done a lot of work to kind of fill out our history, family history, our lineage. So we just started doing work to find names.
There were a bunch. We wrote names in one color from my family, names in another color from her family. And our goal was to have one name from each family. And they were great. Like we had some winners in there. We had Garland.
Caskey. I was fighting pretty hard for Caskey. Bayless. That's probably coming back if we have another son. It might be a girl. But we like, it took us a while.
Like we had to try to find names that we ended up, we like Silas. I really like Silas. But I wear a lot of plaid and I have a beard most of the time. And I didn't want people to think I named him after Uncle Si off of Dunk Dynasty. I don't watch the show, but people assume things. And so we really went round and round on Silas and we're like, I don't know if we can do this.
The other thing you have to do, it's really hard to name a human. Those of you who have done it, I'm proud of y'all. It's difficult. I had to walk, like I walked around my house trying to say the name. Because you just, you just read it or you just say it. It's like you had to put it in context.
So I would walk around with names. So like, so we picked Bayless or whatever. And I'm trying to think, you know, you have to sing the banana manamofana song or whatever to try to see how inappropriate it gets at the end. Like there are certain names you gotta, you can't do. You have to try to think up what will first graders call them? Like what are bad nicknames here?
I would do stuff like I'd go, um, Caskey Bayless on the tackle. Like I would try to think through what would this sound like over a PA? Like if it was like, would Bayless Phillips please report to the principal's office? Like I have to realize, I know me. Look, I'm not, I'm not putting on airs. I gotta realize I've gotta shout this name in Walmart at some point.
I know I've gotta be like, Bayless, if you don't put that down, boy, you get over here. Like I know I've got, I had to practice this at my house. We ended up going with Archer O'Daniel. We actually was gonna be Archer Daniel, but he was gonna be born on the 20th of March. And I told my wife, I said, all right, how about deal? Daniel's an old last name that they Americanized.
It used to be O'Daniel because it came from Ireland. I said, if he's born on St. Patrick's Day. We go, O'Daniel. And I stuck my hand out. She said, okay.
So she shook hands on it. We found out on the 16th, he was gonna be, had to have a C-section the next day, which was St. Patrick's Day. We're on the way home. And she goes, I knew it. I said, what?
She said, I knew as soon as I shook your hand, he was gonna be born on St. Patrick's Day. I was like, then this is the breaks, girl. You just gotta deal with it. The reason we were able to do that is because our son's a real human who comes from real humans and a real genealogy, a real family line. The reason Matthew begins here is because he wants to make so absolutely crystal clear and concrete in our minds that Jesus is a real human born into real history in a real family line.
What he's about to tell us is going to seem insane. It's going to sound crazy. It's going to be unprecedented in human history. It's gonna baffle Jewish people who would not ever believe that God could become a human. This is outside of what they would have believed. He's going to begin to tell us that this Jesus is gonna be perfect and he's gonna die.
And when he dies, it's gonna be a vicarious death for all those who would place faith in him. That he's gonna be laid in a tomb and he's gonna rise again. And then later he's gonna ascend into heaven where he's gonna live eternally. And he's going to tell us this story. And he starts off by saying, I don't care if I bore you a little bit. You need to realize this is a real person born into real history in real time.
He does everything he can to set it on the bedrock of actual living history, family line, because he wants us to be certain as we continue to read Jesus stepped into real life. This is fact. As crazy as it's about to sound. And you know what's beautiful about that? The gospel of Matthew does not start once upon a time. It doesn't start with in a village far away.
Because when we hear those things, we hear once upon a time, when we hear there lived a man up in the mountains, we know what we're getting ourselves into. We know that we're gonna hear a story. Maybe it'll be entertaining. Maybe it'll have a point, like a moral thing we're supposed to take away from it. Maybe it'll be just a story about how we ought to live. We know when we get into a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, what kind of story we're getting into.
There's gonna be heroes. There's gonna be darkness and enemies. There's gonna be champions. There's gonna be light versus darkness. There's gonna be good triumphing over evil. Life is gonna defeat death.
Love is gonna defeat fear. We know the kind of stories we're getting into. But see, Matthew's about to tell that type of story. But he wants to make sure you know this one actually happened. This is a real story. And here's what's going on currently, kind of in our culture, and as we get older.
We say those stories are good stories, and we enjoy those stories, but they're for children. Those are children's stories. That the prince rides in and saves the princess. That somebody shows up and defeats the dragon. These are Disney movies. But real life, adulthood, it's not black and white.
They're shades of gray. Good doesn't always win. Evil does sometimes. Darkness defeats light sometimes. Death swallows up everybody, and we end up being just particles in the universe later. We're told that as soon as we can kind of wrap our minds around that, the better off we'll be.
And it's almost weak to believe in these magical stories where good always wins. That it's not realistic. But the beautiful thing about the gospel story and the Christmas story is that it's a historical story. That Matthew's gospel story and Christmas story are going to be a historical reality. So that the reason we love all these other stories is ultimately because they point us to Jesus.
We actually want Beauty and the Beast to be true. We want to believe that someone can come along and love us enough to save us from the monster we've turned ourselves into by our decisions. We want to believe that Sleeping Beauty is true. That there's a love that conquers our stupor, that brings us to life, and that someone does ride in and defeat the dragon. We want to believe that. And because this story is true, because the Christmas story and the gospel story are true, real life historical fact, when we believe these stories, when we tell these stories, we actually are just getting to point to a greater reality beyond them.
Tim Keller is a pastor in New York. He wrote a book called Hidden Christmas, and he talks about this idea. I want to read a quote from that book. I thought it was helpful. He says, Put another way, even though the fairy tales aren't factually true, the truth of Jesus means all the stories we love are not escapism at all. In a sense, they, or the supernatural realities to which they point, will come true in him.
The reason our hearts scream and cheer and celebrate when we tell these stories, the reason we love Harry Potter so much is that we somehow innately know and believe that there is some dark force out there, some evil out there that wants to rule through intimidation and fear. And we want to celebrate a story where a child is. And we want to celebrate with the fact that he dies at the end, only to burst forth back into life and to destroy evil forever and let the sun shine again. See, all these stories, because this story is true, point us ultimately, because the Christmas story is true and the gospel story is true.
We get to celebrate that all of this is true. We get to celebrate that all of this is true. We get to celebrate that all of this is true. We get to celebrate that all of this is true. What we celebrate at Christmas is the beginning of that story where joy dawns and hope dawns in the world. As Christ comes to save sinners, as God joins humanity to rescue us from our sin.
Matt and Bianca are going to come back up here. And I really just, there's not any real things we need to go do because this is true. I want us to grow in our faith. I want us to consider this reality. So here's really how we do get to respond today.
If you are a Christian, my hope really is that we would just ponder this in our hearts. That we would remember the true, real story of Jesus' work on our behalf. That we were saved from our sin. We're going to take communion here in a minute during this next song. And if you're a Christian, I just want you to take a minute. We're not going to have the words on the screen.
They're going to sing. We're going to pray. We're going to consider. We're going to think about what Jesus has done for us. And then I want you to take communion, which is a celebration of the broken body of Jesus and his shed blood on our behalf. I just want us to celebrate that we have a hero.
Stepped into real life to rescue his people from their sins. That when he died, your sin died with him. You died with him. And when he rose again, you have the promise and the hope of an eternal life with him. Because God did not leave humanity in its sin. But joined us at Christmas as Emmanuel, God with us, to save his people from their sins.
But if you're not a Christian, Christmas is an invitation to you. What Jesus does at Christmas is he joins us. God doesn't sit far away and tell us to figure it out. God doesn't sit far away and tell us to get our act together. God joins humanity in poverty, in weakness, in life, and in death. If you're not a Christian, the invitation is simple.
Jesus came to save his people from their sins. God joined us to rescue you from all the things that would keep you from him. You can acknowledge your sin. And you can be saved by Jesus. That his work on the cross can apply to you. And if you're in here today and you're not a Christian, but you want to be, this is an actual historical fact that happened on your behalf.
The only thing you do is believe it. Respond in faith to what he's done. It's not about being good. It's not about following a set of rules. It's not about accomplishing anything. The reason we take communion is we remind ourselves that it was his work, his body, his blood that rescued us.
So if you're in here today and you're not a Christian, you can become a Christian right now because it's not about what you do. It's about what he's done. You can go take communion for the first time. Maybe you grew up in the church and you've taken communion a lot, but you never really placed your faith in Jesus. You were actively living as if Jesus came to save his people from sinners and that you had to be a good person that he could save you away from all the bad people. You can repent and you can take communion for the first time for real this morning, celebrating that his death and his blood and his life and his resurrection on your behalf will apply to you.
Let's pray. God, we thank you that you joined us, that you didn't leave us on our own to figure this out, that you didn't leave us on our own to try to be good or to earn something from you, but that you joined us, that you were born in a manger, that you really lived and you really died on our behalf, that you really rose from the grave three days later. It's in a fairy tale. It's not a legend. It's not a myth. It's not a story to help us know how to live well or to love well, but it's a story about how you lived and loved us, how you actually joined humanity and died on our behalf.
I pray, God, that as we go into this next week, that we remember this. We wouldn't lose sight of what we actually get to celebrate, that all the work is done, that we've been given life and forgiveness and salvation. We thank you, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.