The Promise of Christmas

[00:00:02] Speaker A: I thought the students did an awesome job last week on the student takeover. And I thought Emily did a good job of asking us to stop looking at the evil around us and fix our eyes on the beauty of Jesus Christ. And you may not know it, but there are very few churches in the world that could do a student takeover of the whole service. That is a remarkable program, and I'm very grateful to everyone who works with those wonderful kids. Our dear Heavenly Father, I pray that we could, we could genuinely experience the spirit of Christmas this year. I pray it would not be a holiday that we buzz through only to get to a new year, but it would be a time of new promise, new hope, and new love in our lives. And I pray that your good purpose for Christmas could be worked out in our souls and in our homes and in this church. And I ask it in Jesus name, Amen. Mary was probably a teenager when God invaded her life. She lived in Nazareth of Galilee. And Nazareth was a rather unique place. It was right by an international trade route. So the people who lived in Nazareth actually got to know people from as far south as Egypt and as far north as what would be Afghanistan today and as far east as Turkey. The trade route ran right next to Nazareth. It was also a unique city because the temple was served by 24 different teams of priests. And once a year, your team of priests went to Jerusalem and served. And these priests lived in cities all over Israel. And once a year, they came together, they went to Jerusalem and served. And one of the places that they gathered, one of the teams gathered was Nazareth. So it was a. It was a international city, and it was a city that had a unique religious heritage. It was also very near a. One of the most fertile plains in Israel. And it was a. It was a place where it was easy to farm. If you try to imagine, Mary lived in this international city. And once a year, there would be a big deal where the priests got together to make their way to Jerusalem. But living in the world of Mary was not like living in our world. When we need groceries, we get in the truck and go to wherever Sharon wants to go. We bring them home, we put them in the cupboards and in the refrigerator. It didn't work that way. In Mary's world, every day making a meal was a major issue. And almost everybody had a garden and everybody had to make their own bread and things had to be stored properly. And okay, she didn't have a vacuum cleaner to vacuum her house. There was a lot more that had to be done in your daily life in Mary's world than there is in ours. And she was about those things. She did her important part in her family, which means it left less time for free time for herself. But as happens with all teenagers, she fell in love with the guy who caught her eye. The guy had a career pathway for himself. He was. He was. He was a builder. I know you hear that. He was a carpenter. He was probably a stone mason. They didn't build houses in Israel out of wood. They built them mostly out of stone. And Joseph was probably a mason. And they had gotten serious, and he had talked to Mary's dad and he had proposed to Mary, and they had set a date on which they intended to be married and spend the rest of their life together. I guess it was a common day, like any other day in her life. But after all the work was done and the chores were done and things were put back in place, Mary had a little time alone. And in that time, she had alone. The gospels tell us that a most unique thing happened. The angel Gabriel showed up to speak to her. This is how Luke told the story. In the sixth month, God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. Gabriel came to her and said, greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you. [00:07:29] Speaker B: Ah. Ah. [00:07:32] Speaker A: What an incredible moment it must have been. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Ah. Ah. [00:07:40] Speaker A: How stunning it must have been for Mary, who had been living this very common life and had a very common expectation for her future to suddenly be spoken to by the angel Gabriel. Gabriel is a Hebrew name, Gabor El, and it means something like this. God is powerful. I also read some rabbis believe it means God is my hero. The angel named God is my hero showed up to speak to a common teenage girl. God invaded her history, you say? Wouldn't it be. Wouldn't it be awesome if that could happen to me? I don't believe you're going to ever meet the angel Gabriel in this world, But I do believe the Holy Spirit invades your life as surely and as certainly as the angel invaded Mary's life. I believe with all my heart God wouldn't like anything more than this Christmas to invade your everyday life and share his presence and his wonder with you. I believe. I believe holidays ought not to be so hectic that there isn't any free time for the Holy Spirit to move in your heart in a meaningful and rich way. Mary and Joseph were engaged to be married. And when Gabriel spoke to her what was going to be a relatively common future together was radically changed. You see, when God shows up, it is a great blessing, but it also creates unexpected complications. When God shows up in our life, it is a beautiful thing, but it also creates unexpected complications. God would love to meet you. He would love to interrupt your life this Christmas. He would. He would love to create unexpected complications that make you look at the future differently than you're looking at it right now. It's part of the promise of Christmas. You see, Christmas changed everything. When Christ came into the world, it changed history. If nothing else, we changed how we date everything. We date everything by the incarnation of Jesus Christ into the world. God invades your life for the purpose of making your future different than it would have been without him. And then Gabriel says to her, greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you. I'd like to push on this word, O favored one. It literally. If I translated it literally, it would be, one who has received great grace. One who has received great grace. God invaded Mary's life so that he could give her great grace. Church God has great grace for you wherever you are in life. This morning, whatever happening, whatever your. Whatever your great joys are and whatever your great disappointments are, God has a desire to treat you better than you deserve, to treat you better than you can imagine. It is the desire of his heart. And then he said to Mary, the Lord is with you. What a beautiful promise. What a beautiful promise. I don't know what I have to face next year. I do know a good friend of mine said, you know, you're going to be living in the hardest decade of your life. And I said, well, thank. That's very encouraging. I don't know what I have to face next year. Mary had no idea what was coming up in her life, but she had this promise from God, I'm with you. When God shows up in our lives, when he invades our history, he says, I've got great grace for you. And whatever you have to face this year, I'm with you. I'll be right there with you in your greatest joys. I'll be there celebrating. In your deepest heartaches, I will be there. I will weep along with you in your deepest heartaches. He is the God who invades history so he can be with us and continually show us his favorite. And then the Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph, they had a unique history. They were descendants of King David. If things had been the way they were supposed to be. One of David's Descendants would have been king in Jerusalem and they would have been royalty instead of being just common people living in Nazareth. [00:14:17] Speaker B: Ah. [00:14:22] Speaker A: But God said, even though history has changed the course of your family, I've got something awesome for you. Many of you are living in a history that wouldn't be your first pick. There was another time in your life when you saw things would be different in the way they are. There was another time in your life when. When you had different expectations. And I'm saying in this moment, the promise of Christmas to you is the same as it was to Mary. Regardless of how life has got you to where you are, God has a better future for you. Your past does not predict your future. The promise of Christmas is God is able to do exceedingly and abundantly above what you can ask or think. And what has happened in the past is not the predictor for what God is going to do in the future. The presence of Christmas past do not predict the presence of Christmas future. God is creative and he's good and he's gracious and he's going to meet you in your life in ways that are richer than your past can predict. How did Mary respond to all of this? Luke said she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, and he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom there will be no end. Mary's first response was she was troubled. You shouldn't be surprised because if you read earlier in chapter one, the same angel Gabriel showed up and spoke to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. And in verse 12, when Gabriel spoke to Zechariah, it said Zachariah was troubled and he and. And fear fell upon him. Mary heard. Mary saw Gabriel. She heard his message and something was upset within her. [00:17:40] Speaker B: Ah. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Ah. The status quo had been broken. And along with it, she lost that sense of comfort you have when everything's going just average. She felt that odd feeling in her stomach, that feeling that you get when things aren't the same and you don't know where they're going from here. The promise of Christmas is often uncomfortable. In a couple of weeks, I'm going to preach to you a Sermon called the Problem of Christmas. Problems are normal for Christmas. If you have Christmas problems, welcome to the human race. Ah, there is. Christmas is supposed to break the status quo. There's supposed to be times in our life where we say, what pathway am I on? And is this the time I need to change the pathway I'm on? If I continue living the way I'm living right now, where's that going to get me in five years? The promise of Christmas is with Jesus Christ. You can endure the discomfort you have to endure to chart a new course and become more of the person God created you to be and accomplish more of his eternal purpose for you. When God spoke to Mary, he said, mary, this is not going to be the way you thought it would, but I'm going to be with you. And when Mary heard that, she felt the discomfort of it. But she had the faith to say to God, all right, where do we go from here? Ah. If God meets you this Christmas season and he interrupts the comfort of the status quo of your life, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will direct your path. Then Mary had to try to figure out it said. She tried to discern and figure out what kind of greeting this was. Mary heard what the heard what the angel said, but she wasn't sure how it all fit together for her. And she had to. She had to contemplate it. Here we are again. Christianity is a thinking religion. Can you hear this? Christmas is part of our thinking religion. I hope you will take time this Christmas season to try to think about the life of Christ. What kind of life did he live? What did he do? What did he teach? What was important to him? How did he treat people? Christianity and Christmas, it has to be contemplated. Christian Christmas is not just a ritual where we play a few Christmas songs, put up our Christmas tree, try to get the right presents, hope that the weather's good on Christmas Eve, go to Christmas Eve service, eat family, it's not a ritual. If Christmas dissolves into a ritual, it's nothing more than the Fourth of July. But if I'm willing to take a moment in the Christmas season and say, this has to be thought about, I'm going to think about, what do I know about Jesus Christ? What stories can I remember from the Gospels? What parables do I remember from the Gospels? What miracles do I remember from the Gospels? Tell yourself the story the best you can and then say, whisper this prayer to Christ in this Christmas time. Would you help me to understand who you are and what you're doing better than I ever have in my life. Church. You just say to Christ, I don't want to waste another Christmas. I'm asking you to help me understand you better than I've ever understood you in my life. So it matters what you spend your time thinking about this Christmas, some of you are going to spend more time being grouchy about all the stuff that goes with Christmas than you spend on being thankful to God for Jesus Christ. Am I right? [00:23:19] Speaker B: Ah. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Some of you are going to spend more time wishing you didn't have to do something you have to do. Then you're going to spend thinking about the beauty of Jesus Christ. And when you do, you. You ruin Christmas for yourself, Church. You ruin Christmas for yourself. It's supposed to be better than that. It's supposed to be more beautiful than that. So what is the promise of Christmas? Gabriel says five things to Mary. One, do not be afraid. The promise of Christmas is like Emily said last week, no matter what you're seeing around you, no matter what you're seeing around you, you don't have to be afraid. The Lord is God and he is on your side. I know that some of you have a difficult things that you're engaging in right now and you have. You have difficult prospects for the future, but the promise of Christmas to you is do not be afraid. I preached a sermon series on do not be afraid. You probably don't remember it, but The Bible says 66 times, do not be afraid. And this is one of them. Why does God have to say to us 66 times, do not be afraid? Why isn't 10 enough? How about 30? No, it's 66 times. He says this is important. You can't face the future in fear. The promise of Christmas is you don't have to be afraid. What is the promise of Christmas? It is trusting in the grace of God. Gabriel said to Mary, you have found grace with God. Could I tell you in Jesus Christ, everyone in this room and everyone online, you have found grace with God. John tells us in his gospel that the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld the glory of God. Ah. Gloria is the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth? Jesus Christ is full of grace. It is his richest desire to treat you better than what you deserve. The promise of Christmas is God wants to be gracious to you. The promise of Christmas is God has grace for you beyond what you've imagined. The third part of the Promise of Christmas. Jesus is unique. Behold, you will conceive and give birth to a son and you will call his name, Jesus. Jesus is unique. There is no other living being like Jesus. Could I remind you, he is unique because he is both God and man. Mary gave birth to the human man, Jesus Christ. But God placed within Mary the divine nature of the Second Person of the Trinity. We believe that Jesus is unique because in him, God and man stand together in one being. We believe that the man doesn't become God and the God doesn't become man. The man stays man and the God stays God, and they stand together in one person. Jesus Christ is not just another religious leader. I'm tired of these. I'm tired of these false comparisons I hear all the time about Jesus is like a Buddha. Jesus is like. He is not like any other man. He is absolutely and totally unique. The Christ we worship at Christmas time is the unique idea of God Almighty. Because man cannot rise up to God. God comes down to man in Jesus Christ. And every Christmas we celebrate that. God loved us so much that he gave up the beauties and the wonders and the splendors of heaven to walk around this dust ball for 33 years and ultimately to sacrifice himself for our sin. He is unique. He deserves to be treated as the unique one. And he deserves to be worshiped and loved with the very best of our hearts. The promise of Christmas is Jesus is not just unique, he is great. The Son of the Most High. This one will be great, and he will be called the Son of the Most High. I don't know how you measure greatness. I don't know what greatness looks like on your scale. I don't know if you measure greatness by somebody's athletic ability, or you measure greatness by how well they can act, or you measure greatness by how much wealth someone accumulates. I don't know what your scale of greatness is, but I tell you, if you have any scale at all, Jesus Christ is infinitely greater than everybody else on your scale. The very greatest of the great are inferior to the majestic Lord Jesus Christ who came to this earth to show us the goodness and the greatness of God. And then the fifth part of the promise of Christmas is, no matter what it looks like to you out there, somebody's in charge and somebody is running all of this, and they're running it for an eternal purpose. I know you look at the news and you say it's chaos. I know you look at many things in life and say, if God is Running this. How can it possibly be this ugly? How can it possibly be this bad? The promise of Christmas is God is running it. God is. He is reigning. The reign of Christ is an eternal reign. The reign of Christ is greater than what I can see. If you don't understand the rules of football and you watch a game, it looks like chaos. What are they doing? Why do they stop here? What are those flags they're throwing all over? If you don't understand the rules of football, it looks like chaos, right? If you understand the rules of football, you look at what's happening on the field in a very, very different way. I don't understand the rules of soccer, especially how they keep time. No soccer game has any time. They just. Kids want to keep playing or they want. I don't know, they add time and add time. I don't get it at all. [00:31:26] Speaker B: All right? [00:31:28] Speaker A: When I don't understand things can look chaotic and not be chaotic. I don't understand many things that are happening in the world. But my failure to understand them doesn't mean that God is not ruling and reigning in a way that he's working things out for his eternal purpose. Because it looks chaotic to me. It only means I don't understand what God understands. The promise of Christmas is the world is not in chaos. It is being ruled and reigned by the one who is the greatest of all, the one who is the most unique, Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Then Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. Mary's question was a fair question. It was an honest question. It was a question she had every right to ask. She said, I am not in a time in my life where I'm sexually active, yet how can I possibly have a son? There is a mystery in Christmas, and the mystery is God is more creative than what we imagine. I believe what the Church has always taught for 2000 years. In the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. God placed Christ in Mary in a unique and singular way. He had to for Jesus Christ to be the God man. The promise of Christmas is God can do things greater than what I understand Church. God's actions are not limited to my understanding. In fact, I would like to say if I could understand everything God does, he wouldn't be God. If a common man can understand everything he does, he wouldn't be God. The proof that he is God is that he acts in ways beyond my limited comprehension. Christmas requires the divine. It's not just a human holiday. If God had not done what God did, there would have been no first Christmas. And can I tell you, your Christmas this year requires the divine. You have to have a sense of God in your life this Christmas. Otherwise it's just another human holiday. Gabriel said the Holy Spirit is going to do something that only God can do. And you're going to give birth to a child, and that child will be absolutely holy. Ah, the child that Mary gave birth to was morally perfect. He never made one mistake his entire life. Hey, mom, how would you like to raise that kid? How would you like to be that kid's brother or sister? Oh, you're perfect. And Jesus says, that's right. Can you, can you, can you look beyond every Christmas card manger scene you've ever seen? Can you imagine beyond the manger scenes and the crushes you've seen in yards your whole life? And can you. Can you see God born as a child, absolutely perfect, and being required to grow up in a broken, ugly, selfish, violent world? The holiness of God was offended every single day of Christ's life, every single day of his life. The holiness, the moral purity, the perfection of character that he so valued, every single day of his life that was insulted. The promise of Christmas is a call for patience. Holiness is not self righteousness. Holiness is not you going around proving you're better than other people. Holiness is you living out the same character that Christ lived out. And when the people around him offended him, his holiness made him rich in patience. Somebody's gonna get on your nerves this Christmas, I promise you. I hope it's not me. Ah, Christmas is a call for holiness. Jesus Christ was absolutely holy. And Jesus taught while he was alive, because I'm holy, I want you to be holy this Christmas. God is whispering to you. You can show the holiness of God the same way Christ showed it, by being patient and kind and gentle with others, especially when they're getting on your very last nerve. Church Luke ended this story by telling us, behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age has also conceived a son. And this is the fifth month with her, who was called barren for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. Listen how this ends. This average teenage girl, her life is interrupted by God. Her future is radically changed. It's made infinitely more complicated. She can only guess the difficulties she has to face. But when it comes right down to the moment, she says to God, I am your servant. Church Christmas is meant to remind us that we are the servants of God. He is not our servant. We are his servants. We exist for his glory. Our look at the future should be based upon what it is that my Lord and Savior wants of me, instead of me creating my January, my January plan and telling God what his part in my plan is. This year. Mary had plans for her life. She had dreams for her life. She had expectations for her life. But when, when, when, when God met her that day, she said, I am before all things your servant. And if this is what you want, this is what I'm willing to do. Church this Christmas, you might find a moment to quiet your heart and you might find a moment to say, some of you, maybe for the first time, I want to become your servant. I am yielding myself to you today. I am receiving you as my Lord and Savior. Some of you have already done that, but life has pushed you around and it would be real hard for you to honestly say, today, I am a servant of the Lord. It would be really hard for you to say, in my day to day life, I really try to serve God. Perhaps the Holy Spirit could invade your life. You could have a holy moment and you could say to God, thank you. This is a new Christmas and I'm starting a new day. I want to be your servant. I want to serve you the way you deserve to be served. I want to serve you in the kind of way that what you desire for me is worked out in my life. And then she said, let it be to me according to your word. I sometimes wonder what influence Mary had on her son Jesus in the Gospels. It can be confusing sometimes, but sometimes I get little flashes of light, and this is one of them. Mary said to the angel, listen to what Mary said. Let it be to me according to your word. Ah, 33 years after this, Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he's saying to the Father, let this cup pass from me. But then he prayed, perhaps the way his mom taught him to pray. Not my will, but your will be done. That's exactly what Mary was saying in this moment. Mary was saying to God, I had plans, I had ideas, I had an agenda, but not my will, but your will be done. The best prayer you can pray this Christmas is the prayer that Mary taught Jesus to pray, and she wants to teach us to pray. Ah, let it be to me. This year according to your word. I see in Christ such beauty, such wonder, such goodness, that I am submitting completely to your good purpose for my life this year. The promise of Christmas is that God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven, because people like you and I learn from the New Testament and we say to God, I am your servant. Do with my life whatever you will. Our dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for the beauty of this passage. I thank you for the beauty of who Mary was. I thank you for. I thank you for the great grace that she experienced from you. And now I pray for myself, everyone who's here and everyone who's watching online, I ask you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that we could experience you in a healthy way this Christmas. And because we have experienced you in a healthy way, our souls would be recalibrated and we would hear ourselves pledging ourselves freshly to you and saying, let it be to me as you have willed. And I pray that you will receive all the glory in Christ's name, Amen.