God Wants Us

God Wants Us

12/19/1999 Isaiah 9:1-7, Luke 2:8-20, Text John 1:1-18

Think for a moment of a person you truly love. Suppose you had a large sum of money fall to you out of the sky, and a voice said, use this to buy that person a Christmas gift. Now would you think, "what’s the worse possible gift I could buy for this person to make their lives absolutely miserable? What can I get them, that they would use one time and then put it on a shelf and forget about it?" No you probably would want to give them something, that they would enjoy and something which would benefit their lives. You would do this, to let them know, "I care about you", "I want to be a part of your life", and "I want you to know that you are special."

When the angels appeared to the shepherds in the fields, they did not come with the message, "I got some bad news from God. You are really in trouble now because God has put up with all He’s going to take you from you." No, they came with the message, "Man have we got some good news for you. God wants you, and He’s sent a Savior into the world just to show you how badly He wants you."

The shepherds were considered to be the minimum wage earners down at the bottom of the economic ladders. They got the job nobody else really wanted. They were the dropouts, the uneducated members of society. Yet God wanted them and told them where they could find a Savior. But somehow through a star shining in the east God got the attention of some rich highly educated people to let them know they too were in a savior. They were the ones who brought to Jesus the gold, the frankincense and the myrrh.

At the heart of Christmas is the reality that God wants us. He wants us old and young, rich and poor, black, white, red, yellow, and brown. He wants the educated, the uneducated, He wants those in the city, in the country, and in the suburbs. He wants those in the east and those in the west. Look at the person next to you and tell them, "God wants us."

To fully understand the meaning of Christmas, Matthew tells us about the struggles of Mary and Joseph and their relationship to each other. Luke lets us know about the good news to the shepherds, but John takes us back to the ultimate meaning of Christmas and where it all began. You see some people think, Jesus came into existence when He was born and placed in a manger in the city of Bethlehem. But that’s only partially true.

If you look in John chapter one, you will discover where the Christmas story actually begins. Verse 1 tells us that in the Beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. John is telling us, "Look as far back as your minds could think, The Word was with God.

Now in verse 14, it says, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. This means that which was with God in the beginning, became a human being and lived with other human beings. Now we know the Word is the same as Jesus Christ. You may here people use this big word called the Incarnation. The Incarnation simply means, that Jesus, Who Was God, came into a human body. I remember it by thinking of a human body as a carton or container. Jesus came and got into a carton.

Jesus was God -- and with God -- As The Word of God before creation. Everything that was made was made through Christ As The Word Of God. Remember, God spoke the word, "Let There Be" and whatever God said it was. As the Word, Jesus brought everything into existence. So Jesus existed long before Mary and Joseph had a little boy in Bethlehem.

When the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, decided to disobey God, God told them, "the day you do what you’re not supposed to do, you will surely die." Adam and Eve, like us so often, didn’t believe God knew what He was talking about, so they disobeyed and sure enough, not only did they die, we have all been dying ever since then.

But God went looking for Adam and Eve, because even though they had separated themselves from God, God still wanted to have a relationship to them. That’s when God promised them that one day Christmas is going to come. He told Satan, because you deceived Eve, one day she is going to have a great, great, great, great, great grandchild, and he is going to destroy you and the work which you have done.