FEELING ALONE IN THE WORLD:
A COMMUNITY UNAWARE
Luke 2.1-7
S: Community
C: An Unaware Community
Th: Advent
Pr: DON’T MISS JESUS!
Type: Inductive
PA: How is the change to be observed?
• Don’t miss the Christ of Christmas.
• Be humble enough to receive Him.
• Worship!
Version: ESV
RMBC 24 December 06 AM
INTRODUCTION:
ILL Christmas (H): Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men, and Mint Jelly
Many years ago a Washington, D.C. TV reporter who was working on an assignment called “The Spirit of Christmas,” telephoned the British Embassy and asked to speak to the British ambassador.
“Ambassador,” the reporter said, “you have been very kind to us through the year and we would like to include you in a special Christmas news segment we’re going to run. Tell me, what would you like for Christmas?”
The ambassador replied, “I am very touched by your offer, but I must decline to accept any gift.”
“Oh please,” said the reporter, “you really have been very helpful to us, so won’t you please tell me what you would especially like for Christmas?”
Again the ambassador refused, but the reporter persisted, and he finally gave in. “All right then, if you insist. This Christmas I would like a jar of mint jelly.”
Having forgotten about the conversation, the ambassador was surprised when several weeks later, on Christmas Eve, he turned on the evening news and heard the same reporter introducing a segment on “The Spirit of Christmas.”
We recently interviewed three visiting ambassadors and asked them what they would like for Christmas. These three diplomats each gave revealing answers when they pondered what they would most like during this Christmas season of goodwill.
The German ambassador said: “I would like to see a peaceful and prosperous decade ahead for the newly liberated German people, and all citizens of the planet. May God bless us all during this historic period of change.”
The Swiss ambassador wished: “May the Spirit of Christmas last throughout the year. It is my dream that our world leaders will be guided toward a common goal of peaceful coexistence. This is my wish this Christmas season.”
And then we asked the British ambassador who said, “I would like a jar of mint jelly.”
I have come to a conclusion, and I am sure that many of you will agree with me…
1. There is so much that goes on Christmas, it is easy to miss what is really important.
We know, as Christians, that Christmas is about Christ.
In our minds, we know that this is about Jesus.
Intellectually, we have that down.
But still, though we have it in our minds, and we say that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” we still end up missing it.
The reasons are varied, and perhaps even complex at times.
But in the end, even though we may have had a good time, the time has flown by, and we know deep down we really missed another opportunity to get it right.
You may remember that…
2. Last year, some churches missed Christmas by canceling services.
You may recall that Christmas was on a Sunday last year, so many mega-churches decided to not hold services.
The most common reason that was given is that they wanted to be family friendly.
One pastor testified that they did not want to emphasize religion over relationship.
As soon as I read that, I thought what about a person’s relationship with God.
I think that Robert Johnson, a professor at Fuller Seminary, made an astute comment when he said the canceling of Sunday morning worship services redefines Christmas as a family celebration rather than the commemoration of our Savior’s birth.
This concerns me, for when we forsake the corporate worship and the fellowship of believers, we are giving family and traditions what I consider God weight.
In the big picture of things, we end up contributing to the growing disrespect that our culture has for the spiritual significance of Christmas, because we can’t keep the priority of worship together.
If we slow down for a time, we might have a different reaction to the truth of the Incarnation.
You see…
3. When it comes to the birth of Jesus, we should be appalled and confused.
We tend to make the Nativity scenes pretty and cute.
When we do so, though, we are doing an injustice to the rawness of the situation.
For when we understand what happened on this day, we should be struck with bewilderment.
We should be filled with a sense of awe, because why should God go to such an extreme?
His method should, at the very least, raise our eyebrows with wonderment.
OUR STUDY:
Hear again this familiar passage…
(1) In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. (2) This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. (3) And all went to be registered, each to his own town. (4) And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, (5) to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. (6) And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. (7) And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
One of the things that struck me this year as I was planning this series is how unaware the community was to Joseph and Mary.
For the text speaks of a couple that end up being very much alone during a time of crisis.
First of all, note that…
4. Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem alone.
They had to travel a long distance that would have taken many days from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
It would have been a long, arduous journey, especially since Mary was so far along in the pregnancy.
But why do they come by themselves?
Where is the family?
I think, if you read between the lines, you can figure it out.
For…
5. Joseph and Mary are morally alone.
No relatives are with them because they have become social outcasts.
In the Jewish culture, before a couple is to be married, they are to go through a year long betrothal, in part to insure against an unwanted pregnancy.
Though Joseph and Mary know and believe the reason for her pregnancy, it does not appear as if they have behaved with sexual integrity.
Therefore, their trip to Bethlehem is a long and lonely one.
So when they arrive, there are no relatives to help.
And there is no grand welcome that we might expect for the one that is bearing the nation’s Messiah.
There is no parade.
There is only the busyness of a town coping with the sudden population influx.
And there is no place for them to go, as there is no room in the inn.
Now the crisis has hit.
The journey has taken its toll, and Mary goes into labor.
So…
6. Joseph and Mary go through the trauma and the joy of birth alone.
As I think about this, it occurs to me it must have been a terrifying experience, especially for Mary.
She was likely to have been very young, anywhere between 14 to 17.
There were no family members to help.
There was no midwife.
There was no woman to provide comfort and support.
Just Joseph.
I don’t know that would have given Mary a lot of comfort.
I think it just makes it all the more scary.
And here, they are not yet married.
This is all going to be very personal.
For Joseph, we already know that he is a man of integrity, in spite of what the circumstances look like.
I think we can be sure that he would have desired to provide comfort, safety, and dignity for both mother and child.
But a stable for a recovery room and a manger for a crib would not fit the bill.
I can imagine that they were attempting to make the best of the circumstances, but if I was Joseph, I would be thinking that this couldn’t be any worse.
I imagine that they both felt very alone in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Bethlehem.
But also note this…
7. God comes alone.
God Almighty submits Himself to coming into the world through the birth canal, covered in dark blood.
The Creator of the Universe comes naked into His world.
Because of His love, He enters squinting in the strangeness, with squalling cries, and with arms and legs waving about.
He arrives, totally dependent on the care of these two young people, searching for a warm breast to sustain Him.
God stripped off his finery and appeared in His birthday suit to a people that were unaware of His arrival
APPLICATION:
As we have shown…
8. The Incarnation occurs in the midst of an unaware community.
And, in some ways, it is no wonder.
For God’s heart of love moved him to make choices that seem absurdly unstrategic.
If we had been in the decision making process, we may have chosen to have Jesus show up hitting the ground running, perhaps born to wealth or an emperor.
But God ignored our kind of thinking, and instead chose to identify with our pain.
He chose to identify with our humanity.
He chose to know what it felt like to be flesh and bones.
He chose to come, even though most would be unaware of His coming.
Let’s not repeat that same mistake.
Let’s not be caught unaware this Christmas season and miss the wonder of this story.
We know that there is much trying to get our attention.
As Christians, though, we are the ones that are to deeply note the birth of Christ, but we too often miss it.
9. The busyness and materialism of Christmas causes us to miss Jesus.
This certainly could describe the innkeeper.
He, of course, would be preoccupied with the inn.
After all, business was booming.
It was a busy time.
The same is true for us.
There are parties, Christmas cards, trees, decorations and company coming.
They all demand our attention.
But they can occupy us to such an amount that we literally never stop and pause, and sit in wonder of the truly most blessed event.
This is not our only enemy that makes us miss it.
10. Our own self-interest keeps us from Jesus.
This certainly describes the so-called King of the Jews, Herod.
When the wise men come to Jerusalem, probably a year later after the birth, Herod schemes against the idea that there would be a possible usurper to his throne.
Though he makes nice to the wise men, it is a sly maneuver, for he is determined to eliminate any competition.
Unfortunately, the same kind of self-interest can distract us as well.
When we come to Christmas for what we can get out of it, to serve our own desires and wants, we totally miss the greatest gift that has ever been given.
There is another danger as well.
For…
11. Substituting knowledge for relationship will cause us to pass over Jesus.
There is an irony in the story with Herod.
The religious leaders knew where the Messiah was going to be born, but they give no credence to the wise men’s inquiry about him.
They do not show even the slightest bit of curiosity.
We can fall into the same kind of trap.
For their reaction, or lack of it, shows us that we can be very familiar with the story, but still have no real hunger for God.
This is why we must go beyond the book, and find the relationship with its Author.
We need to get beyond the surface of the story, and hear the good news for what it is.
ILL Christmas (S)
Bret Harte’s story The Luck of Roaring Camp is about what was supposed to be, the meanest, toughest mining town in all of the West, Roaring Camp. More murders, more thefts -- it was a terrible place inhabited entirely by men, and one woman who tried to serve them all. Her name was Cherokee Sal. She died while giving birth to a baby.
Well, the men took the baby, and they put her in a box with some old rags under her. When they looked at her, they decided that didn’t look right, so they sent one of the men eighty miles to buy a rosewood cradle. He brought it back, and they put the rags and the baby in the rosewood cradle. And the rags didn’t look right there. So they sent another of their number to Sacramento, and he came back with some beautiful silk and lace blankets. And they put the baby, wrapped around with those blankets, in the rosewood cradle.
It looked fine until someone happened to notice that the floor was so filthy. So these hardened, tough men got down on their hands and knees, and with their hardened hands they scrubbed that floor until it was very clean. Of course, what that did was to make the walls and the ceiling and the dirty windows without curtains look absolutely terrible. So they washed down the walls and the ceiling, and they put curtains at the windows. And now things were beginning to look as they thought they should look. But of course, they had to give up a lot of their fighting because the baby slept a lot, and babies can’t sleep during a brawl.
So the whole temperature of Roaring Camp seemed to go down. They used to take her out and set her by the entrance to the mine in her rosewood cradle so they could see her when they came up. Then somebody noticed what a dirty place that was, so they planted flowers, and they made a very nice garden there. It looked quite beautiful. And they would bring her, oh, shiny little stones and things that they would find in the mine. But when they would put their hands down next to hers, their hands looked so dirty. Pretty soon the general store was all sold out of soap and shaving gear and perfume and those kinds of things … for the baby changed everything.
The question for us then is…
12. Will we be humble enough to receive the good news?
Will we be humble enough to allow the baby to change everything?
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
ILL Christmas (S)
I recently heard Ron Hutchcraft on the radio talking about getting prepared for Christmas by getting out the decorations.
He described its application this way:
“We unpack Christmas when we want it and we put Christmas away when we don’t want it. You can do that with Christmas. You can’t do that with Christ, although a lot of people try to. We haul out Jesus when we’d like to have Him be a part of things: on Sundays, for Christmas, when we’re in a jam, when we want to be religious. But, to be honest, we keep Him largely at the edges of our life, mostly in our head - not really in our heart.”
Don’t miss Jesus!
He is our Savior!
He is the one that rescues us out of the problems and the life we have made for ourselves.
He is our Lord!
He is nothing less than our Lord, who controls everything, and gives us the best direction for our lives.
Many of us like to drive, but Jesus doesn’t settle for that.
He tells us to move over.
He doesn’t ride, He drives!
The good news about that first Christmas is that there were those that did not miss Him.
Even though God came to an unaware community, there were those that had eyes of faith to see what was going on.
The shepherds heard and believed.
Simeon and Anna saw the baby and they knew.
They knew the Messiah had come.
And the reaction was always the same.
They were knocked flat by the grace of God.
And they worshipped.
ILL Christmas (S)
Steven Mosley has worded it well:
God took us by surprise. While we craned our necks at the sky, trying to decipher the lofty properties of deity, the Almighty became a baby in our arms.
BENEDICTION:
Don’t miss Jesus in the midst of Christmas…for we have been given a great gift, a Savior and a Lord, who demonstrates His love for us in this, while we were yet sinners, He died for us, so that we might enjoy life now and forever.
Now to him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
RESOURCES:
Ashcroft, Mary Ellen. “Gift Wrapping God,” Christianity Today, December 8, 1997, pp. 32-33.
Boice, James Montgomery. “The Men Who Missed Christmas,” The Alliance Witness, December 10, 1986, pp. 8-9, 12.
Couchman, Win. “The Traditions Grinch,” Just Between Us, Fall 1993, pp. 2-4.
Hutchcraft, Ron. “Packing Up Christmas,” A Word with You, December 18, 2006.
Martin, Allie and Jenni Parker. “Some Churches Taking Heat for Closing Doors Christmas Sunday,” Agape Press, December 14, 2005, http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/12/142005a.asp.
Mosley, Steven. “When God Was Made Vulnerable,” Moody, December 1983, p. 25.
Schaeffer, Dan. “What’s Wrong with this Picture?” Moody, November/December 1996, pp. 63-65.
