Christmas is almost here, just one more day to wait! This is an exciting time! Tomorrow morning, when we get up, the day will be filled with laughter and fun and all of those great traditions that take place on Christmas morning. The kids will come in early and make Erin and I send them back to their room at least four times before 6 AM. My brother and sister and I used to do this every year when we were little. We got so frustrated that my parents didn’t seem to share our sense of urgency, we didn’t think that 5 or 6 in the morning was too early to begin celebrating Christmas! One year we came up with the perfect plan to get our parents attention and to get them out of bed on Christmas morning. They voted that I should play my trumpet as loud as I could as soon as I woke up. Well, it worked. My dad got up! Amazingly, my trumpet survived the wrath of Scrooge that morning but it never was used on Christmas morning again! Now the shoe is on the other foot and Erin and I have to remind ourselves that we did the same things when we were little.
I love to watch the kids as they first come in to the room and see the tree all lit up and the presents all spread out. It’s fun to watch the joy and the smiles on their faces. That’s a part of Christmas I wouldn’t want to miss. Then there’s the food. Christmas breakfast has always been a big tradition for us. Cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, eggs, bacon, there is so much to look forward to. Often, Christmas day is the easiest day to forget about Christ. We can focus on Him in the build up to Christmas, but when the day arrives, between family and the presents and the cooking, and other things, He gets left out of the actual celebration. One of the ways that my parents would help to remind us to celebrate Christ’s birth was through a birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas Day. Do any of you do that? It was a great way to remind us to turn our thoughts back to Him. We did it every year except the one that my dad dropped the cake onto his foot. We would always bring out the cake and sing Happy Birthday to Him as a way of remembering the Truth of Christmas, what was still going to be there long after we cleaned up and the memories and presents faded away. It helped to keep Jesus at the center, especially on Christmas Day.
That’s what we’ve been trying to do for the last few weeks, to break through all of the outer trappings of this holiday season and to turn our thoughts and attention back to the basics, to a mother and her newborn child in a lonely stable in a far away place. Back to the appearance of the angels, the wonder of the shepherds, and the awe of a father as he tries to take it all in. Over the last five weeks, we’ve been talking about “The Christmas You’ve Always Longed For.” We’ve talked about a need to slow down and reflect, we’ve talked about refocusing, sighting in our scopes so that Jesus will always be in the middle, in the center of our line of sight. Two weeks ago we talked about the background. We looked at how Mary focused on the important things and trusted God for the impossible details to be filled in. I hope that you have been able to do that these last few weeks. If you have, I know that God is faithful and I know that you have seen Him work in your lives this Christmas in a way that is beyond anything you could have accomplished on your own.
Today, on Christmas Eve, I want to wrap things up. (that was a joke) I want to take a good look at the manger this morning. I want you to leave this place with no doubt in your mind who it was that was born and with no doubt in your mind what He came to accomplish when He made His home among us.
Home is a very important part of Christmas. It always has been. There is something in us that longs for the closeness and familiarity of family at this time of year. I can remember the feeling as I laid my pen down after the last question of the last final of each of the Fall semesters that I was in college. There was only one thought on my mind, I was going home. It was time for Christmas break and I was going to be with my family.
There have been numerous movies and commercials that have been made that show the lengths that people will go to in order to be home for the holidays. People brave the elements, venturing out in blizzards. When cars fail and planes are grounded, they walk through the cold using any means necessary to get where they need to be, home with the ones they love. There’s songs that pay tribute to this desire in us, “I’ll be home for Christmas.” There’s no place like home for the holidays.” We do what we can to be home to experience the traditions of old and to create new ones together each Christmas. Home is where the memories are made.
Home marked that first Christmas morning too. But it wasn’t gathering at home or coming home, the Christmas story was marked, in many ways, by leaving home and moving out into unfamiliar places. The wise men saw a star and knew that it was a sign of great importance. They knew that it was pointing to something big, something earth-shattering and life changing. They left home to follow that star and to bend their knee before a new king. The shepherds were home in the fields enjoying a quiet evening after a long day when the angels burst from the heavens and trumpeted the arrival of the king. The shepherds left home and ventured into Bethlehem to see the child that the angels had told them would be there and they found things just as they had been told. Mary and Joseph were called away from home to travel to Bethlehem because it was the town that Joseph’s line, the line of David, had come from. They left everything they knew and loved to begin a new season in life and to be the Earthly parents of a miracle child. In leaving home, they fulfilled the prophecies and God ensured that His Son would be delivered just as He had promised His people.
Each of these characters in the story left home and followed the command and instruction of God and each was blessed to witness the coming of the king and to worship the Christ child. If that first Christmas was marked by leaving home, there is no better example of that than the baby Himself. Each of the others left earthly homes and earthly families when they set out, Jesus left much more and sacrificed much more to make this story a reality. To understand the sacrifices that He made, to understand what He gave up and what He was born into, you have to understand who He is. I want to take you to the book of John this morning. This is not your traditional Christmas story passage but it has everything to do with why we celebrate and there is one verse that sums up the true meaning and purpose of Christmas better than any other.
READ 1:1-5
In these verses we learn about this baby. We learn about who He is and who He has always been. This is no ordinary baby.
We see that this baby is:
1) Eternal – v 1 and 2
This birth is unique in so many ways but certainly in the fact that the one being born has always been. We think of pregnancy and birth as the beginning of life. We count birthdays from the moment that the baby makes its first appearance outside the womb. Birth is a starting point. That’s not the case here. There has never been a time when this baby, that has just taken his first breath of air and let out his first cry, has not been. He is eternal. While it’s true that all of us are created for eternity and our souls will live forever, there was a moment when each of us became us, we were created. Not so with Christ. Before the heavens and the earth were formed, Christ was.
Revelation teaches us in the 4th chapter that in heaven, around the throne of Christ there will be a chorus proclaiming the glory of Christ and this will be there cry: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."
He has no beginning and He has no end. It’s an impossible concept for us to get our minds around. Jesus Christ is eternal. That Truth is essential to understanding who He really is and then understanding the reality of who He became for us. He is Infinite.
We also see in these verses the
2) Deity of Christ – v 1 Word was God
This baby was in every way, God. Again, it is not a concept that we can easily grasp because we have nothing on Earth to compare it to. Jesus is God, He is deity.
He says in John 10:30 I and the Father are one."
When we understand that Jesus is God, it makes it all the more remarkable that He would become a man. As Paul writes: PHP 2:6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, PHP 2:7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
Because of His deity, He was a revelation to us. He came to reveal the character of God to mankind. Salvation and forgiveness were huge parts of why He came but we can’t forget this aspect, this purpose of His coming. For the first time, we could see God. His presence was no longer for priests and prophets alone to experience, this baby who was God, revealed God to all of us.
COL 1:15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
What men had worshipped but never really known, that which was hidden from them, was now here in the flesh. Jesus could be seen and touched and known and because of that, we could see and touch and know the Father as well. There has always been a desire in men throughout the ages, to know God.
Moses asked to see God and was given a glimpse of His glory. In John chapter 14 Jesus is speaking with His disciples. Philip asks for Christ to show them the father, they wanted to see God too. Listen to His reply:
JN 14:9 Jesus answered: "Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.
Moses saw a part of God’s splendor and glory because men could not see God’s face and live, but Christ changed that, the disciples and all who saw Christ were given the full picture.
COL 2:9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
Jesus Christ, that baby in the manger, was and is the Almighty, Yahweh, Jehovah, the I Am, the First and the Last, From Everlasting to Everlasting, He is God and He came to reveal God to us so that we could see Him and we could know Him as He intended for us from the beginning.
The next thing we see is that He is the
3) Creator v 3
He was there at the beginning, He was in every way God, and He was the agent of Creation, all things were made through Him and by His authority. He created the very men who would take His life.
Col 1:16 For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Jesus is the Creator.
He is also
4) Life v 4
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Now, this is what I want you to understand, Jesus did not just come to bring life, He did not simply offer a way to receive life, an abundant, fulfilled, joyous life. He was and is that Life. There is no life apart from Christ.
JN 6:35 Then Jesus declared, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.
JN 11:25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies;
JN 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus is Life. Apart from this baby, there is no other hope for life.
And finally we see that He is:
5) Light v 4-5
To a world of darkness a brilliant light was born. Like a candle piercing through the dark night was the birth of this child. He is the light that guides our steps.
PS 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.
John has made it clear that Christ is that Word!
And Jesus said,
JN 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
When the world was created, God said “Let there be light” and there was, On that first Christmas morning, He said those words again and His Son was born. Jesus is the light.
John teaches us the identity of the baby, so there is no mistaking who He is. When we grasp that, the reality hits home that He left His home in glory to be born in a stable. His heavenly home reflected all the honor and the glory that was due to Him. He was deserving of riches and splendor yet He traded that to walk on Earth.
John lays out these Truths to draw attention to the tremendous sacrifice and the grace that Christ displayed for us. When Jesus traded home in heaven for home in Earth;
The Infinite became the Finite.
Deity became Humanity
The Creator became part of the Creation
Life came to Die
And Light entered into Darkness
How did God choose to accomplish this? John explains and in doing so he sums up Christmas in one verse.
JN 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word became flesh and chose to live here with us. The verse can be literally translated, “pitched his tent among us.” He didn’t come to live in luxury and to be inaccessible. He came to live how we live and to experience what we experience, he pitched his tent right beside us when He took on the form of a baby. Heaven came to Earth. If we were to script out a way for the eternal God, the creator of the universe, the life and the light of the world to be presented to the world, my guess is that a helpless newborn would be the last way that we would do it. But this is how the gift was given, in a way that was unexpected.
When Erin and I had been dating for 1 year, it was on Christmas Eve, I gave her a gift that I had spent months thinking about and planning for and saving for. I was so proud, I had gotten her a garnet ring (her birthstone) and it had a diamond too. Now, I was 16 at the time, a diamond was a big deal. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t even a percentage of a carat small enough to describe it so they called it a diamond flake, it was a diamond ring in my mind. I planned the perfect evening, took her to the nut cracker, we had to have a chaperone because I couldn’t drive past 9! When we got back to my house we sat in the living room with the tree lit up and she opened my present. I could see the look of disappointment on her face as she saw what was in the box, it was a stuffed ape. I thought it was a very cute stuffed ape. She tried to act like she liked it but I could tell that she had no idea what she was going to do with it. This ape was about this big and it had a banana in its mouth that you could take in and out. I had put the ring on the end of the banana and put it in the ape’s mouth. She said thanks and set it aside. I said, you know the banana comes out. She wasn’t impressed. I told her again and she’s looking at me like I’m nuts! Finally, I took the ape and pulled the banana out and she saw the ring. The gift didn’t come packaged the way that she thought it should and even though I tried to point it out, she almost missed it!
The way that God chose to wrap this gift was not what the people expected and despite many clues and signs, many of them missed out on God’s gift. Many are still blinded today and can’t see it. They’ve missed the incredible miracle that the word became flesh.
Paul sums it up like this:
2 Corinthians 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
He did it for us, because He loves us. He became nothing so that we could gain everything. Christmas should be something that we celebrate from the very core of who we are because wrapped up in this God child are salvation, a relationship with God, the revelation of God, forgiveness of sins, and eternity with God. These are the hope we have. Be passionate about Christmas. Celebrate and Worship the birth of the King. Don’t let anything or anyone turn your eyes from The baby in the manger, this Word who became flesh, the One who would give His life in sacrifice on the cross, and who will forever be the resurrected Lord of all. It began with this, it began with John 1:14, The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that is the message of Christmas. Immanuel has come.
