WE OPENED WITH VIDEO “O, What A Gift” (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=562729207881472)
“I read the story of a woman who saw her friend at church and then, without thinking, said: “Happy Christmas!” The problem was… it was Easter. So, she quickly corrected herself and said, “I’m sorry. I meant to say, Happy Easter.” Her friend smiled back and said: “Well, you can’t have one without the other.” (Cindy Hess Kasper, Our Daily Bread, 4/8/07)
The video we started out with said it this way: “Humbly He came… in a manger, born to die. Just a babe… fully human; fully God. The Word made flesh, God’s only Son. Sent to save us… Died on a cross, rose from the grave. All because He loved us.”
That phrase: BORN TO DIE caught my attention. You can’t have Easter without Christmas, and you can’t have Christmas without Easter. There’re kinda like a matched set. When Jesus was born in the manger, He was literally “born to die.” That’s why He came.
Now, when preachers do “Christmas Sermons” they rarely use John 1 as their text. I mean, there’s nothing in the Gospel of John about shepherds, or wisemen, or angels. And there’s no mention of Mary and Joseph and the manger. There’s no Nativity Scene at all!!!
But the first chapter of John explains WHY we have Christmas. It explains why the birth of Christ matters: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the WORD WAS GOD.” (John 1:1) The entire Gospel of John is dedicated to helping us understand that one concept: Jesus IS God.
Now the other Gospels point to that too. For example, the Gospel of Matthew 1:23 tells us that the angel declared: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means, GOD WITH US.”
But John comes out - right out of the box – saying “The Word (Jesus) was God.” John was telling us that –
THIS IS IMPORTANT… PAY ATTENTION!!!!
But WHY is it important?? Well, there’s a couple of reasons that comes to mind. The first is that the idea of God is an abstract concept. When people think of God, they have this fuzzy image of what God is like.
ILLUS: A Sunday School teacher shared of the time she asked her students what God looked like: One child said “He’s a human being with heart, feet, eyes like fire, and He shampoos his hair everyday.” A boy stated “He looks like my daddy. He wears a jumpsuit on weekends and has a bald head.” One of the girls said “I think God has nice eyes. He wears a very pretty robe, and He has white hair.” Another child said “I think He’s an old man with a long, gray beard. And He sits on a throne like a king, and drinks all the Dr. Pepper He wants.” And still another child thought “He looks like whatever you want Him to look like.” (Calvary Temple in Compton, CA)
Just like those children, lots of folks have a hard time grasping WHAT God is really like. But with Jesus it’s different, because… well… Jesus was God in the flesh. Everything about Jesus tells us what God is like. Everything Jesus said, every healing He did, every kindness He showed… all of that tells us what God is like.
ILLUS: There was a famous scientist in 1960s named Oppenheimer who once said "The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person." In other words: Ideas are abstract… but people aren’t. Ideas can be hard to understand, but you can talk to people and see how they live out the concepts they believe in.
In Jesus we see THE IDEA of God wrapped up in a child. Jesus was (literally) God in the flesh. And even when Jesus was born - as a baby in a manger – that part of His story tells us a couple things about God. In fact it tells us two crucial aspects of Jesus ministry we might miss if we didn’t have the story of Jesus in the manger.
The 1st thing Jesus birth teaches us was: He was willing to be approachable. Have you ever noticed what happens when a mother brings her baby into church? Everybody wants to touch that child and maybe hold it in their arms. They’ll make strange faces at it and make noises they wouldn’t think of making around grown adults. Why do thy do that? Because the child doesn’t turn them away or make fun of them. Babies are “approachable.”
And during His ministry, Jesus was like that… he was approachable. And that’s the way His ministry was. Jesus wanted to be approachable. At one point He said “Come to me (come to me) all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28
The 2nd thing we learn from Jesus’ birth was that He was willing to be vulnerable. There’s probably nothing more vulnerable than a baby - they have hands and feet but they don’t know how to use them. They can’t defend themselves. They’re easily hurt. And, you know, when Jesus was a baby, that was perhaps the most vulnerable He ever was… until He allowed Himself to be crucified on the cross.
You see, Jesus was God in the flesh. He was God telling us that He cared enough for us that, like a child, He was willing to be approachable and vulnerable… because He loved us.
ILLUS: I was intrigued by one person’s description of Christ in Christmas: “To get ready for Christmas, God undressed. God stripped off his finery and appeared (how embarrassing) naked on the day he was born.” Mary (Ellen Ashcroft, “Gift Wrapping God,” Christianity Today, 12-8-97, p. 32-33)
Jesus WAS God - BUT HE UNDRESSED Himself. Did you realize, Mary didn’t have a little “onesie” for Jesus to wear so she wrapped Him in swaddling clothes (strips of cloth) because that’s all she had! And so Jesus (in essence) came NAKED into our world… as a baby.
But why on earth would He do that? Why would God “undress” – remove His Godhood?
Philippians 2:6-8 explains it this way: “though he was in the form of God, (Jesus) did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
In essence (Philippians 2 is telling us) God “emptied Himself” - He became flesh - so He could die on the cross. Why? Well, follow me here: The Bible teaches us that we’ve all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
ILLUS: Just to give a visual perspective on this… have you ever accidentally left a loaf of bread out for about a month or so? What does that loaf look like after that month or so? It’s all green inside. It’s moldy, disgusting, and you just can’t imagine ever opening that package. You just pick it up with tongs and carry it over to the trash bin.
THAT is what our sins do to our lives. It makes us disgusting in the God’s presence. That’s why, as long as our sins are not removed, we won’t be allowed to enter into the heaven and be in God’s presence.
This past year the news covered a school that did an experiment with bread. Back in November (2019) a couple of teachers in Idaho where they took five slices of white bread (one of which was left untouched and immediately zipped into a plastic bag: the control slice). The other 3 were handled by all 17 students plus both instructors, but in various states of cleanliness. One slice was handled by the class without washing their hands. Another was passed from student to student after everybody had used hand sanitizer. And the fourth slice with handled by the class after they’d washed their hands with soap and water. Each slick was placed in a plastic bag, labeled and hung on the classroom wall.
Two weeks went by. The control slice looked relatively normal, as did the one that had been handled by the students after they’d washed their hands with soap and water. But the slice handled by those who used hand sanitizer looked bad… and the one where no one washed or sanitized was atrocious. (https://nypost.com/2019/12/18/disgusting-classroom-experiment-proves-you-really-should-wash-your-hands/)
(see footnote)
Why did the slice that students handled, who hadn’t washed their hands, look so terrible? Because EVERYBODY has germs on their bodies. And what Scripture tells us is that EVERYBODY has a spiritual form of germs… called sin. And everything we touch becomes so gross to God that nothing we offer Him is acceptable – unless we’re washed first.
What can wash away our sins? Well, throughout the Old Testament, God taught His people that the only payment that could be made to cover their sins was the blood of a flawless sacrifice. An animal had to die in their place to bring forgiveness.
The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death. If the blood of pure sacrifice is not available to cover our sins we will DIE in our sins!!! Thus, the only way for us to avoid dying for our sins is that something has to die in our place. And so, the Law of Moses repeatedly called for the blood of animals. Thousands of animals were sacrificed every year so the blood of those animals could die in the place of people whose guilt would bring God’s wrath.
But now, (in the back of their minds) everybody suspected that the blood of animals really didn’t fix the problem. Those animals hadn’t volunteered to die in someone else’s place. So, what was really necessary was for a perfect SOMEONE who would willingly die for everyone else’s sins.
But no mortal man could be found that was sinless enough to die in their place.
In Isaiah 59 we’re told about God’s dilemma: “(God) saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.” Isaiah 59:16-17
You see, God saw the problem. But He couldn’t find anyone who could help, God couldn’t find anyone who could save us, so He decided to do it Himself. God’s plan was to step down from heaven… and bring us salvation.
But now, there’s a problem here. Yes, God was the only one who was righteous enough to offer Himself as a substitute - a pure sacrifice – for our sins. But the problem was: by definition God is IMMORTAL. You know what that means? He can’t die. God couldn’t just step down out of heaven and become our sacrifice for sins because being IMMORTAL meant He couldn’t die.
But now, mortals - CAN die. The problem, of course, that there has never been a human being who was ever righteous enough to get the job done. They’ve all had “germs.” Not one of us has ever been pure enough to die for their OWN sins… let alone yours or mine. As Isaiah 64:6 says - “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.”
Now I think I’m a pretty nice guy. Don’t you think I’m a nice guy? Of course I am! So, do you think I could die in your place? No? Why not? That’s right, because I’m as tainted by sin in my life as you are in yours.
But God had a plan. When Jesus was born He was born to be human (He was the child of Mary), BUT He was also born to be GOD (He was born “of the Holy Spirit”). So, in that one mortal body, Jesus was both fully human and fully God. He was fully human – so He could die. And He was fully God… so He could be sinless and pure enough to be our perfect sacrifice.
Now, that’s great theology. But there’s a problem with great theology. It can be cold and heartless and help explain the world around us… but mean nothing to us personally. If all you believed about what I just explained to you was that it was great theology… then that’s all it will ever be – theology.
But for God, it was way more than a theological exercise. What I just explained to you was WHAT God did, but not why. Just a couple chapters later in John we read this: “For God so LOVED the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
God stepped out of heaven, stripped off His Godhood, and allowed Himself to be rejected, beaten, and crucified because He loved us. If He hadn’t loved us, this all would mean nothing.
And sometimes there are those who see His love even in the manger
CLOSE: I want to close with the true story of a missionary team who had been invited to Russia to teach Christianity. It was Christmastime and the missionaries were at an orphanage. They shared the story of Christ's birth and everyone listened in amazement. None of the kids or the staff had ever heard it before.
One of the missionaries wrote: "We gave the children some materials and instructed them to create the manger scene that they had just heard about. All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat; he looked to be about 6 years old and had just finished his project. But the startled missionary saw not one, but 2 babies in the manger. He called for a translator to ask why.
Looking at his completed manger scene, the child began to repeat the story… until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger. Then Misha started to ad-lib his own ending to the story. "He said, 'And when Mary laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mama and no papa, so I don't have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him forever.'
"Putting his hand over his face, Misha's head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed. But his were not tears of sadness, but of joy: he had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him. He had found Someone who would stay with him forever." (Story related by Stan Cole)
For those who truly understand the Christmas story… it’s not about theology. It’s about a God who cared enough to do what was necessary, so we could stay with Him forever.
INVITATION
Footnote: When I used bread and mold illustration I left out part of the findings in the school's experiment. The teachers also had a fifth piece of bread that in their experiement that they swiped across the keys of a chromebook the students used. I left that out because, though it was interesting, it would have distracted my audience from the focus I intended.
