A Sunday School teacher had her students put a manger scene in a corner of her classroom. It was the Christmas season, and her pupils were excited as they set up the model barn and covered the floor with real straw and then arranged the clay figures of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Wise Men, and all of the animals – all of the clay figures faced the little crib with a tiny doll represented baby Jesus. When the scene was all set up one boy kept going back and standing in front of it totally engrossed by what he saw.But there also a puzzled expression on his face. And the teacher finally asked him, “So, what do are you thinking? Is there something you’d like to know?” The boy kept his eyes glued on the manger scene, and slowly said, “What I’d like to know is, where does God fit in?”
As I was working on today’s sermon, I started to ask myself that very question: Where DOES God fit into this story? I mean… it’s fairly obvious that the baby in story is the Son of God. Or, as the Gospel of John tells us:
“In the beginning was the Word (that’s Jesus), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1
SO… PROBLEM SOLVED! (pause) Or is it?
You see, GOD was way more involved in this story than just being the baby in the manger. For that simple scene - with Mary and Joseph and the baby living in an obscure smelly barn, surrounded by shepherds and sheep and goats and calves… and all of it taking place in UNimportant little town called Bethlehem. For all that to happen (for just that little scene) A lot of planning had to take place. A lot of planning by God.
1 Peter 1:20 says “(Jesus) was foreknown before the foundation of the world
Galatians 4:4 tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son”
This thing had been in the works for centuries. Everything in that Bethlehem story had been meticulously planned since the foundation of the world.
On top of that, everything in the Old Testament pointed forward to the coming Messiah: His birth, His life, His death… and the resurrection of Jesus. All that had been predicted. There were over 300 prophecies declared: “He’s Coming! He’s Coming!!!”
And one of those prophecies is in Isaiah 7:14 that declared: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
And that brings us to our text today: “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from 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…. And the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 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.’ And 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.’” Luke 1:26-27 & 31-35
Now that’s a nice story… but why go to all that trouble? I mean: What difference would this little story mean to us?
As I was thinking about that, I recalled a conversation I’d had recently with a friend. This friend was telling me that they truly believed in Jesus, but they couldn’t quite bring themselves to accept the idea that ALL THE OTHER world religions were wrong. She was really struggled with that (and she’s not the only one).
Now theologically, we know that that’s true. Jesus IS the only way. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
That’s truth!!!
But WHY is that truth? Why is that no one can come to Father except through Jesus?
The answer is simple: All other religions speak of a god or force who’s “way up there, and really doesn’t care” UNLESS you’ve earned enough brownie points to make him/ her/ or it love you. That kind of god would never do anything for you UNLESS you deserved their attention
But, the prophecy in Isaiah 7:14 tells us that God cared enough to make the 1st move! “Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.”
Immanuel means: “God with us.” Immanuel meant God was stepping down from heaven to live among us. God was taking on “flesh” to become one of us.
No other religion would teach ANYTHING like that, because no other religion teaches a god who loves us.
ILLUS: You know the song (sing) “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”? Did you realize that no other religion has a song like that! And do you know why they don’t have songs like that? Because their gods don’t care… and they don’t love anybody.
But that was part of the angel’s message to Mary: God loved us enough to come down and be like us.
ILLUS: A famous Scientist once said that “The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person.” (J. Robert Oppenheimer) And the idea God wanted to send to us… was that He cared for us. So He wrapped Himself in human flesh to show us He loved us.
Now, that brings me to next reason the angel’s message means something to us: The message about Jesus was more than just “God loves you.” That angelic message was also telling us: God did something for you, you couldn’t have done for yourself.
Once again, this is a major difference between all the other world religions and Jesus. All other world religions say you can do enough good deeds to outweigh your bad deeds. That’s what Karma is all about! Karma basically maintains that if you do enough good deeds, you can balance out the “scales” of life and “pay for” your bad deeds. The more good deeds you do, the more likely you are to attain heaven or nirvana, or whatever it is they aim for.
But even that becomes problematic, because many people have realized that they couldn’t possibly do enough to pay off the debt of all their sin in one lifetime. That’s why somebody came up with the bright idea of Reincarnation. With reincarnation, you just keep coming back again and again and again, until you paid off your debt.
But the Bible tells us, it wouldn’t matter how many times you came back, you still couldn’t do enough to balance it out. WHY???? Because “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) If reincarnation were true, very time someone “came back” they’d repeatedly sin and fall short of God’s glory. You just can’t win at that kind of game. You’ll always lose.
So since all have sinned - and the price to be paid for our sin is death (Romans 6:23 “… the wages of sin is death”) We couldn’t do pay for the debt of our sins.
So God did it for us.
Isaiah prophesied that God looked down on all the sin of mankind and was frustrated that “there was… no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head; he put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.” Isaiah 59:16-17
Jesus was God in the flesh - born to go to war against the guilt of our sins. Born to pay the price for our failures and the things that make you hate yourself. Born to die in that battle. Born to die in our place.
Of course the problem is this. God (by definition) can’t die. And while Men can die, not one of them is sinless – and we need a sinless sacrifice… so no ordinary man can die in our place.
SO, only God is SINLESS and He was willing to die for us but being God He couldn’t die. So how could God do that for us? How could God possibly die for us? Well, FIRST… He’d have to become mortal. And that brings us to Jesus
Who was the FATHER of this child? Well, that would be God. The angel told Mary… “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.” Luke 1:17
And who was the MOTHER? MARY - a mortal woman who’d never known a man. She could have turned God down … but she didn’t. She said: “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” Luke 1:38
So, Jesus was born (of Mary by God) making Him fully man and fully God. He was Man, so He could die - and He was God so His sinlessness (as God) could pay for our sin. No other world religion has a god/or force of any kind who would be willing to do anything like that for you.
So, the question “Where was God?” has a very straightforward set of answers: 1) God took on flesh to show that He cared for us and 2) God became a man so He could pay for our sins.
But there was one more thing that God did here. He became poor so that we could become rich! When Jesus left the glories of heaven, He stripped Himself of His Godhood. And He did that so that He could give us something we didn’t deserve - a place in his Kingdom. That’s what the angel Gabriel meant when he told Mary “(Jesus) will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his KINGDOM there will be no end” Luke 1:33
And Colossians 1:13 tells us that BECAUSE we became Christians “(God) has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.”
You see, here’s the problem with all the other world religions: they teach that you can reach heaven (nirvana/or whatever they may call it) because you’ve bought your way in. If you don’t get in its because you weren’t good enough. But God tells us… NONE of us will ever be “good enough to be good enough.” You won’t get into heaven because of HOW good you’ve been, you’ll only get into heaven is because of WHO you belong to.
ILLUS: Benjamin (my 2 year old Grandson) has gotten really excited Christmas. He doesn’t understand about the story of Jesus quite yet, but whenever he sees Christmas decorations he shouts out… “CHRISTMAS!!” In a few weeks he’s going to be sitting around a Christmas tree with his families and opening presents and some of those presents will have his name on them. THEY’LL BELONG TO HIM! They won’t belong to another child or to his parents, or to me. They are his and they will be precious to him because THEY ARE HIS! And if he really likes them… he’ll drag them all over the house. He’ll want them to be where he is at.
Now, when you and I became a Christians, Jesus told us that we were really precious to Him. He died so you could be His! As 1 Peter 2:9 says “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.” And just like Benjamin wants his precious possessions with him, in the same way you are a precious possession of Christ’s. So, wherever Jesus is… that’s where He wants you to be.
THAT’S WHY WE GET TO GO TO HEAVEN. We’ll go with Whom we belong.
CLOSE: That’s the power of story of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus. It’s the story of our God: a God who cared for you, who died for you, and who WANTS YOU to be where He is.
Gene Dulin tells of standing in Austria, looking at a hand carved nativity scene. The figures were a bit larger than life size and they were among the most beautiful that he had ever seen. Just then, a grandmother stopped with her 3 year old grandchild. She stooped and began talking with the child. She pointed to Mary, then to Joseph, and to the baby. Dulin says he couldn’t understand her language, but he knew she was telling the story of Jesus to her grandchild.
Then Dulin added, “For 2000 years parents and grandparents have passed on the story of Jesus. It has changed millions of lives and the whole world.” That’s the gift of the baby. That’s the gift of God.
INVITATION
