Years ago, a champion chess player named Paul Morphy visited a museum and saw a picture called: “One more move.”
As a champion chess player this picture stopped Morphy in his tracks. You see, the picture was a piece of art that showed a man playing chess with the devil; assumedly as a game for his soul. Somewhat like Johnny who competed with the devil for his soul in the song: “The devil went down to Georgia.”
As Morphy looked at the picture, he retrieved a chess board and set up the board exactly as a the art constructed the pieces.
Morphy studied the board intently and finally made his move and finished the game with one last move that took the devils king and snatched the victory from the devil.
Transition:
Prior to Christmas, it appeared that the devil had the upper hand when it came to the hope and future for mankind. It appeared that because of our sin, the devil had won the victory; He had mankind doomed to death and eternal lostness without God.
Yet, God had one last move. In a stroke of grace and goodness, Bethlehem happened. Today, we celebrate the move that God made. We read the amazing story of Christmas as read the most popular Christmas passage in scripture that says: “Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth....” and because of this; everyone was on the move.
Verse 3 reads: “And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.”
Joseph and Mary were on the move. In verse 4 we read: “Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem...”
Yet the joy of the story is that God was on the move as Jesus moved out of heaven and came forth from His mother’s womb as we read: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloth, and laid Him in a manger...”
Yes, God was moving and His radical move from heaven to earth communicates how valuable we are to Him. speaking, providing and communicating to all of us how valuable we are to Him.
Nothings communicates how valuable we are to God more than He was willing to come from heaven to earth, the Creator become a creation, the God who made man becoming a man communicates our worth to God in monumental ways.
I must admit, I don’t feel worthy of such love but that does not change the fact that in God’s evaluation; you and I were and are worth sending Jesus, moving heaven and earth, and providing this miraculous birth for you and me.
On this day, Christmas Eve, we pause to consider our worth to God even when we feel unworthy.
Transitional Sentence: From the recorded story of Jesus birth we learn that God communicates our value through:
I. Becoming Like Us
Luke 2: 1-7- “She gave birth to her firstborn son; and wrapped him in clothes and laid him in a manger.”
Explanation:
In our church, one of our core values reads as this: “We see everyone the way Jesus does.” I love that this is a pillar of the purpose of our church.
Do you know why? What really matters in life is not how others see us; what matters is how God sees us.
The Bible tells us in Genesis how we were made. The Bible says in Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.”
Materially, I like to tease and say we’re a bunch of dirt bags. Yet, aren’t you glad that we are a whole lot more than that to God.
God tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay...” Materially we are just a common ordinary vessel. We’re like a clay pot. We’re like an old stale piece of pottery that was shaped by a potter on a spinning wheel.
Yet, that was before God’s grace showed up. You see, when God shows us grace shows up. The Bible declares Him to be a “God of grace.”(Psalm 103:8) The Bible even says “He is the God of all grace.” (I Peter 5:10).
In other words, if you are going to find grace; it will be found where God is.
In the Bible the word “grace” is mentioned 171 times in reference to God. God is obsessed with grace. He’s a graceful God.
One of the greatest evidences of His grace and value of us is that God moves into and upon people.
In Luke 1:35 we read how Christmas came to be. The angel Gabriel tells Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you...”
Who is the Holy Spirit? He is the third member of the Godhead and Christmas happened when the Holy Spirit “came upon her.”
The Holy Spirit came upon her. What does this phrase mean? “It means that the Holy Spirit or the presence of God came upon her for an event that God had planned for her life.
You see that’s what makes us different than any other creation in the world. We are created by God as a spiritual depository for the Holy Spirit. We have been created with a soul for God’s presence to abide in. We are even called as Christians: “ The temple of the Holy Spirit.”
( I Corinthians 6:19)
When God has a plan to be fulfilled He “comes upon us.”
God’s grace has made you valuable through making a place in your heart for His Spirit to take up residence. When you are born again; the Holy Spirit “comes upon you.”
Mary’s purpose was to bring forth the Messiah. The redeemer of the world. The one and only way to heaven. The person who would be born and put in a cradle, grow up and bear our cross, be laid in a borrowed tomb; and miraculously be raised from the dead so that he might redeem us from our sins.
Mary made herself available to God as a depository for the Holy Spirit and by supernatural means God was implanted in a virgins womb and Luke 2:7 tells us that the result was that: “She gave birth to her firstborn son; and wrapped him in clothes and laid him in a manger.”
By God’s grace, unlike any other creation, we can be moved by God’s Holy Spirit. He can speak to us in a plethora of ways. For Joseph it was through a dream, for Mary it was through an angel, for all of us it is through God’s Word.
This Christmas let me remind you that Mary and Joseph were people just like us. They were human. Physically, they were flesh and bone vessels of clay just like you and me yet, spiritually they were also like you and me; they had a soul and a spirit that the Holy Spirit can come upon and move; fulfilling His plan through our lives.
Listen: Whether you know it or not; you are no ordinary creation. You not just physical; you are spiritual; designed for a relationship with God where His Spirit comes upon you and moves you.
Illustration: Change the packaging- Change the care
A few Christmases ago, I Dutch Bicycle manufacturer was having a problem; when their bikes were sent out for delivery, they were in perfect condition, but by the time they reached the homes of their customers; a large portion of them were severely damaged.
In turn, a considerable number of their bikes were returned due to damage or required a considerable amount of their money to be returned due to repairs.
They did everything they did to try to deal with their delivery companies with no lasting results so they came up with an idea. A genius idea.
They learned that the one item in the shipping business that gets the most care by delivery people was Flat screen TV’s. As a matter of fact, almost all flat screen televisions arrive in perfect condition so this is what the bike company did; they changed their packaging.
By simply printing a Flat screen TV on the boxes with a picture of the bike on the inside on the TV, they reduced the rate of damaged goods by 70 to 80 percent. Do you know why? The delivery people identified the box with expensive flat screen televisions and handled them with care.
Application:
When we value what’s in the box, we treat the box with greater care.
In the hustle and bustle world today, we often forget when we see other people what’s inside the packaging. There’s a soul inside. A place where the Holy Spirit wants to dwell, live, and bring joy.
When we see everyone the way God sees them; we see beyond the packaging. Listen: The next time you look in the mirror, understand you are looking at someone who was so valuable that God came to live in one of those human bodies.
Christmas reminds you that God values you because He chose to come live in a human body just like yours. Christmas reminds us that God came to live in the flesh, to identify with you, so that ultimately His Spirit could live in you.
That’s how valuable you are to God. Don’t let anyone steal away your identity --- you are and will always be valuable to God.
Transitional Sentence: From the recorded story of Jesus birth we learn that God communicates our value through:
II. Coming to Us
Vs. 8- In the same region there were shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. And the angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them...”
Explanation:
The fact that Jesus’ birth announcement first came to shepherds provides a powerful reminder of how God sees people.
Most have heard that a shepherds career in Jesus’ day was at the top of the list of despised professions. Just above the job of shepherds was the profession of medical doctors. Strangely enough, doctors were seen by the Jewish people as swindlers.
One ancient writing of that days was quoted saying: “The better of doctors were good for hell...”
Yet, shepherds were looked down on due to the ritualism of Judaism and the social acceptance of the day.
Shepherds were despised because they lived out in the fields. Their smell was repugnant. They were dirty. They were often crude and earthy in their behavior. Yet, God valued these people. While the “religious” of the day would not allow them to worship in the temple or give testimony in court because of their character and appearance-- God looked at them differently.
Therefore, when God sent His heavenly messengers to give them a message, they responded in shock, fear.... they were overwhelmed.
Think about what they saw. The night sky was a dark canvas to them-- yet a host of angels filled it. Suddenly, an angelic messenger spoke appeared suddenly to them. This was quiet a night!!
In the world Jesus was born, Shepherds were despised yet suddenly they were distinguished.
Notice two things you might have missed:
a) Jesus was laid in a manger- The bed of Jesus was no golden cradle; it was a common
shepherd sight. It was not intimidating to the Shepherds; it was inviting to the shepherds.
They were surrounded by mangers all the time.
b) Jesus was wrapped in swaddling clothes- This was something these shepherds did to the
lambs all the time. They wrapped new born lambs in swaddling clothes immediately after
they were born .
Notice, the angel invited them to meet Jesus. To be the first to hold and see the baby. They were told that the baby would be born in Bethlehem.
Bethlehem is an interesting word. In Jesus day, Bethlehem also went by a different name. It was called: Migdal Eder-- which means: “The Tower of the Flock” because the countryside of Bethlehem was littered with towers that Shepherds inhabited to “watch over flocks” day and night.
The outskirts of Bethlehem was a place where Shepherds abided throughout the year. It was a place where sheep were raised for the purpose of sacrificing during the Passover season.
Josephus ( the Jewish historian of that day) tells us that during the lifetime of Jesus 250,000 sheep inhabited that hillside each year and they were gathered to be sacrificed during Passover as 2 million worshippers would come to Jerusalem participate in the annual sacrifice for their sins.
This location was first mentioned in the Old Testament in Genesis 35:21 and later in Micah 4:8 reminding us of the fact that Rachel, Jacobs wife was buried in Bethlehem; the place known as “the tower of the flock.”
The towers in that area were two-story towers:
a) On the top floor there was a place where the Chief-Shepherd would stand and watch
over the sheep and have a birds eye view of the fields at night.
b) On the bottom floor was a birthing room. It was the place where the mother sheep was
taken prior to giving birth and after birth, they would wrap the baby lambs in a hewn-
out area called “the manger”.
The reason why they wrapped the lambs in swaddling clothes to assure the baby lamb did not injure itself by movement following its birth. The swaddling clothes would bind them up and assure that they would remain without blemish for future sacrifice.
God was communicating the gospel to the shepherds through the angelic announcement. He was not just giving them clues of what to look for in Bethlehem, not providing a spiritual GPS to get them to Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, but was telling them who this baby was.
This baby was things:
a) He was the lamb of God.
b) He was their unblemished sacrifice.
He was the one who would (as John the Baptist would say) who would “take away the sin of the world.”
You see, their value communicates how valuable we all are to God. It reminds us how God sees us. He loves us and wants us to not only know Jesus has come, but to come to Him and find the one from whom real forgiveness comes.
That night, they not only believed the angel’s message, but they responded and went to Jesus. Oh God, help us all be like the shepherds and know we’re all valued, even if the world looks down on us, we have a God who sees our worth, and in the highest expression of His love; invites us to come to Him.
That night, Mary saw this event and pondered this in her heart. She connected the dots and knew this has taken place because God is a God of grace.
What started in Nazareth with an angelic visit to her where the angel said, “Mary, you are highly favored” now found its way to a manger in Bethlehem, with shepherds surrounding it and seeing the long-awaited Messiah.
The Greek word we translate as highly favored means: “to grace”--“to endow with special honor”-- “to be accepted.”
Many people come like you and I to the Bethlehem story and do as I have this day, retold this amazing story about how God has “graced” us with Jesus and “endowed us with special honor.”
Conclusion: Jerome- What can I give you?
Among them was a man named Jerome. In AD 400 the Bible was translated into the Latin language; the common language of the Roman Empire. Amazingly, the place where it was translated was in Bethlehem, in the precise location where Jesus was born.
Jerome wanted the “word of God” to be translated where the “Word (Capital W) of God was born. He knew that His translation would take Jesus (The Word of God) into the known language of the common ordinary man through his linguistic work. Where better for that to happen than in the cave of Bethlehem?
Yet, recently I heard an addition to that story that I had never heard.
During his time in which he worked on that translation, Jerome tells of a dream he experienced. In the dream, Jerome was taken back to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. In his dream he saw the baby in the manger; yet Jerome had nothing to bring.
So in his dream, Jerome goes out and gets all his money. He comes back and presents it to Jesus and Jesus tells him: “I don’t want that.” Jerome leaves and returns with the title of his property and comes back to the manger and Jesus tells him, “I don’t want that.”
Jerome then says: “Jesus, what can I bring to you? What gift will you receive?” At that moment of his dream he heard Jesus say: “Bring me your sin. That’s what I came for.”
The story of Christmas is the story of the greatest hope. The hope of the cradle points us to the hope of the cross. It was through the cross that we experienced the greatest birth; the spiritual birth that Jesus came to give us.
Bring Him your sins. He valued us all enough to come for us and now it’s your turn, come to Him.
