But What’s The Reason?
Isaiah 53:1-6 Luke 1:26-38 Text John 3:16
Journey with me for a moment to the land of Karonia. Things were not going to well in the land because many people were dying of a crippling sickness of which there seemed to be no cure. Finally word came to the people of Karonia, that a cure had been found in the distant nation of Lucindia. The people of Karonia sent a delegation to go the land of Lucindia to bring back the cure. Those who went were cured, and they came back and told the citizens. "Fair citizens of Karonia, there is indeed a cure for what ails us. This is to be a day of celebration." We must go at once to the land of Lucindia in order to be cured. Many people went and were made well again.
The day of the return of the delegation became a yearly celebration. They called it Miracle Day. Anyone who wanted to be healed of the crippling disease could be healed by going to Lucindia. But the trip to Lucindia was a difficult one and many people decided it was not worth the struggle to go. Others were sure a new cure, one closer to home would be found. Still others simply hoped the disease would just go away. But each year everybody celebrated Miracle Day.
As times past, more and more people became sick, but they all looked forward to having a great time on Miracle Day before they died. Somewhere along the way, the people of Karonia forgot the reason for the season. People died because they forgot or ignored the instructions to go to Lucindia and be healed. But the people of Karonia celebrated Miracle Day faithfully with great energy and enthusiasm.
Let’s come back home to our modern world. We too have a great celebration going on, but instead of calling it Miracle Day, we call it Christmas. A delegation came to us from a place called heaven in the form of angels. There were a group of shepherds out in a field taking care of their sheep when a magnificent light appeared all around them and an angel came to them. The shepherds were nearly scared to death. But the angel said to them, Luke 2:10-12 "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. [11] Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. [12] This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."
Have we come to celebrate the good news of Christmas without dealing with the need to understand the reason for it all? Is the angel’s message today lost in the spectacular event of the season. The shepherds heard that a special child was about to be born in Bethlehem, and they wanted to go and see the child. But the truly good news wasn’t a child was being born, it was "Look God has come up with a way to deal with your sin." It’s not just a baby being born, it’s God is intervening in history to raise us a Savior.
To understand the reason, you have to understand when Jesus Christ came into being. Jesus did not come into existence on Christmas Day. Jesus has no beginning. He has always existed as God. In Genesis, before the creation of human beings, God said, "let Us make man in Our image." Although God is One, God has three distinct personalities all of which have always existed.
In John’s Gospel, we are told in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The Word became flesh or a living human being and came to live among us. So Christmas is not the beginning of Jesus, it’s the beginning of God’s walk in the middle of humanity as one of us.
The idea for Christmas comes out of story of rebellion found in the book of Numbers. God had delivered His people out of a cruel and painful slavery in the land of Egypt. He told them He would take them to a new land where they could have a great living. They were excited the new land until they found out they would have to do some work to obtain it. They refused to take on the challenge. God then told them, because of your refusal to accept the land I want to give to you, you will wander in the desert for 40 years. After a while the people complained against God and Moses for taking them out of slavery. They complained about the food God gave them to eat. They complained about the water. They were just plain complainers.
God said enough is enough and He sent poisonous snakes into the camps. The snakes bit the people and many of them died. They were absolutely helpless to do anything about the poison once bitten. They came to Moses and said, "We did a terrible thing in talking against you and against God. Please pray for us. We know we sinned this time." So Moses prayed for them.
God told Moses, make an image of a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Lift the pole up and anyone who has been bitten by the snake can look at it and live. Moses made the snake as God said, and everyone who look at it was healed. The person couldn’t do anything to deserve to look at it or to deserve being healed. God said, look and be healed. It was the same offer to everybody who had been bitten. The reason for looking was to be healed of the disease.
Jesus later used this same story to explain why it was, He had come into the world. He did not point to his birth as the thing to get excited over, but rather He pointed to his death. Jesus was having a talk with a man by the name of Nicodemus who wanted to know how He could go to heaven. Jesus told him, if you’re not born again, you can’t even begin to enter the kingdom of God. Jesus explained that all of us are infected with the disease of sin, in the same way the Israelites were infected by the poisonous snakes. Just as they couldn’t get rid of the problem on their own, neither can we. Just as a snake was lifted up on a pole and people who looked were healed, so would people lift Jesus up on a cross and those who looked upon Him would be healed of the infection of sin.
What is sin. Sin is the demand to get our own way regardless of what God commands us to do. Sin is living as though God has nothing to say about the way we live our lives. Sin is the reason we can’t get along with each other. It’s the reason we fuss, argue and fight. It’s the cause of marriages crumbling to ruins, it’s at the root of the murders and crimes we see everyday. It’s the reason we experience loneliness, heartache and pain. Sin builds our pride to keep us from saying I’m sorry or I was wrong. It provides us with the motivation to keep us from forgiving each other. Most importantly sin creates a barrier between us and God which we cannot cross on our own. Sin is something which has infected the entire human race.
There’s one other nasty little thing about sin, is that it carries a penalty for it which we are not going to want to have to pay. The penalty for sin is death. When God created us as human beings, we were created to live forever. The only thing we had to do to maintain eternal life was to obey God. God placed Adam and Eve in a garden with everything they needed. The only thing God asked in return was their allegiance. God told them, you can eat of every tree in this huge garden except the one over there called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day you eat from it, you will surely die.
Adam and Eve did quite well leaving the tree alone until one day, a beautiful figure appeared in the garden and told them God was wrong. The figure was Satan. He told them, "God is just keeping you from becoming all you can be. As a matter of fact, God knows you will not die, He just doesn’t want you to be as smart as He is. So they ate from the tree, disobeying God and giving birth to sin in humanity. Every since that day, every living person has said no to what God requires of their lives. But since God created us to be immortal, sin continues to affect us even after we have died. The ultimate penalty for sin is eternal death.
If we are put back into a right relationship with God, we will enjoy Him forever in heaven. Our names will be written in a book the bible calls the Book Of Life.
But if we die in rebellion against God, we remain in rebellion after death. The eternal death is the lake of fire. God says everybody is going to stand before Him to be judged. On that day, if one’s name is not listed in the Book of Life, He or she is going to be cast into the Lake of fire. So it is of utmost importance that one gets his or her name into the Book of Life. The real reason for Christmas is to deal with the sin problem in order to have one’s name recorded in the Book Of Life and to spend eternity with God.
The Lake of fire was created not for sinners, but for the devil and his angels. But God says those who will not accept my provisions to escape the flames will have no other choice but to be cast in with the devil.
Do you recall the angel came with good news. The good news is that a Savior was born. Suppose for a moment, you were in Dick’s Sporting Good Store Just minding your own business. Out of nowhere, somebody is fooling around with a life jacket throwing it down the aisle and just as you turn the corner, bang it hits you up side the head. Now do you say, "Hallelujah, praise God for this life jacket. Do you run up to the person and say thank you for throwing me this jacket. What can I ever do to repay you for this act. I don’t have much, but whatever I have which you can use, its yours.?" Well if you do respond like that, you obviously know something the rest of us don’t.
But now suppose for a moment you were out there on Lake Erie fishing when a wave came up overturned your boat and threw you out. There you are gulping water, sure you’re about to see Jesus in just a few minutes. All of a sudden, this same person, hits you in the same spot, with the same life jacket. Now you are so grateful you are willing to do just about anything for the person.
What’s the difference. The difference is that in the store, you didn’t see any need for a lifejacket. You didn’t see a need for someone to throw you a life line. But when you were in the lake, you recognized your tremendous need for a savior. Nothing else mattered except getting a hold of the life line.
The reason for Christmas is we’re all in need of a Savior. Some of us recognize it and have given all we have to cling to Jesus Christ. Others of us see Jesus as life jacket hanging up in the store. He may look okay, and perhaps there may be a time when I might need Him. I’ll think about praying then. We think because we don’t see a need, there must not be one.
How many of you have had a car which had a need, but you didn’t know about it until it was too late to get it fix for a cheap amount. If there was no need for a Savior, there is nothing to get excited over in the Christmas story. So this kid would grow up and become a King. Well that happens all the time.
The good news in Christmas is God has come up with a way to put us into a right relationship with Him so we can enjoy life and escape the eternal punishment for sin. The angel also said "a Savior has been born to you, he is Christ the Lord." He was to be a Savior, but He was also to become one in charge. People don’t mind the baby Jesus too much because He doesn’t demand too much. It’s the risen Lord and Savior who gives us trouble. He’s the One who holds us accountable for our actions.
The apostle John put it this way. "For God so loved the world." Anyone who sees God as angry and vengeful does not understand God. God is very straight forward and honest. He tells you in advance what He’s going to do, and even finds ways to warn us again and again to help us avoid paying the penalty for our actions. God has told us, if you sin, the price is to be cast into the lake of fire. Now some people say, "If God is love, God will just cancel the penalty and accept us regardless of what we have done." No one would respect that kind of a God.
Just suppose for a moment, someone kidnapped you and brutally beat you. They cut off your arms and the beating left you paralyzed. But somehow you survived. If they caught the other person, brought the person to trial, and the jury found the person guilty. Suppose the judge said, to him, what you did was wrong. But I’m a loving judge. I forgive you for the wrong you have done. You’re free to come and live with me. That was not love, that was a miscarriage of justice.
God is not going to violate has nature of justice and righteousness just to accept us into heaven. But the verse said, "For God so loved the world." The world includes every single person in it, from the youngest to the oldest, the smallest to the tallest, the darkest to the lightest, the poorest to the wealthiest, everybody. Those who are trying to live for Him and those who are not. Those in jail, out of jail, on their way to jail and never will be in jail.
Just because we did wrong, doesn’t mean God ever stopped loving us. There is no earthly comparison for the kind of love God has for us. He knows all our secret sins and still loves us. If we knew about each other, what God knows about each of us, our opinions of each other would drastically change. But God knows and God still loves.
God’s love moved God into action. Love isn’t love when it never does anything. But God did something. It says, God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son. When It says He gave His only Son, it’s not talking about what happened on Christmas. Sure Jesus was born and came into the world, but keep in mind Jesus had been alive from eternity sharing fellowship with God the Father. When God gave us His Son, it didn’t happen in a manger, it happened on a cross.
It didn’t happen when he was wrapped up in swaddling clothes, lying peaceful in a manger. It happened when he had been beaten with whips, thorns sticking in his head, blood pouring from his side and, and nails in his hands and feet. That’s when Jesus cried out "My God, My God Why have you Forsaken Me." That was the moment when the Father gave us the Son to be the Savior of the world. That’s the Jesus we have to look to in order to understand what our sin cost our God.
It says, For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. There is nothing we can do to earn eternal life. Again, as the people bitten by the snakes were helpless against the poison, we too are helpless against the bite of sins. When we stand before God to be judged, we are found guilty because only those who are sinless can enter into heaven.
God knew we were without hope, but God’s love found another way for us in giving us Jesus Christ. The only difference between the believer and non-believer is that Jesus steps forward and says I paid the price for his sins in my death on the cross. Our account is therefore clean, we become sinless as Adam and Eve were before their disobedience in the cross. It’s not God simply saying, your sin doesn’t really matter, God is saying I paid the price for you to be saved because I love you.
Can you imagine how painful it will be for God to see people insist on being cast into the lake of fire. God will say, I did all that was necessary for you to be saved and you still wouldn’t accept me. All you had to do was to believe on my Son Jesus Christ. Yet other things were more important to you. You worshipped the gods of money, of popularity, of fame, of success, but what will
they do to keep you from the lake of fire. You celebrated Christmas. You knew
the stories about a Savior being born. Yet in your pride, you saw no need of a
savior for yourself.
We get so many things backwards. Some people think, Jesus came into the world to decide who would go to hell and who wouldn’t. But that’s not true for John 3:17 says, "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." Jesus came to bring life. He came to bring healing. He came to restore lives. He came to offer hope. He came as God’s final means of salvation. These are the reasons for Christmas.
God loves you, but you can’t stay the person you are and get to know God. You may think everything is fine and you’re basically a good person. There will be no good people in heaven, only sinners who have been made whole through their acceptance of Jesus Christ and His plan for their lives. You can’t know Jesus us your Savior, and not also make Him the Lord of your life. The two go together because the one recognizes the need for the other.
If you sit back and decide to do nothing it’s the same as sitting inside a burning building. The very act of doing nothing is a decision to go up in flames. To do nothing with Jesus is to reject the only possible way of salvation you could ever hope to receive. It says in John 3:18-19 " Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. [19] This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
The reason Jesus came is because God loved us enough to rescue us from a certain and definite coming judgment. Are you prepared for it to happen?
