INTRODUCTION
Opening Statement: A pastor tells a story on himself that took place on Christmas Eve many years ago. The bishop was readying his family to go to a candlelight service over which he would preside. On the way to the church, the pastor’s son asked, “Dad, are you going to let us enjoy Christmas this year or are you going to try to explain it to everybody?”
Transition: I want you to enjoy Christmas this year. I hope that my explanations of it don’t ruin the joy found within it. But there are a few texts that I find myself returning to each and every Christmas. These passages almost defy explanation.
Title: A Jesus We Can Grab On To
Key Word: My words will hang on two key passages today.
Text /Recitation:
John 1:14 (New American Standard): And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory
John 1:14 (The Message): The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.
1 John 1:1-4 (The Message): 1From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in--we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. 2The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. 3We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. 4Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
Transition: Allow me to explain by using a simple story as I begin.
OUTLINE
Illustration: Imagine two neighbors who have quarreled and parted company. Then one of the neighbors has second thoughts. He dashes off a note to his estranged friend, suggesting that they bury the hatchet. He receives no reply. So he tries again, penning a heartfelt note with these words, “Let us make peace and resume our former friendly relations.” Still no response. Then the neighbor decides the broken relationship requires a sacrifice – he will bundle up and undertake the long, cold journey to the other man’s house on foot. It is biting winter weather and the man arrives breathlessly, dusted with snow. The neighbor sees before him a suffering human being, one who undertook a great ordeal to get to him. His heart melts and he takes the invitation of appeasement seriously. Now he says “Yes. We will be reconciled.”
Explanation: Emil Brunner, the great Swiss theologian, wrote this little parable to help us understand Christmas. “The neighbor is God,” says Brunner. “He has written many letters to us and we have not answered him. Through the prophets, he has sent invitations to participate in his kingdom, but we have declined time and time again with excuses: ‘Too busy…not enough time…maybe later.’” And so God did the unimaginable. He is the one who bundled up in flesh and made a long journey to us to right a broken relationship. He himself came to us, dwelling as a poor man among men, as one who did not have a place to rest his head, and finally as one spiked to a cross because people refused to believe in his gracious invitation. Yet in that hour the eyes of some people were opened: such is the love of God toward us, so powerful is his sacrifice that we cannot now fail to say “Yes.”
Quotation: In his book The Life of God in the Soul of Man, Henry Scougal, the seventeenth-century Scottish minister, said, “God hath long contended with a stubborn world, and thrown down many a blessing upon them; and when all his other gifts could not prevail, he at last made a gift of himself.”
Exposition: Christmas is the arrival of a gift. As we have already noted, the Gospel of John puts it this way, “The Word [The "Word" (logos - revelation) is a metaphor that refers to Jesus who reveals God to people.] became flesh [Evidently, he was in some form other than flesh before he came to earth. “Flesh” is a strong, almost crude way of referring to human nature. He could have said "The Word became man…" or "The word took on human form or a body…" But he bluntly said "flesh." There’s no denying the reality of his bodily presence among us. It was not an illusion.] and made his dwelling among us.” [In the original Greek text, Christ literally encamped or tabernacled or tented in flesh among us — he pitched a tent in our front yard and waited for us to say “Yes” to God’s invitation.]
Definition: The Greek word skenoo {skay-no’-o} meant "to pitch one’s tent, to tabernacle." In the Jewish mind, they would recall those days in their history when God’s Shekinah "dwelling" glory dwelt in the tabernacle (Ex.40:34), and in the temple (1 Kgs 8:10-11); but that glory had departed from disobedient Israel (Ezek.9:3; 10:4,18; 11:22-23). And now, it was returning in the person of His only Son to reveal Himself to not just Israel, but the entire world. The disciples were able to see again and again glimpses into His glory as He "tabernacled" among men.
Explanation: What strikes me about the incarnation is how up close and personal God became. He “camped out” among us. That’s incredible. Why? When you camp out with somebody, you get to know him or her. You find out how loud they snore, what they like to eat, where they like to go, things they like to do, stories they like to tell, even the values that they live their lives by.
Illustration: I don’t know about you and your experiences, but camping brings out the best and worst in our family. Hang around the Nelson’s campfire long enough and you’ll see our good side and our bad side. I remember one time in Texas trying to fit five people in what was suppose to be a five man tent. I started on an air mattress but didn’t wake up there! Boy, Texas ground is awfully hard. I was lucky if I got 30 minutes of good sound sleep that entire night. What immediately struck me about camping out is how incredibly inconvenient life becomes. It’s wonderful to build relationships in that setting, but it comes at an incredible cost sometimes.
Observation: When the text says that Jesus became flesh and camped out among us, it is telling us that he was willing to do something incredibly inconvenient for the sake of reestablishing us in our relationships with God and with one another. Don’t miss the significance of Jesus “camping out” among us.
Illustration: Think about what the text could say. Compare “camping out” to the way that we communicate and get to know one another today. God loved us so much that He sent us an email. God loved us so much that He set up a satellite link that we could log into heaven to hear a special message from Jesus. God loved us so much that he set up a web site so we could get to know Him better. Somehow, that just doesn’t connect like the words “God became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus went beyond parchment and paper. He has gone beyond tapes and cassettes. He has gone beyond videos and telephones. He has gone beyond computers and technology. He has actually come and pitched his tent and beckoned us to watch him and get to know him. In the Incarnation, Christ has come seeking after each one of us: to celebrate our humanity, to make holy the things of this earth, to usher in a new created order by renewing, restoring, and reconciling us, and all of creation to God.
Textualization: This is why the incarnation is such a “universe-sundering, history-altering, life-transforming, paradigm-shattering event (Timothy Keller).” God became someone that we could relate to. And after God arrived in human flesh, we got to experience him. He wasn’t beyond some 2-inch glass with a sign on it that said, “Don’t touch.” 1 John 1:1-4 (The Message): 1From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in--we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. 2The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. 3We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. 4Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!
Explanation: Here’s what he’s saying to his readers: When we give you the accounts of Jesus walking on the water, Jesus speaking words of eternal life, or Jesus rising from the dead, these are not legends. These are not made up things. These are things that we actually saw, we touched, and we experienced. They saw Jesus first as a baby who experienced human birth. They saw him grow up. They saw him tired, weeping, sad, disappointed, discouraged, angry, and overcome with sorrow. He got submerged in our brokenness and we witnessed it. Christmas actually happened! Our testimony is proof of it. God is no longer a remote idea or a force we cower before. He is someone that we can “grasp hold of” in Jesus. And John makes it a point to tell them, so that they can grab on to Jesus and experience Christmas too!
Quotation: Timothy Keller states: “Christmas is an invitation to know Christ personally. Christmas is an invitation by God who says: ‘Look what I’ve done to come near to you. Now draw near to me. I don’t want to be a concept; I want to be a friend.’”
CONCLUSION
I hope that my explanations have not ruined your Christmas!
Question: Philip Yancey questions: "If Jesus came to reveal God to us, then what do I learn about God from that first Christmas?" He goes on to answer that question with a small list of one-word associations. What kind of a friend is God based on the incarnation?
1. Humble. The Maker of all things became a tiny cell barely visible to the naked eye and was finally born in a stable and laid in a feed trough.
2. Approachable. God didn’t want to frighten us so he set aside all that would scare us so that we would feel free to touch, to see, to converse with, to experience God.
3. Underdog. An unwed mother, homeless, was looking for shelter while traveling to meet heavy taxation demands by the government. God provided.
4. Courageous. To come down here where He would meet a haughty, cruel world that would kill him, took courage.
Application: I would like to roll these concepts into an application point. What this tells me today is that no matter how bad you’ve been, you can approach God through Jesus and find grace and salvation. No matter how alone and out of place you feel, God has been the underdog too. No matter how fearful life has become, God courageously helps you to meet your world through Jesus. No matter how humiliated you are, through Jesus, God knows what it’s like to become a tiny cell barely visible and to start life in humble circumstances.
Quotation: I want to close with Max Lucado. He captures it perfectly,
We Want to Know How Long God’s Love Will Endure. ...Does God Really Love Us Forever? Not Just on
Easter Sunday When Our Shoes Are Shined And Our Hair Is Fixed. We Want to Know...How Does God Feel
About Me When I’m a Jerk? Not When I’m Peppy And Positive And Ready to Tackle World Hunger. Not
Then. I Know How He Feels About Me Then. Even I Like Me Then.
I Want to Know How He Feels About Me When I Snap at Anything That Moves, When My Thoughts Are
Gutter-level, When My Tongue Is Sharp Enough to Slice a Rock. How Does He Feel About Me Then?
Can Anything Separate Us From The Love Christ Has For Us?
God Answered Our Question Before We Asked It. So We’d See His Answer, He Lit The Sky With a Star. So
We’d Hear It, He Filled The Night With a Choir; And So We’d Believe It, He Did What No Man Had Ever
Dreamed. He Became Flesh And Dwelt Among Us.
He Placed His Hand on The Shoulder
Of Humanity And Said,
"You’re Something Special.
