THE LOVE OF GOD
The Stable In Bethlehem
Tells Us Of The Love Of God
The Infant In The Manger
Tells Us Of The Love Of God
INTRODUCTION
Pastor: Choose an introduction that illustrates from your life the fact
that we seek out gifts that say “I love you.”
Shopping for a Christmas gift for my wife is an experience that fills me with a tremendous amount anxiety because I want to find a gift that says “I love you” as meaningfully as possible. It usually takes days and days of seeking as the panic grows inside me that I won’t find it in time.
But one happy year I found the perfect gift on my very first day out shopping. It was a crystal chandelier that fit our new home and matched my wife’s taste in decorating. I was so excited I almost gave it to her before Christmas. The only thing that restrained me was the realization that if I did I would have to go out and search for another gift for her to open on Christmas morning.
That chandelier now brings us lots of pleasure as the crystals capture the sunlight, refract it and send colorful splashes of light all around our dining room and living room. I am still pleased with myself that I found the perfect gift!
Well, it was the close-to-perfect gift.
The most perfect love gift ever given was the gift God gave at Christmas – the gift of His Son. To help us appreciate that gift, think for a moment of the Nativity scenes you have probably seen all around at Christmas. They usually feature shepherds and Wise Men and perhaps a few barnyard animals. But at the center of the scene we always see Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus lying in a manger.
I’d like to use that scene to describe to you the love that motivated the giving of this little boy.
THE STABLE IN BETHLEHEM
TELLS US OF THE LOVE OF GOD
Lk 2:1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to his own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
One of the central features to the Christmas story is the Jesus was born to an unwed couple in a stable in a town called Bethlehem. This was a scene loaded with tension and pregnant with truth!
Let’s take a look at that scene in this clip from the movie The Nativity Story.
The Nativity Story
Film Clip Scene 149-152
Mary & Joseph preparing for the birth of Jesus
Let’s think of the tension in that stable that night. First of all, Joseph and Mary were betrothed but not yet married – and yet Mary was pregnant. We are told in the Gospels that Mary was a virgin and that the child in her womb was the creation of God the Holy Spirit. The infant to be born would be the most unique child in all of history – He would be God and man at once. But who would have believed Mary and Joseph when they tried to explain how she became pregnant? The people in their hometown were undoubtedly shocked and this young couple must have been ostracized from the community for their apparent sin.
The next thing that that strikes us as strange is that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem was little more than a suburb of the more significant royal city of Jerusalem. Bethlehem was so small it didn’t even have enough inns to accommodate the visitors. Since the child was born to become king of the Jews, it seems he should have been born in Jerusalem, the capital of the nation.
But most shocking of all, why was the child born in a stable? God could have arranged for Him to be born anywhere – like a palace to at least a nice clean home. In fact, God could have snapped His fingers and produced a modern hospital with antiseptic delivery room and a full staff of doctors and nurses.
What an unlikely place for a king to be born! After a difficult journey for a woman in the ninth month of pregnancy, a stable is the last place that a caring husband would want her to be. The Nativity scenes that decorate the landscape during Christmas season are something less than accurate. None of them smell quite right. We don’t fully understand the unsanitary conditions of having to walk carefully around the droppings of animals and then lay down a newborn baby, fresh from the pains of delivery, in a feeding trough streaked with the saliva of animals.
We don’t fully understand the embarrassment Joseph must have felt to watch his wife go through this pain in these surroundings. The Son of God deserved something better.
Why then did God choose a stable?
Let’s answer some of those questions. First of all, God selected Mary and Joseph because even as a young couple they were spiritually and morally the kind of parents to whom He could entrust the raising of His Son. God selected an unmarried virgin so that the world would always know that Jesus is both God and man.
Secondly, Jesus was born in Bethlehem to fulfill the vow God had made to send the world a king who came from the family line of David. Furthermore, there was an evil, paranoid, non-Jewish king sitting on the throne of Israel at the time who had killed every person who threatened his power – including his own wife and three of his sons. When he heard of the birth of Jesus, he also tried to kill him. Jerusalem was certainly not a safe place for Jesus to be born.
And here’s why Jesus was born in a stable. It was to ensure that we would always know that He came for all of us, from the lowest to the greatest. Had He been born in a palace, the poor would always have felt left out. But Jesus told us that He had come especially for the poor! Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah to explain why He had come to earth:
Luke 4:18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Of course, Jesus also came for wealthy people. But God has a great heart for the downtrodden and the suffering people of the world. We also have to remember that just becoming human was an enormous condescension on Jesus’ part. Jesus was God and always remained God. But He added humanity to who He is in order to build a bridge between man and God.
Perhaps the closest we can illustrate this would be an earthly king who sets aside his royal robes and puts on a peasants clothes, as the prince did in Mark Twain’s book, The Prince and the Pauper. He does not cease to be king just because he is wearing a poor man’s clothes. He is simply a poorly dressed king.
Jesus laid aside His heavenly robes and rights and clothed himself with humanity, just as the prince did in Mark Twain’s novel The Prince and the Pauper when he put on common clothing and walked among his people.
Think of it: Jesus had always lived in a perfect environment surrounded by perfect love and absolute purity. He had always lived in total freedom with no restrictions or restraints upon Him. He had always been all- powerful. But now He limited Himself to the body of a vulnerable infant boy born in a dirty stable.
He did it because He loves you! And me! Here’s how the Bible describes it:
Philippians 2:5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7 but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself and became obedient to death
-- even death on a cross!
In summary, what these verses teach is:
He was, and remained, true God. (2:6a)
(Nevertheless. . . )
He chose not to selfishly grasp His privileges as God. (6b)
He chose instead to divest Himself of His rights: (7a)
- He relinquished His dignity (but not His deity)
- He swaddled His glory (hiding it inside His humanity)
- He surrendered His riches (living as a poor carpenter)
- He restrained His power
He became fully human: (2:7b-8a)
He humbled Himself (2:8b)
- Even to the point of dying a despicable death.
Think of it this way: Jesus put His glory "on hold" the way we put a telephone call on hold. The light is blinking and so we know that the line is still live, but it is suspended for the moment. All you have to do is touch the button to reactivate the line. The glory of Jesus was always there but it was on hold. For example, when they came to arrest Jesus the night before He was crucified, He stabbed the button and for a moment His glory flashed out. John writes: "When Jesus said ’I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground." (John 18:6).
But for most of his life all of God’s limitless power and love was compressed into the form of one little infant boy.
When that first cry was heard from the stable of Bethlehem and into the care of Mary and Joseph came a wrinkled, blood-covered baby, the universe reached its turning point. For the first time, the God and Creator who before had only been heard could now be seen and touched. All that He was (as God) now occupied human flesh . . . approachable, available, vulnerable.
On that night in the stable Mary and Joseph were filled with love for this little infant, as any new parents are.
But they could hardly imagine how much this little boy loved them! His love for them would reveal itself most dramatically when He was a grown man and was cruelly nailed to a cross. The stable hints to us about the love of God. But the infant lying in the manger would make His love crystal clear!
THE INFANT IN THE MANGER
TELLS US OF THE LOVE OF GOD
The Apostle John wrote:
1 John 4:9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
There is an amazing truth here: God initiated the relationship with us!
That is the exact opposite of what religion teaches! Religion starts with the assumption that we must initiate the relationship with God. Religion tells me that I must improve myself until I have earned the love of God.
But the opposite is true! Think through these two statements carefully:
· God loves you and there is nothing you can do to make Him love you more.
· God loves you and there is nothing you can do to make Him love you less.
You cannot persuade God to love you more because His love is absolute. And although God hates sin, His love for us sinners is so absolute that He sent his one and only Son to die for us while we were yet sinners.
John tells us that God is love (John 4:16). This means that love is the very essence of God. It’s not just that God feels love or does loving things (although He certainly does). It is that the very nature of God is love. Love does not exist apart from God. If you could vaporize God and cause Him to cease to exist then love would cease to exist.
It is actually impossible for us to imagine a love like this. The apostle Paul prayed that his readers would be able to just begin to get their arms around God’s love:
Ephesians 3:17b And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
It cost God the Father dearly to dispatch Jesus to earth. John has told us that Jesus died as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. That means that He satisfied the requirements of the Law that we be punished for our sins. When God’s Son was nailed to the cross, our sins were legally transferred to Jesus so that He became culpable for everything you and I have ever done wrong. At that terrible moment God the Father and God the Son were severed from one another for the only moment on all of creation.
And God did this act of love despite the fact that we didn’t deserve it nor did we even want it! The Bible says:
Ro 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Christ died for us long before we ever did anything to deserve it! Actually, we will never be able to deserve it! Christ died for us because He loves us.
He did more than die for us. John says that god sent His son so that we might live forever! (God) sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. Jesus rose from the dead and offers not only to forgive our sins; He also offers to give us eternal life. Jesus Himself said:
Jn 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
We can live forever if we simply believe in Jesus. To believe in Jesus means to believe that He is God; that He died in your place, and to put your faith in Him rather than in yourself or in any religion. One way to understand this is that up until the moment you believe in Jesus you are the god of your own life. Believing in Jesus means that you resign as your own god and ask Jesus to take the throne of your life – to become your God.
As an ambassador from God, I beg you to respond to the love of God and to believe in Jesus right now!
CONCLUSION
There is a story that comes out of the Vietnam War that reminds me of the love of God. A Vietnamese orphanage had been struck by artillery rounds and a small girl lay bleeding from shrapnel wounds. When American medics arrived on the scene they realized that she needed a blood transfusion as quickly as possible. They were somehow able to find an orphan boy who had the same blood type as the girl. Despite the fact that they could not speak Vietnamese, the medics were able to communicate to the boy that they needed to transfer some of his blood to the little girl.
They laid the boy on a mat and the medics were soon beginning to draw blood from his arm. The little guy lay as stiff as a board and after a moment his body began to shake and tears came streaming down his face. Just then a Vietnamese nurse arrived and the medics, thinking they were hurting the boy, asked her to find out what was wrong.
The nurse talked quietly to him and, with eyes wide she told them, “He thinks you’re going to take all of his blood and put it into the girl.” “Does he understand that if we did that he would die?” they asked. “Yes,” she said. “”But why would he be willing to do that?” they asked.
The nurse once again spoke to the boy and turning back with tears in her eyes she reported, “He said, ‘Because she’s my friend.’”
Jesus said,
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
Jesus became our blood brother and laid down His life that we might live forever.
Jesus has loved you from the moment you were conceived. (Psalm 139)
Jesus loved you on the cross.
Jesus loves you now!
Please believe in Him so that He may give you the most perfect gift of all – the gift of eternal life.
