Pondering the Paradox of Christmas
(note: this sermon was delivered at Maranatha Christian Fellowship, Nevada, MO)
December 10, 2006
Luke 2:8-19 (NIV) 8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, "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." 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests." 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." 16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
I want to focus this morning not on the angels, not on the manger, not on the shepherds, but on this verse:
Luke 2:19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
At Christmastime, I like to sit and ponder, too. I like to sit in my living room, with all the lights off, except for the lights of the Christmas tree. I like to listen to Christmas music, and ponder. And sometimes, I’m like Mary - I ponder the great truths of the Christmas story. And like Mary, I realize that so much of it is a paradox.
par•a•dox n.
1. a statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.
3. any person, thing, or situation exhibiting an apparently contradictory nature.
Contrary to popular opinion the word paradox doesn’t refer to when your two doctor friends hang out together. In that case, you have two doctors, or a pair of docs.
Paradox is not quite, but close, to the meaning of oxymoron.
ox•y•mo•ron n., pl. -mo•ra Rhet. a figure of speech which produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”
There are a lot of paradoxes and oxymorons in the world we live in. Seemingly impossible things, seemingly contradictory things. Things which seem mutually exclusive. For example:
Why do croutons come in airtight packages? Aren’t they just stale bread to begin with? Or, why, if you ask people why they have deer heads mounted on their walls, they tell you it’s because they’re such beautiful animals. Now, I think my wife is beautiful, but I only have photographs of her on the walls.
Paradoxes.
Or how about this: Why do bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks? It’s a paradox. Or consider this: The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness of the bread. The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the ability to reach it. If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends? If the #2 pencil is so popular, why is it still #2?
These are paradoxes.
But seriously, if you think about it...the Christian faith often seems to be one of paradox, doesn’t it? Those of us who take the Bible seriously believe in definite black and white, and we believe in the absolute truths. Yet, there are those truths about God, about the way He does things, that we must admit are paradoxes. Jesus spoke in phrases, that to our finite understanding, we have to think, “how can that be?”
John 12:25 "He who loves his life loses it; and he who hates his life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.
Now, in our understanding, in our society, in our culture, you look out for number one, don’t you? And who’s number one? We are. In our society, our culture, the expectation is that you love your life – because you love yourself…if you don’t, you’re foolish.
But here, Jesus is telling us to hate our lives in this world. Now, clearly, it’s meant to be a comparison to how we love Him and follow Him, but the statement at first blush is a paradox…because it contradicts our society’s common understanding of love of self.
When Jesus says things like “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” our first reaction is – what a paradox! But in living our faith, in knowing Christ more fully, in meditating on His Word, we come to understand that these things make perfect sense in the economy of God – even when we don’t fully understand them ourselves.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians...
1 Cor. 3:18 Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise.
So, to paraphrase...to be wise, be a fool. Does that make perfect sense to us? Not without the enlightenment of scripture, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, it’s a nonsensical paradox. In 2 Corinthians 6:10, Paul wrote that he was
sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Seemingly contradictory – almost impossible, but true. Later, in 2 Cor 12:10, he wrote:
2 Cor. 12:10 That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Now, only the Holy Spirit can bring us that kind of attitude...Delighting in weaknesses, hardships, persecution, difficulties? Maybe tolerating, maybe putting up with them, but delighting? And then he adds: “for when I am weak, then I am strong.” What a paradox!
And to the Philippians, he wrote:
Philip. 3:7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
And these are just a few passages we could name that present some of the things of the Christian faith as paradoxes. We haven’t even begun to look at many others, such as:
- how do grace and works mesh?
- how about the sovereignty of God and our free will?
both clearly taught in the Word, so both are true, but such a paradox. Some of these things, even with the enlightenment brought by Scripture, and by the Holy Spirit, are still paradoxes, bringing us to the point where Paul was, when he wrote this to the Romans:
Romans 11:33-36 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! 34"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?" 35"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?" 36For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
I believe Mary, the mother of Jesus, thought about such things. She witnessed and heard a lot of amazing things in the course of less than a year prior to the birth of her firstborn son. She was visited by an angel – and told she would become pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit.
She was told this baby would be the Savior of the world. She saw God’s word confirmed to her by her cousin. She saw her marriage saved - (remember Matthew says that Joseph intended to divorce her when he heard she was pregnant, because Joseph knew he wasn’t the father) but the marriage was saved when another angel told her husband-to-be that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, not by another man, as Joseph must have supposed when she told him her impossible news.
Then, she traveled far from home, couldn’t find room at the Holiday Inn, but, after the birth of this baby Jesus, she was visited by shepherds who told her angels had visited them, too, and told them where to find the baby Jesus. What a year, huh?
Mary was presented with many paradoxes in the course of her young life. Remember, she was just a teenage girl, obedient to God. How many of you girls here are between about 12 and 18? You’re in the same age range as Mary was when all this happened to her. But Mary was more than just obedient and devoted to God. She was a thinker. After the shepherds left, it says...
Luke 2:19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.
She thought about, pondered these things, these events, these seeming paradoxes. And instead of causing her to dismiss these things as wild fancy...it brought to her a sense of wonder...and a sense of thanksgiving, gratefulness for the blessing God had given... it says “she treasured these things.”
I believe that the Christmas season is the perfect time of year for us to consider some of the great paradoxes of our faith. It’s a time for Pondering the paradox of Christmas (message title).
These kinds of thoughts stretch us, they challenge us, they cause us to seek answers in His Word. But perhaps most importantly, they reveal to us a mighty God, so much greater than we can imagine, so great, that truth and reality to Him, often seem as paradoxes to us. They’re wondrous paradoxes. They reveal to us a God of wonder, beyond all galaxies, who is holy, and able to do far above and beyond what we can imagine. They reveal truths that we tend to think of as either/or facts, but in God’s wisdom, they are both/and truths.
1 Tim. 3:16 Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory.
Now, this truth about godliness being a mystery, doesn’t mean what the mystery religions used to think...and what sometimes we tend to think when we hear the word mystery today.
Some people thought, as they do today, of mysteries as things that are unknowable. But in the New Testament, this word for mystery is used to mean something that was once hidden, but is now revealed. That doesn’t always make it fully understandable to our finite minds. But not being fully understandable doesn’t mean it’s not truth. Also, this truth, as noted in 1 Timothy, is a great truth...a mega truth – meaning large, important...meaning that this truth is overwhelmingly large in scope, and extremely important in significance.
That’s how Paul described to Timothy this mystery, and this mystery is how we can receive the gift of grace, which brings to us true godliness. In this passage, the most pertinent phrase for us in this Christmas season is the fact that Jesus appeared in a body – that’s something we call the Incarnation, and we’ll consider that more fully in a moment.
Author and teacher William McDonald wrote about this passage:
The mystery is great not because it is very mysterious, but because it is so astounding...
We’re being asked to believe the unbelievable...Jesus existed from the beginning – He existed before time itself...but in Jesus, eternity stepped into time, the Eternal One was born into a world of time...the Timeless One now lived in a realm of calendars and timepieces...The One who is omnipresent, that is, He exists in all places at one and the same time, in the Christmas story, is now confined to a single place in the person of Jesus.
again, quoting McDonald:
“It is wonderful to think that the Great God, who fills heaven and earth, should compress Himself into a human body. As men looked at Him, they could say accurately, “In Him dwells all the fullness of the godhead bodily.” From the palace of heaven to a cattle shed, a stable, a manger! The omnipotent one became a helpless baby. It is no exaggeration to say that He whom Mary held in her arms held Mary, for He is the sustainer as well as the Maker. The omniscient one is the fountain of all wisdom and knowledge, and yet we read of Him that as a child, He increased in wisdom and knowledge.
These are all truths of the incarnation. It’s perhaps the greatest paradox of our faith, but it’s proclaimed as absolutely true in the Word of God. Fully God and fully man. The Master came into the world as servant. The Lord of glory veiled that glory in a body of flesh. The Lord of life came into the world for the express purpose of dying. The Holy One, who cannot look upon sin, came into this jungle of sin called earth. The object of the Father’s delight, and of angelic worship, hungered, thirsted, sweated, hurt, was weary, slept, He wandered as a “homeless stranger in the world His hands had made.”
He worked, He never even had the things we have (a nice mattress, hot and cold running water). He came from luxury to poverty. Believers throughout the centuries have pondered these great truths. It started with Mary - think about it. She was the first one confronted with the choice to believe that Jesus was the Messiah. As we noted, she pondered these things, and treasured them.
Think of this today:
Mary was the only human present at Jesus’ birth who also witnessed his death. She saw him arrive as her baby son, and she watched him die as her Savior.
There’s a verse in a modern Christmas song by Mark Lowry that asks: Mary did you know that this child that you’ve delivered will soon deliver you?
I don’t know if that’s something she thought about when it says she pondered these things, but it’s something worth our prayerful pondering.
Many others have considered and wondered and become awe-struck by these truths as well.
Charles Spurgeon wrote of Jesus:
“Infinite, and an infant. Eternal, and yet born of a woman. Supporting a universe, and yet needing to be carried in a mother’s arms. King of angels, and yet the reputed son of Joseph. Heir of all things, and yet the carpenter’s despised son.”
The Lord of the universe sets aside His royal robes, and exchanges them for a set of diapers. Does that seem sacrilegious? Considering the idea that Jesus wore diapers? And they certainly weren’t the high-tech absorbent ones we have today, you know – the kind where your child is in danger of sinking to the bottom of a pool if he or she wears them into water.
But if we believe what the scriptures clearly teach, that Jesus was fully God, and fully man, one and the same, at the same time...a real paradox....then He must have been like any other baby of His time. He can’t have been supernaturally potty-trained from birth.
In the gospel of John, the one which speaks most clearly of the incarnation and all its implications, we see that Jesus was weary (4:6) and thirsty (4:7). He groaned within (11:33), and openly wept (11:35). On the cross, He was thirsty (19:28), died (19:30), and bled (19:34).
It’s interesting that the gospel of John mentions nothing about the birth of Jesus, but it contains more theology about that birth than the other gospels.
John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
and then:
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Incarnation – fully God and fully man. It’s a key doctrine that’s important to ponder this and every Christmas season. It’s a clearly biblical idea, but the word incarnation is not found in the Word of God. We use it because the Latin version of John 1:14 used it. As a biblical teaching, incarnation affirms the fact that God, in one of His three persons of the Trinity, and without ceasing to be God, has revealed Himself to humanity, for the sake of our salvation, by becoming the human being named Jesus.
Jesus, the baby born in Bethlehem, the man from Nazareth, is the embodiment, the incarnation, of God Himself. Here’s the way one Bible dictionary put it:
As the God-man, Jesus mediates God to humans; as the Man-God, He represents humans to God. By faith-union with Him, men and women, as adopted children of God, participate in His filial (that is, father-son) relation to God as Father.
Jesus, as God in the flesh, or as John 1 puts it, the Word made flesh, makes it possible for us to participate in a relationship with God the Father. This is a critical thing for us to accept, even though it’s an amazing paradox.
What Jesus taught us and what He did, are tied inseparably to who He is.
That’s why one of the key red flags that tells us a belief system is cultic, is how they view Jesus. That’s a key reason why Islam is a false religion. They believe in Jesus, but they believe he was just a prophet, not God in the flesh. That’s why Jehovah’s Witnesses are a cult. They don’t believe Jesus was divine.
That’s why liberal Christianity doesn’t work...Jesus, in their view, is not truly God in the flesh. They might accept Him as a good teacher, as if that’s truly significant.
But that’s not one of the choices we have. We only have two. He either is divine, or He isn’t.
Though Jesus took upon Himself full humanity and lived as a man, He never stopped being God. As the Word of God says, He was from the beginning, He is the creator of all things, and He sustains all things.
He is the source – the only source – of eternal life. This is the truth about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, that same baby who was born in Bethlehem, whose birth we celebrate again this Christmas season.
This truth is really foundational. Foundational means that every other truth we believe is built on this one. If we cannot, or do not, believe this truth, we cannot or will not have faith to trust our eternal destiny to Him. A Jesus who’s merely human, only human, is not qualified to save us from our sins. If He’s not God in the flesh, He’s not trustworthy enough to entrust our eternal destiny to Him.
Now, clearly, people have struggled with these truths, these paradoxes, for centuries. Even in the Christmas story, we see that struggle. After Mary was told she’d become pregnant, she asked, not so much in doubt, but in wonder, how could this be?
Let’s read that passage:
Luke 1:26-37 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34"How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37For nothing is impossible with God."
There are two keys here to how we are to deal with the paradoxes of faith. Mary asked the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” How would God do the impossible in Mary’s life? How does God do the seemingly impossible in our lives?
The angel answered: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
The same Greek word used here where it says “the Holy Spirit will come upon you” is also used in Acts 1:8 when Jesus told His disciples:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you;
Then, the same words the angel used here when he said “the power of the Most High will overshadow you...” are also used in each gospel account of the transfiguration of Jesus.
Matthew 17:5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!"
Now, while we’re pondering things, let’s consider this...
Zondervan NIV commentary: This word is used in all three accounts of the transfiguration to describe the overshadowing of the cloud. Likewise, in each account the voice comes out of the cloud identifying Jesus as God’s son, a striking reminder of this verse (in Luke) where the life that results from the enveloping cloud is identified as “the son of God.”
How can this be? The final answer is in verse 37 of Luke chapter 1:
Nothing is impossible with God.
It’s the message of Christmas. It’s the answer to paradoxes that we can’t wrap our minds around. It’s the answer when we wonder the same thing as Mary did, about different things in our lives – the way God chooses to move: How can this be?
Luke 1:37: Nothing is impossible with God.
Matthew 19:26 (NIV) 26 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
As we’re pondering the many paradoxes of our faith, as we ponder the paradox of Christmas, as we join Mary centuries later, pondering these things, yes, even treasuring these things, thanking God for these things, let’s remember the angel’s answer to Mary when she asked, as we often do: How can this be?
Nothing is impossible with God. The Maker of the Universe, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, made flesh and dwelt among us....loved us, died for us....died at the hands of the men he made...died when nails forged from the steel he created pierced that flesh...it’s a paradox...it’s an amazing love story....
For nothing is impossible with God.
