CHRISTMAS IS: GOD WITH US

This sermon is from the series CHRISTMAS IS and was preached on Sunday, December 15, 2013 at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Cherry Log, Georgia by Pastor Paul Mims.

Matthew 1: 15-25Not everyone is happy about the birth of a baby. King Herod was not very happy about the birth of Jesus because he saw him as a rival king. Neither was a little boy I heard about. He went to school and his teacher said to him, “I hear that you have a new baby at your house.” “Yes” he said. “Well, aren’t you excited about it? Aren’t you excited about having a new baby brother?” “No,” he said, “there were a lot of things we needed more than that.”

Some people feel that way about Christmas and the coming of Jesus. However, He is the most important person that the world needs at the moment.

Who was this babe in Bethlehem? The Bible declares him to be God in human flesh. This was perhaps the most difficult thing that God ever did. He could speak the universe into being. He could easily put the stars in their galaxies and the planet in their orbits. He could easily spread out unending space over thirteen billion light years with a wave of his hand. But to send His Son to be like us required an effort of love on His part that was far more difficult than anything He did in creation. He saw his chief creation, human beings, in a fallen state from which they couldn’t get up. He sent Jesus to pick us up out of the mire of failure one by one. The plan of redemption that he chose to do this was to become one of us so that he could communicate with us in a way we could understand.

This event is even more awesome when you read the first chapter of the gospel of John and the first chapter of Genesis. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God…” When things began, God already was. We do not have the brain power to grasp that. The bible indicates to us that God never had a beginning – He always was! Then in John 1:1 we read, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” John is saying to us that the babe in Bethlehem was the fullest expression of God that he could make and that he existed on the other side of eternity. When all that we know of the earth and space began, he already was. But that is not all. John says in 1:3, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing that was made has been made.” He came into the world that he created to re-create fallen humanity into the image that he designed for us to be before the creation of the world. He did not just proclaim a salvation from the glory of heaven. He left heaven and came down into the realm of earth to rescue us unto himself. To do that, He chose to become one of us.

Matthew puts it more in human terms: “All this was done to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him “Immanuel” which means “God with us.”

I. GOD IS WITH US TO REVEAL HIMSELF TO US.
What is the most difficult thing that you have ever had to do? Think about that for a moment. Your mind will probably take you to some educational achievement, some crisis point in your life, some decision you had to make, some relationship you had to straighten out, some physical difficulty you had to overcome, or some mental agony you had to work through.

I submit to you that the most difficult thing that God ever did was determining how he could reveal himself to you and me. How would you have done it if you had been God? How would you manifest yourself to people like us? Population experts tell us that all through time about eighty billion people have lived on the earth. It was God’s desire to reveal himself to each and every one of those persons. How could he do it? How could a mind as finite as ours understand the infinite? How could an attention span so earthbound as ours focus on the eternal and grasp it? How could hearts so filled with sin as ours focus on that which is altogether lovely and altogether pure? How could God reveal himself so that we could comprehend Him? He did it through nature and the beauty of creation, but that was not personal enough.

The way He decided to do it was to become one of us. He would live here like we live, suffer what we suffer, feel the pangs of life that we feel, and then, deal with that great cancer of the soul called “sin” by making an atonement for it by taking it upon himself for our sakes.

How was this received? It was received with cynicism. “God can’t become a baby!” “God can’t become a man!” That same cynicism that greeted the Christ Child is prevalent across our world today.

But it was also received by multitudes with open hearts of faith. We are in that great throng. We know for sure that we are not alone in this great cosmos. We are not alone in the great stretches of humanity across the earth. We are not alone in our pain and suffering. There is present in each believing heart the assurance that “God is with me.” I don’t have to face life and eventually death alone. There is a Divine presence in my life, my home, for all my days. The image of God that was marred in me has been remolded by grace and I can commune with the ever present Lord who has redeemed me.

You know that it is very difficult to communicate with someone who rejects you. You have to keep on loving, keep on waiting, keep on pleading, and keep on hurting until he or she accepts you. The same is true with God.

Years ago, I tried never to miss the Christmas Eve broadcast of the late Paul Harvey. Each year he told the same parable. Perhaps you remember it. The parable is about a man who said to his family on Christmas Eve, “I just don’t believe this Jesus stuff anymore. I have been thinking about it and I just can’t intellectually accept it. Because of this, I am not going to the church with you on Christmas Eve.” His wife and children went on to the Christmas Eve service. He sat at home and read his newspaper by the fire. He began to hear thuds at the living room window. He looked outside and there in the yard was a great flock of birds. Seeing the light through his window, they were trying to fly into the light and they were hitting the glass. He went outside and thought, “What can I do to save this flock of birds? If they stay here they will be caught in the winter storm that is coming later tonight. Then he looked at his barn and went over and opened the doors and turned the light on inside the barn. Maybe the light will draw them in. But that didn’t work.

Then, he got another idea. Maybe if I would put some bread crumbs and some seed out here it will lead them in. That didn’t work either. Then he tried to get behind them to shoo them in, but they would not be shooed. Then it dawned on him, “They are afraid of me. They are not going to do what I want them to do. I am too big for them. Then, he began to think, “What can I do to communicate with them? If only I could become a bird!”

About that time out across the town the church bells were pealing out, “Joy to the world! The Lord is come.” He finally realized how God had tried to communicate with him and he fell on his knees there in the snow.

II. GOD IS WITH US – BUT IS HE WITH YOU?
That is the big question at this Advent season.
Philip Yancey (in his book PRAYER) says, “When I am tempted to complain about God’s lack of presence, I remind myself that God has much more reason to complain about my lack of presence. In other words, I am the one who leaves Him. God is always there for me. We are the ones that have gone away. We did not keep our appointment with Him. We have not been worshiping Him regularly on Sundays; seldom talk to Him about our problems; we did not hear what He has to say to us in the Bible. We distant ourselves from Him because we are distracted by many things, by our work commitments, by our busy lifestyle.”

You can be in Christ and be distant from Him at certain intervals in your life. You can lose all sense of his presence with you because of the pre-occupations of your mind. This does not mean that God is not with you. It means that you of yourself are not able to appropriate His Divine presence in your life. We all have those dry times when we feel alone in the desert of the soul.

I was given a book by the late Dr. James Kennedy called WHAT IF JESUS HAD NEVER BEEN BORN? These are some of the things he says would never have happened if Jesus had not been born. “Literacy and education for the masses, Capitalism and free enterprise, Representative government, separation of powers, civil liberties, the abolition of slavery, modern science, the discovery of the new world, the elevation of women, benevolence and charity, higher standards of justice, the elevation of the common man, the condemnation of sexual perversion, high regard for human life, the civilizing of primitive cultures, the codifying and setting to writing many of the world’s languages, the greater development of music and art, the countless changed lives that have changed from liabilities into assets for the world, the eternal salvation of countless souls.”

Apply that same concept to your life. What if God had not broken into history through the Incarnation – how would your life be different? Just about every one of the listings of Dr. Kennedy would apply to us. But now that we can say “God is with me – He is my Immanuel” our lives are different. But there remains one other question for some in this congregation.

III. WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR GOD TO BE WITH YOU?
Perhaps you will have to understand it like a little boy in Russia did in a story told by Rob Short.
“In 1994, two Christian missionaries answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics in a large orphanage. About 100 boys and girls who had been abandoned, abused, and left in the care of a government-run program were in the orphanage.

It was nearing Christmas and they decided to tell them the story of Christmas. It would be the first time these children had heard the story of the birth of Christ. They told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem. Finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where the baby Jesus was born and placed in a manger. Throughout the story, the children and orphanage staff sat in amazement as they listened. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word.

When the story was finished, they gave the children three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manger. Each child was given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins that they had brought with them since no colored paper was available in the city.

Following instructions, the children tore the paper and carefully laid strips in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel, cut from a worn-out nightgown an American lady was throwing away as she left Russia, were used for the baby’s blanket. A doll-like baby was cut from tan felt which the missionaries had also brought with them.

It was all going smoothly until one of the missionaries sat down at a table to help a 6 year old boy named Misha. He had finished his manger. When the missionary looked at the little boy’s manger, she was startled to see not one, but two babies in the manger. Quickly, she called for the translator to ask Misha why there were two babies in the manger.

Crossing his arms in front of him and looking at this completed manger scene, Misha began to repeat the story very seriously. For such a young boy, who had heard the Christmas story once, he related the happenings accurately until he came to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger.
Then Misha started to ad-lib. He made up his own ending. He said, “And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mamma and I have no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay. Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn’t, because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everybody else did. “But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift’ And Jesus told me, ‘If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me.’
“So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him–for always.”

As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed.

The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon nor abuse him, someone who would stay with him–FOR ALWAYS.”

GOD IS WITH US – PRAISE BE TO HIS NAME!