A Let It Be Christmas - "Nothing's Gonna Change My World"

It began so well.

God created it all, everything that there was, out of nothing. Everything was new - and it was good.

But then sin or rebellion if you prefer, crept in through the open door of selfishness. Mankind discovered that it could sin, and that they were good at it. So good they never even went to the trouble of rationalizing or making excuses. Nothing like we would do.

So the perfect couple, created in the image of God, created by Him, created in pure love, left the perfect world created for them and went into the hard places. Oh and they immediately began tearing it down.

It wasn't all that long then, when one brother, angry over God's refusal to accept his offering, killed his brother. For nothing, really.

From that point it just got increasingly worse - to the point that God decided a do over was the best for all concerned. We treat Noah and the Ark as a charming children's story - even doing our baby nurseries in the motif. But the fact is that the flood was needed to wipe out something that was going to consume the entire earth if it wasn't stopped.

Yet after a little while, it began again.

God, ever the faithful One, kept trying with a people no other God would have wanted. The Israelites would benefit from having God's Law, the Torah, and exhibitions of God's power - such exhibitions that the Jews still leave an empty chair when they celebrate the Passover - when God delivered them from slavery.

But they were a stubborn people, often refusing to obey.

Still God tried.

"Give us a King," they said, claiming God was just too complicated - too distant.

And their wish was granted, and that King, a man named Saul, succumbed to the siren call of sin too. He was followed by King David, a "man after God's own heart" who wrote beautiful songs of praise, and also committed adultery and murder.

It just kept getting worse.

God sent prophets - men who spoke for Him - to straighten out the Israelites. They killed some, ignored others. God used Israel's neighbors to punish them, sent the people into exile, scattered them - but to no avail.

So we pick up the story this morning in the last prophet's writings. A man named Malachi, who lived in the southern kingdom of Israel about 500-450 years before the birth of Jesus.

If you pick up the book and skim it, it resembles a pretty familiar occurance in most of our lives. Doesn't it seem to you like the conversation between an exasperated parent and immature teenager? The adult tries his best to get the teen to recognize the issue, and the teen refuses to admit there's any problem with him at all, and if one exists, it has to be with the adult.

- But you say
- But you ask
- But you say, "It's too hard..."

So God begins to close this chapter of His dealings with people. And notice, the final words contain an opportunity to be blessed, or the certainty of a curse.

5 “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives.6 His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
Mal 4:5-6 (NLT)

And then, silence...............

450 years of silence.

No prophets came forth to speak the words of the Lord.
Neither did the God who freed them from slavery in Egypt remove the boot of Rome from off Israel's neck. The people were oppressed, they were taxed severely, and though a few remained faithful, the majority gave up on God.

Nothing was going to change their world.

We pick up the story again in a book written by a Greek convert to Judaism named Luke. He was a scientist of a sort, a physician, actually, and because this was a discipline still evolving, his main skills centered on observation and recording what he saw. Each case provided him with knowledge he could use again later. So his book opens the way you'd expect it to - with an introduction explaining his purpose and attesting to his trustworthiness.

Luke immediately introduces us to a couple named Zechariah and Elizabeth. In Malachi God referenced a list of His people who did right. These two would have been on any list like that. They were devout believers and faithful in all they did. Still, though they were universally appreciated, and even loved, people knew there must be some sort of curse in their past, or some hidden sin they were paying for - for you see they had no children.

Barrenness back then was thought to be a sign that a person was on the outs with God in some way. So though this older couple were as good as anyone they ever knew, the people who knew them quietly must have whispered their guesses about what their sin could be. It would have followed them everywhere. How many times did Elizabeth turn a corner and hear "there she comes, be quiet" or Zechariah find the men grow silent as he approached?

How heavy a load that must have been. And they carried it for 40, 50, maybe 60 years. People they grew up with had already had their kids - shoot, their kids had had kids, and maybe their kid's kids had too in that culture. But that couple, that old couple, never turned away from God, and never turned on each other.

Zechariah could have divorced her for cause. There's no doubt her barrenness hurt his career as a priest. Instead of the riches of Jerusalem, he was sentenced to the hard life of a small village priest.

You know, when you think about it, that whole "Nothing's gonna change my world" attitude - what they are really saying is that if anything is really going to be different - it is up to me - and that really, I'm not up to it. Right?

We are stuck in a rut and either unable, unwilling, or unmotivated to do whatever needs doing. What percentage of people do you think are living today right there? Right at that point in their life? Maybe 80%

We take a look at the problem and decide it has us licked. And so we just go on with putting one day in line after another. That's what seems to have happened with these two.

Because when Zechariah wins the lottery and gets to represent the nation in God's most Holy presence, he's surprised when God's messenger shows up, and down right insulting in his response to the greatest news he could have ever heard.

11 While Zechariah was in the sanctuary, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the incense altar.12 Zechariah was shaken and overwhelmed with fear when he saw him.13 But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John.14 You will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth,15 for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He must never touch wine or other alcoholic drinks. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. 16 And he will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God.17 He will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and he will cause those who are rebellious to accept the wisdom of the godly.”
18 Zechariah said to the angel, “How can I be sure this will happen? I’m an old man now, and my wife is also well along in years.”
Luke 1:11-18 (NLT)

In other words, if I can't do it, it's impossible.

19 Then the angel said, “I am Gabriel! I stand in the very presence of God. It was he who sent me to bring you this good news!20 But now, since you didn’t believe what I said, you will be silent and unable to speak until the child is born. For my words will certainly be fulfilled at the proper time.”
Luke 1:19-20 (NLT)

Maybe Zechariah needs time to sort out his thoughts. In silence.

Maybe we do too.

From Outsiders To Insiders

“Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people.11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
Luke 2:10-14 (NLT)

Christmas is coming again.

The Greatest Story ever told will go largely unheard or unremembered as Americans focus on buying things they don't need with money they don't have and giving gifts to people they don;t even like. How can we get our story noticed among the cacophony of sounds and competing stories? Is it enough just to retell of Messiah's coming, or do we need more?

How can we be most effective - like the angels that first Christmas - at bringing outsiders like the shepherds - inside?

We're going to try something very different.



Let It Be Christmas - A story told by Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, George and Ringo.

The idea is to take people from the secular - those experiences, feelings, and preferences we all have and share in common - to the Sacred - to the wonder, the mystery, and the grace-filled gift that is the Incarnation. To get them close enough to hear more this Christmas than Radio Shack jingles. To introduce them again to just what the Advent of Christ means.

Each week we would use a Beatles song prior to worship to set the tone and the message would follow a specific theme suggested by that song.

* Week one - Nothin's Gonna Change My World
* Week two - All The Lonely People
* Week three - I Believe In Yesterday
* Week four - You Say You Want A Revolution

Let me say upfront that there will be a clear explanation of the gospel every week and a call to come to Christ just as we always do. We won't water anything down. I think the effect of using the secular to highlight the sacred will do just the opposite.

And if we will invite our friends, if our youth will invite their friends, maybe people who have never really heard the true meaning of Christmas might draw near to Christ.

Outsiders to insiders. That's good news.

New Year, New Series

Christmas is behind us now, and we've crossed the threshold of the New Year. I haven't yet had to write 2008 but I know how to make a seven into something eight-ish, so I'm good. Time to move on from the "Nights Before Christmas" series of sermons.

Started thinking before the holidays about this, praying what direction to go in next. Several factors involve themselves in the preparation process. Number One of course is what is God directing? There have been times when it was extremely clear what I should preach. That could be driven by the circumstances we found ourselves in as a church, or a pressing need that presented itself, or a realization over time that the church was in need of instruction in a certain area.

For a few years, I actually followed the Lectionary in order to try to cover as much as the whole counsel of God's Word as I could. In another couple of years I tried to follow the SBC lectionary - the Adult Sunday School quarterly. :) Yes, I would preach ahead of the next week's lesson in the Sunday School texts, hoping to go deeper and give more context than they would receive in their lessons. I was helped in that by some great resources put out by the EXTRA! staff at Lifeway.

The goal in both was to try to deliver one consistent message each Sunday instead of three different ones. When you think about it, the average Baptist who comes to every opportunity on Sunday will hear a SS lesson which applies to life in one area, a sermon which probably is in another, and then finally a Sunday night sermon or small group. Three messages, three applications - all of which will be mostly forgotten by Monday afternoon.

So my idea was to take each Sunday as a teaching unit, and pound one Big idea from three angles. General context and application in SS, Broader context and application in the morning sermon, and then that night to really focus on parts that might be nuances but were more than incidental in the text. For example I might do a word study that night to help flesh out a concept, or I might do a character study of someone involved in that morning's text.

I still really like that, and believe it has the most potential for transformation, however present structure and circumstances being what they are, it is a nonstarter. If I was in a plant, the small group lesson would come as further exposition and application of the Sunday morning sermon. But I'm not in a plant.

So here I am.

With a mix of people at various stages of spiritual growth, with a varied demographic of ages and education, with varied backgrounds as far as church and region. In general, we need to be better at applying what we already know of the Bible to our lives, we need to have a more consistent ability to see the world through a Christian world view, we need to be able to share our ideas in the marketplace of ideas effectively and clearly across all those demographic lines and tribal boundaries. And we need to grow as a church on mission.

Oh is that all?

I should just tool over to see what Fellowship, or Granger, or Northpoint is doing and buy their last series. The most effective church in the area, far and away the one that has grown the fastest, does that, and has done that for three years. But I can't do that. They don't know New Hope like I do, and I have precious little in common with any mega. At times I'm not sure we're seeing the same world.

So I pray, and I think about the people who are most likely to be out in front of me as I deliver the message. Will this series reach them? Is this what God would have me do?

One other factor - what can I do best?

The craziest thing has happened to me. Without wanting to or meaning to, I've gone from a topical preacher to an expository one who is far more comfortable with a passage than a series of verses spread out over the Bible. When I first began, I could preach topical sermons - really well at times. But now, I struggle with it.

Today I'll read every word Jesus ever spoke that's recorded in the Scriptures as I pray about a series on "The Red Letters" which will probably come mostly from the Sermon on the Mount and if it goes well, the parables. I'm also looking at the book of Romans and for Wednesday nights (we're through with Numbers) whether to continue into Deuteronomy or skip it.

By tomorrow, I hope to have clear direction and begin serious prep work for whatever God leads me to do. Pray with me that I'll be a willing vessel for His awesome Truth.

On Christmas

The Word Made Flesh

The Word of the Father, by whom all time was created, was made flesh and was born in time for us. He, without whose divine permission no day completes its course, wished to have one day for His human birth. In the bosom of His Father He existed before all the cycles of ages; born of an earthly mother, He entered upon the course of the years on this day.

The Maker of man became man that He, Ruler of the stars, might be nourished at the breast; that He, the Bread, might be hungry; that He, the Fountain, might thirst; that He, the Light, might sleep; that He, the Way, might be wearied by the journey; that He, the Truth, might be accused by false witnesses; that He, the Judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial by a mortal judge; that He, Justice, might be condemned by the unjust; that He, Discipline, might be scourged with whips; that He, the Foundation, might be suspended upon a cross; that Courage might be weakened; that Security might be wounded; that Life might die.

To endure these and similar indignities for us, to free us, unworthy creatures, He who existed as the Son of God before all ages, without a beginning, deigned to become the Son of Man in these recent years. He did this although He who submitted to such great evils for our sake had done no evil and although we, who were the recipients of so much good at His hands, had done nothing to merit these benefits.

St. Augustine, Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, Trans. Sister Mary Sarah Muldowney, R.S.M., Vol. 38 in The Fathers of the Church, ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc.), p. 28.

Christmas - weakly

While rereading the accounts of Christmas again last night, it occurred to me - God's powerful act of Incarnation couldn't have come to a more unlikely group of people. His mighty actions elicited a very weak response, didn't they.

Zachariah doubted God and couldn't believe when an angel showed up.

Joseph searched frantically for a way out.

Even Mary, a model of faith asked "How can this be...?"

Each and every one of them had a moment or moments when the situation they were presented with was just too much to believe.

Have you ever been there?

I sure have.

There have been times where, despite years of trying to live a live of faith and devotion to Jesus, something will happen and I'll silently ask the question "How can this be...?" Or really, how in the world am I going to make it through this?

To that question, God answers - "wait."

Uh, not really helpful - see we have this situation here and I need to get it fixed. And to that you say - "wait?"

I realized when I typed it that "wait" is not a word we would ever associate with Christmas, unless we add the obligatory "I can't.." as a prefix.

And yet, waiting is exactly what God required of each of the people involved in Christmas.

Zachariah and Elizabeth had prayed for a son all their married lives.

Joseph and Mary agreed in their betrothal to wait a year before consummating their marriage.

Even after the angel's announcements to them, there was the usual nine month wait for the babies that were promised to appear.

How long have you been waiting for your Christmas miracle to come? I'm not talking about that long promised pony or motorcycle.

I'm thinking of that moment when the faith you have...

...expands to fill your whole life.

When this verse becomes reality... to you.

What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see. Heb 11:1 (NLT)

You know what?

I'm encouraged that Zachariah wouldn't take an angel's word for it.
Likewise by Joseph's worries and Mary's concerns.

Because I am no weaker than they were, when they failed to grasp Christmas.

But then it's not about us, in our weakness. It's about God, and His unfailing love.

Preaching To the Choir

I found myself very much straitened before I had got to the middle of my sermon, and was at length brought to a full stop. I had only power to make a public confession of my weakness, and that I was utterly unable to proceed. The Lord gave me however at the same time to hope that it might be good for me and for my people that I should be thus humbled, so that I was not much disconcerted, nor has it given me a moment's uneasiness ever since. Only I hope it will be an abiding memento to me to be afraid of leaning to my own understanding, and make me go up the pulpit steps for the future, with a deeper conviction both of my unworthiness and my inability.
- John Newton

Richard Cecil, The Life of John Newton, edited by Marylynn Rousse (Christian Focus Publications, 2000; originally published circa 1810), p. 135.

I did a risky thing this week. After last week in which I found myself wondering about the effectiveness of my preaching, I opened myself up to God's correction, and asked a group of men who I admire to help me understand where I might have gotten off track.

The reason I call this a risky act is because for a pastor, preaching is very much tied to our self-concept of who we are. There are many things that a smaller church pastor does each week - the phrase "and all duties not otherwise assigned" plays out in a thousand ways - but it is the preaching event that seems to matter most.

When a church contacts you and wants to evaluate you as a prospective pastor, they do not ask to see how you managed a ridiculously small budget. I have never had a search committee question about why we work on making sure the people who are members are actually involved. No one even asks me about my favorite things - interacting with the people God has placed us with. They want copies of sermons and "video would be great."

Week in and week out, the sermon has the most potential to help people examine themselves in light of God's Word as the church gathered. If you can preach well, in most cases that is sufficient for people to overlook many other weaknesses. And so, when you get a feeling that you might be off track, it can shake your confidence.

My friends are all pastors, who are spread out across the country. With the exception of the site's owner, I have never met any of them. But I know their hearts because I hear their stories of struggle and success as we daily try to do a job that is impossible without the constant reliance on the Holy Spirit.

I really likened the preaching act to a physical sports analogy such as hitting or pitching a baseball. You can still be the same player, have the same physical skills, possess the same amount of strength, but when you have a change in your mechanics it becomes hard to do that which is easy. And then if you let that get into your head, now you have real trouble. I was afraid I was suffering a Rick Ankiel moment (St Louis Cardinal pitcher who inexplicably lost the ability to throw strikes).

So all week long I sought their council. I explained what I felt and they probed and prodded. I explained some more and they questioned and suggested. The interaction helped me focus. I decided then to do something I hadn't done in a long time. I wrote the entire sermon out in a manuscript after I had done the powerpoint. Normally I do not use notes at all, relying on the ppt slides to keep my on track.

I have plenty of notes from my studies on a passage. It is not unusual for me to generate well over 50 pages of notes during the week, and if I am preaching through a book, by the time I get through I would have several hundred pages of notes. This past Sunday I had about 60 pages that I used to write 6.

Immediately before I went to bed, I sent several of them a copy of the sermon, and I posted a copy on a couple of my blogs. My hope was that if I really was off base in my interpretation and application, or muddled in my thoughts, that one of them would catch me before I preached Sunday. But I felt good about the sermon.

The reports trickled in. "Looks good but could have a stronger close." "There's enough there for two sermons." "That will communicate well, preach it." "I'd spread your application out over the sermon instead of leaving it all until the end."

Most of these I read after the fact.

When I preached, just before I did something I never, ever do anymore. I asked the congregation to stand with me for the reading of God's Word. And we prayed. And I prayed and gave it away to God. John Newton's quote above, which I had read during the week, was ringing in my head. "Lord, if I falter, let it be because I am in awe of You and Your Word."

I won't blame preaching too long on Him. :)

My bad - I got excited. ;)

I am so grateful to the men I serve with and their help. And I am in way over my head, but my feet are on the Rock.

What Child Is This?

John 1:1-14

My absolute favorite Christmas show is A Charlie Brown Christmas. And my absolute favorite part of that show is when Charlie Brown gets frustrated with how the kids are treating Christmas and in an almost primal scream asks “Doesn’t anyone here know what Christmas is all about?” Then Linus goes into his recitation of the Christmas story from Luke, complete with dramatic lighting, music, and a children’s choir.

When he’s finished, everything about the way the kids celebrate Christmas changes.

I’m expecting similar results here today. (GRIN)

The text I chose was given to John by the Holy Spirit and is quite different than Matthew or Luke’s versions of what Christmas is all about. You remember John, right? He likes things simple. He’s the one that gave us our favorite Bible verse – or at least our favorite when it comes to memorization. John 6:35 “Jesus wept.” I like it when they keep it short and to the point, don’t you?

I was emailed a while back a condensed version of the entire Bible – the Bible in 50 words.

God made, Adam bit, Noah arked, Abraham split, Joseph ruled, Jacob fooled, bush talked, Moses balked, Pharaoh plagued, people walked, sea divided, tablets guided, promise landed, Saul freaked, David peeked, prophets warned, Jesus born, God walked, love talked, anger crucified, hope died, Love rose, Spirit flamed, Word spread, God
remained.

I know, I know – the Pharoah plagued is a bit lame, but I especially like the Saul freaked and David peeked part.

We’re always trying to take what God does and try and fit it into a package we can handle. Trying to reduce His greatness, to slim down His omnipotence, to limit His foreknowledge and make it into something we have down cold.

We like it simple.

Okay, so here we are at John 1.

God has once again met us at the very point of our need. He’s not only going to make it simple for us, he’s going to retrace His steps so we can see how we got to Christmas. Somewhere along the way this week I realized what he had done was the equivalent of someone speaking very slowly to a person who didn’t speak our language.

That doesn’t ever seem to work on TV.

But here God is using visual aids – things we know and can get a grip on. They come a little bit later in the text, so hang with me here.

In the beginning the Word already existed.

How does the Bible begin? “In the beginning, God…

Here John is back at ABC, square one, version 1, God 1.0. When this occurs we have no idea. The idea John is trying to help us with is that the Word is before time. You can put any sort of handle you want on that thought as long as it ends up being pre-existent to wherever you thought was the beginning.

But I thought we were here today learning about Jesus? We are. The word John uses there translated “Word” for us, is the Greek word logos. Oh, that clears it all up.

Think with me here. No, I just wanted a break. Wow, that’s great. I’ll make a mental note to use that again when I get stuck. Okay, now really, think with me. I’m thinking of a word. Any ideas? No, actually I was thinking of bacteria – not sure why. See if I’m going to ask you to think about a word with me, I need to give you not just that word, but an explanation of what it means. In a sense, that’s what the rest of this passage does.

John has already told us that the “Word” existed before the beginning. The next thing he tells us is that the “Word” was with God. And then he adds to that “the Word was God”. And speaking slowly to us, because we don’t have the spiritual language skills of angels, he says “He existed in the beginning with God.”

This “Word” or logos was a concept to the Greeks. They were fixated on what made the universe tick. They had their gods, but when they really wanted to consider the meaning of life and the reason everything existed, they called it the “logos”.

Sounds like God to me. But if John wanted to explain God to Greeks, he couldn’t begin with that word. So the Holy Spirit led him to use “Word”. Everyone would understand that on some level, but the real deep thinkers would be taken real deep.

And that same Holy Spirit knew that you and I would be here today reading this. For us, he led us to the first thing we know about Jesus – about who this baby is - He is God.

I guess in a lot of ways, that’s where the fusses we get into over Christmas today really have their root. In many ways “Christmas” or “that “C” word as I heard one commentator refer to it, divides people simply because of Jesus’ claim, backed up by this Scripture and many many others – that he is God.

I read earlier in the week that certain department store chains were not calling Christmas trees, Christmas trees – instead referring to them as Holiday trees. Is there another Holiday we use those for that I don’t know about? Sounds silly, but at the root is a refusal to allow any reminder that Jesus is God.

The next simple fact that John clues us in on is that Jesus, the Word, God, is also the Creator of the Universe.

3 God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
4 The Word gave life to everything that was created,[a]
and his life brought light to everyone.

So Jesus is God the Creator, who brings everything to be. Once again John repeats Himself for emphasis. “created everything through him, and nothing was created except through Him.” And he goes farther. Not content to limit Jesus to the creation of stars, nebula, galaxies and planets, he points to Jesus as the giver of all life.

I’m a science geek. I love to read about the latest advances in medicine, chemistry, physics and the like. And I’m a wee bit amused at those who seem to think that there’s a disconnect between being a follower of Jesus Christ and having a brain. Ok, maybe I exaggerate. Some think we have a brain, but as followers of Jesus, we are insane. No, that wasn’t better either. Well, anyway, some of them seem to want to talk to us reeeeeaaaalll slooooooowww.

But here’s the thing. In this are, it really boils down to two choices. You can believe that the universe happened by accident, a series of cosmic coincidences almost to infinity, or you can at least admit the possibility of a designer – a creator if you will.

Friends, that job is filled in Jesus. He is the bringer of life, and light.

See I told you that John was going to use some visual aids we could all understand. We all understand life. When we have it there are possibilities galore. Even on our worst days we still have… a day. Without life, we aren’t.

But light – light is a revealer. Light gives you the ability to see, to perceive, to know. And here in John 1, John says that Jesus is the light who brings the true revelation of what God is, to us.

And, oh I love this – that even when things get tough, even when it seems like things are dark, that there’s no hope or even a possibility of hope – Jesus wins.

5 The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it.

It’s a cold and cruel world we live in. But it will never be without hope.

So John’s told us that this baby is God, He is Creator, He is the Purest Revelation – the Light. But the best is yet to come.

Jesus is the Savior

6 God sent a man, John the Baptist,[c] 7 to tell about the light so that everyone might believe because of his testimony. 8 John himself was not the light; he was simply a witness to tell about the light. 9 The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.

10 He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. 11 He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. 12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. 13 They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God.

Jesus had an advance party on his earth adventure. John the Baptist. I like to think of him as Jesus’ “away team” like on the old Star Trek tv show, where the crew would send some people down to a planet to check it out. You could almost always count on a couple of the security team guys, the ones wearing red, to kick the bucket while they were there. I always wondered why they wore red, because those were always the ones who died. Personally, I would have still gone, but I would have changed shirts to something less obvious. But then again John the Baptist didn’t. His away team outfit was a bit unusual as was his job.

John was to tell people that God had sent Messiah – the revelation of God. Jesus was that revelation – that light. And Jesus was coming to His own people, the Jews.

I have always wondered what it was like to have created the world and then come down and live on it. How Jesus must have felt knowing that His creation of the trees – that one would be used as His cross. But when he came to His creations – the people of Israel, they didn’t see Him as God at all. They rejected Him and His message and eventually were so angry at what He and that message said that they killed Him to shut Him up.

But there were some who believed then. The disciples, some women, some others. And to them, and to all of us who have followed them, He gave the right no one but God could give – the right to inherit eternal life – to be made right with God. John says that those people have been reborn.

And again, John slows down and tells us what that means. It’s not a physical act. Old Nicodemas, as smart as he was went there a little later on, so puzzled he wanted Jesus to explain how someone could go back into the womb. It’s not physical, it’s spiritual.

And it’s not our idea – we never would have thought of it.. We never could make it happen. There’s nothing we can do to earn forgiveness from God – nothing. I’m not going to have to wait for someone to pray me out of purgatory so I can leave that bus stop on the way to heaven when I die. Salvation isn’t a human act – it’s a God act.

Someone told me one time that we had to do our part. That’s true of course. We have to be sinners without any hope of forgiveness. Ok, check. Got that done. John gives us in one very clear sentence, what we need to do to be saved, to become children of God.

12 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.

So two words – believed, and accepted and one object – Him (Jesus)

John uses the word “believe” or “believed” over 100 times in his gospel. It never in any single instance means dry dusty knowledge like “I believe red bricks are good.” Nor does it mean something frivolous like “I believe Dairy Queen Blizzards are the twelfth wonder of the world.” When he uses the word it means to stake your life upon it – to give it your all – everything you have – and never look back.

So a person that wants to follow Jesus, who wants to be made right with God and follow God’s plan and pattern for their life must believe in the Word that Jesus left us and in Him as explained in that Word. There’s no expression of Jesus no true expression of Him that isn’t contained in or explained by this book – the Bible. So a Buddhist Jesus, or a Mormon Jesus, or a Karmic Jesus won’t work – can’t be, because they are outside the light of God’s revelation in and through His Word.

Jesus – God of very God. Jesus – Creator of everything that was made. Jesus giver of Life, revealer of Light. And yes, Jesus, born of a virgin.

Can you accept that? In this context the word translated accept doesn’t just mean nod your head. It means pledge your allegiance to. To receive as who he says he is and act accordingly. You receive Jesus, you receive the Holy Spirit living within you. You receive Jesus, you place yourself under His authority and pledge yourself to do whatever he calls for you to do. You receive Jesus and he becomes your master and you become his bondservant.

John says that people who do that receive the right or the authority to change their family name. They become joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. Once they were enemies of God, but now they have become part of God’s family.

I love the way Eugene Peterson translates the last verse we’ll look at today.

14The Word became flesh and blood,
and moved into the neighborhood.

Jesus came into this world the same way we all did. He grew up as any other little boy in his era would have. But he was different in two very important ways. First, he never sinned. That’s important because if he had the second way couldn’t have been true. “He was God.”

When Jesus moved into our hood, or pitched his tent among us, he was just doing what any other short term visitor would do. The people who used tents back then were transients – soldiers, sojourners, and shepherds. Tents were useful because they could be moved quickly, but they weren’t very sturdy. Jesus was fully God, but took on human flesh and blood like any other man. He was fully God and fully man. He gave 200%

John says that everyone who saw Jesus said that he reminded them of someone. I know when I go back to Macon, at times I will run into someone and they’ll tell me that I resemble my father. I generally thank them and then walk away thinking, “man I’m getting old”. But I genuinely appreciate what they mean.

John has that sense in what he writes when he says

He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness.[e] And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.

Don’t you wonder what it must have been like to know Jesus as the apostles did? To see Him as He performed His miracles, to listen to Him speak, to see His great power as He raised Lazarus or even after the resurrection?

Well, John gives us a snapshot here when he says that Jesus was full of unfailing love and faithfulness – grace and truth. Who wouldn’t want a friend like that? Someone who knows you intimately – as you really are – but who loves you anyway – even loves you for exactly who you are!

That would be glorious! That would be like knowing and loving God Himself. John says, we have seen that in the flesh – seen Him! He is unique – one of a kind – and everything the Word said He would be. And the word he uses doesn’t mean he glanced at Jesus, it carries the idea that John and the disciples couldn’t stop looking at Him and seeing God.

He is Jesus, come to save His people from their sins.

I wonder, do you know Him today?

Do you need someone to love you just as you are? Jesus’ love is unfailing.

Do you need someone who will never leave you, never forsake you, never pretend you aren’t there, never fail to answer your cries?

Jesus is full of faithfulness.

You will never truly understand Christmas until you look God the Father in His face and tell Him thank you for sending your Son for me, a sinner lost and burdened with a sin debt that could never be repaid. Have you received Jesus? Have you believed he is everything the Bible says He is and has done everything the Bible said He must do to give you new life and new hope with God?

What Child Is this? He is our Hope. He is our Life. He is our Light. He is Jesus.

On Christmas

The spirit of Christmas needs to be superseded by the Spirit of Christ. The spirit of Christmas is annual; the Spirit of Christ is eternal. The spirit of Christmas is sentimental; the Spirit of Christ is supernatural. The spirit of Christmas is a human product; the Spirit of Christ is a divine person. That makes all the difference in the world.

- Stuart Briscoe in Meet Him at the Manger

If we could condense all the truths of Christmas into only three words, these would be the words: "God with us." We tend to focus our attention at Christmas on the infancy of Christ. The greater truth of the holiday is His deity. More astonishing than a baby in the manger is the truth that this promised baby is the omnipotent Creator of the heavens and the earth! - John F. MacArthur, Jr.

For those nations of the earth which have known the story of Jesus, Christmas is undoubtedly the most beautiful time of the year.

Though the celebration of the Savior’s birth occurs in the dead of winter, when in many parts of the world the streams are frozen and the landscapes cold and cheerless, still there is beauty at the Christmas season–not the tender beauty of spring flowers or the quiet loveliness of the full-blown summer, or yet the sad sweet graces of autumn colors. It is beauty of another kind, richer, deeper and more elevating, that beauty which considerations of love and mercy bring before the mind.

Though we are keenly aware of the abuses that have grown up around the holiday season, we are still not willing to surrender this ancient and loved Christmas Day to the enemy. Though those purer emotions which everyone feels at Christmas are in most hearts all too fleeting, yet it is something that a lost and fallen race should pay tribute, if only for a day, to those higher qualities of the mind–love and mercy and sacrifice and a life laid down for its enemies.

While men are able to rise even temporarily to such heights, there is hope that they have not yet sinned away their day of grace. A heart capable of admiring and being touched by the story of the manger birth is not yet abandoned, however sinful it may be. There is yet hope in repentance.

- A.W. Tozer

“The picture of a nervous, ingratiating God fawning over men to win their favor is not a pleasant one; yet if we look at the popular conception of God that is precisely what we see. Twentieth-century Christianity has put God on charity.”

–A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: HarperCollins, 1961), p. 34.

"Christianity today is man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait patiently, even respectfully, on the whims of men. The image of God currently popular is that of a distracted Father, struggling in heartbroken desperation to get people to accept a Saviour of whom they feel no need and in whom they have very little interest. To persuade these self-sufficent souls to respond to His generous offers God will do almost anything, even using salesmanship methods and talking down to them in the chummiest way imaginable. This view of things is, of course, a kind of religious romanticism which, while it often uses flattering and sometimes embarrassing terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make man the star of the show."

- A.W. Tozer

God grant you the light of Christmas, which is faith; the warmth of Christmas, which is love; the radiance of Christmas, which is purity; the righteousness of Christmas, which is justice; the belief in Christmas, which is truth; the all of Christmas, which is Christ.

- Wilda English

On "Holiday Trees"

It just gets silly after a while. Word came today that Sears and K Mart were refusing to call their Christmas Trees... err Christmas Trees. Instead, they chose to call them Holiday Trees, even though as far as I know, Christmas is the only holiday they are used for.

Are people really that insane?

I like looking at Menorahs. They don't offend me. There's a Hindu temple on the road I grew up on. It looks pretty cool. I know they don't know the Way, the Truth, and the Life, but I'll trust in the Holy Spirit to continue to witness to them. And I'll hope my fellow Christ followers will take every opportunity to tell them of the hope we have in Jesus with gentleness and respect.

Reciprocity would be appreciated.

It's NOT About Us

Luke 1 is not ultimately about marriage stress. We need to be on guard against inserting ourselves and our needs into the center of every passage. Luke 1 is ultimately about one of the most significant events ever - the announcement of the arrival of the Messiah. It’s a pivotal moment in all of history. We risk trivializing the passage when we make it a how-to sermon on dealing with marriage stress.

HT Theocentric Preaching

I struggle with this all the time as a pastor.

You know that people need to listen to the Word and apply its precepts and principles to their lives. You are intimately connected with them, especially as a small church pastor. You know what they are going through more than most.

And at times the tendency is to take Biblical texts with transcendent meaning, and hang "practical application" on them. For example, I could turn John 1:1-14, which I'm taking up this week, as a sermon on relationships based on Jesus' relationship with the Father, and his move to earth to be in our neighborhood and how he didn't let that distance affect their relationship. So (the application goes) we must do everything we can to maintain our relationships.

Barf.

Don't do that.

The Man Behind the Camera

Tomorrow morning, I'm continuing in the series called "The Nights Before Christmas" which is a look at the time, culture, and people that are all wrapped up in God's planned supernatural event - the Incarnation of Jesus.

We're a couple weeks away from Christmas, and I'll try my best to help everyone get enough of an idea about Joseph of Nazareth to understand who he was, why he did what he did, and how we all should emulate him.

He's been a difficult guy to get to know. Not much there in Scripture. I can describe what a typical Galilean Jewish man of that period would have been like. We can pretty confidently predict what his thoughts and actions would have been when faced with the earthshaking news he got from Mary.

But his time on the "stage" is so brief. And he has no recorded words.

This is the man God trusted with His Son.

This is the man who walked behind a little Jewish boy as that child took his first steps.

This is the man who showed his son how to work. How to pray. How to love. How to live.

And sometime between the trip to the temple when Jesus was 12 and when he began his ministry at age 30, Joseph, the man who first heard Jesus say "abba" - died.

He, like a lot of men I've known, don't make it into the family pictures. They are behind the camera making sure everyone else gets what they need.

But God knows.

Advent

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes… and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Monday, Monday

"...can't trust that day."

Sometimes when you roll over into Monday, it's a real blessing. Maybe you had a tough time the day before and knowing you have a day to reorient helps a great deal. Just having the space to reflect can soften the previous day's experience if it's bad, or you can continue to bask in the glow if it was a great day.

As a pastor, you are so tied into the events and people of the church you serve that if you aren't careful, you tend to kick yourself around quite a bit. You know and give assent to the fact that God is sovereign, and His will is being done, but if you didn't feel as though you did your best the day before, then you spend Monday thinking, if only I had worked harder, prayed more, not used that illustration, used more Scripture, used less Scripture... well, you get the idea.

But most Mondays serve as waves on the shoreline, and whatever you scribbled the day before in the sand gets blurred and erased.

Not today.

That sermon stunk. Just plain stunk. It never cleared the "so what?" bar, much less the "now what?" one.

But I can deal.

So then I open an email from Ray Pritchard and find that he's done what I wasn't able to, in the way I was hoping to do it. Thanks a lot God. :)

A decree from Caesar Augustus.
An angel appearing to Mary.
A virgin becoming pregnant.
An angel coming to Joseph in a dream.
A baby who will be called Immanuel.
A mysterious star in the east.
A group of magi showing up in Jerusalem.
Angels appearing to shepherds.
A trip to Bethlehem.
An inn that was full.
A stable that was available.
A babe wrapped in rags and placed in a feeding trough.
A star that led the magi to the right house in Bethlehem.
Gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
A dying king who tried to kill the baby.
A desperate journey to Egypt.
Another journey to Nazareth.

And think of what the Bible says about this baby:

"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end" (Luke 1:32).

"You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

" For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:6).

Pretty amazing stuff, if you stop to think about it. What are the chances that all of those things that had to happen in exactly the right way would have happened? That a pagan emperor would issue a decree at just the right moment in history, when the Pax Romana was in full force, when the world was yearning restlessly for deliverance, that angels would show up to a young man and a young woman, that they would believe the angels, that the virgin would become pregnant, that Joseph would decide not to divorce her, that the star would shine in the east, that the magi would travel hundreds of miles seeking the baby, and all of it would finally focus on a stable outside an inn in the "little town of Bethlehem," where the most incredible event in history took place.

C. S. Lewis says it this way:

The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares the way for this, or results from this.

He is entirely right about that. Sometimes we focus on peripheral questions (how did Jesus turn water into wine?) that distract us from the central truth of our faith. We believe God became a man. That the Creator became part of the creation. That the infinite became finite. That Almighty God took on the form of a man and was born as a tiny baby. This is the central truth of our faith.

I think Shawn is on to something when he uses the phrase "an accident from God." That's what Christmas is. It's an "accident from God," which means of course that it's no accident at all but it sure seems that way from the outside looking in.

It's personal, it's Biblical, it's really good. Everything I was trying to do.

Just Not There Today

"...a man’s reach should exceed his grasp..."

Words from a poem by Robert Browning, suggesting that, to achieve anything worthwhile, a person should attempt even those things that may turn out to be impossible.

Well, today's sermon might have been my attempt to do the impossible.

It started with the idea of walking through the Scriptures that lead to the incarnation by using the genealogy in Matthew 1. What I thought I would do is go back to the fall of Adam and Eve and walk forward through the list of people, showcasing their flaws and failures and God's faithfulness to His people and constant sense of purpose and timing. each of those people had only a portion of an understanding of what God was up to. They lived their lives and were part of God's plan. Some were remembered as heroes, some as villains, but they are all included.

"In the fullness of time, God sent His son, born of a woman..." was to bring the journey to a close with Mary.

I was hoping to go from wide angle to sharp focus as we saw how Mary - ordinary, common peasant teenager that she was, completely unremarkable in so many ways, that her life was prepared for the coming of Messiah just as were bigger events in the world. Nations were prepared. Languages were prepared. God even enlisted a tax program that enrolled 60 million people just so two of them would be in Bethlehem at just the right time.

Wide focus >>>>>> sharp focus
Big picture>>>>>> personal

So if God was at work then, if God was preparing people, places and things now, could He be at work right now through otherwise unremarkable people... like us.

The congregation probably went out knowing a bit more about the overall plan of the Incarnation. Maybe they even thought, "huh, I never realized that."

But the sermon never really got to "so what?" and "now what?" in any satisfactory way.

I bit off way more than I could chew.

hate that. my bad.

Just Throw Strikes

It's Saturday night, the weekend before Thanksgiving. I've worked all week on the

next "Mythbuster", attacking the myth of "God owes me". Most preachers I talk to say that the holiday sermons are the hardest. I tend to agree. The "land" has been plowed so many times that you and your congregation can write the sermon without you saying anything.

"be more thankful" - now let's eat.

The temptation is to try to get fancy. To come up with something no one has ever seen before. Ray Pritchard gave me a word on that tonight I wanted to share.

The following story comes from my friend Dave Burchett. It seems that a young pitcher for the Texas Rangers had just been called up from the minors. He got his big chance because he had shown a fearless ability to throw strikes no matter who was at the plate. Finally the night came when he was going to pitch in the major leagues for the first time. Like many players getting their first start, the young hurler was nervous and it showed on the mound. Thinking he needed to make a good impression, he tried this pitch and that pitch. Slider, fastball, curve, forkball, you name it, he tried it. He pitched high, low, inside, outside, in the dirt, he was all over the place. He walked batters left and right, and the ones he didn’t walk hit the ball hard. At length, having seen enough, the manager decided to talk to the young man. When he got to the mound, the manager put his hand on the pitcher’s shoulder and said, “Son, Babe Ruth is dead. Throw strikes.”

That’s good advice for budding pitchers. Babe Ruth is dead so don’t try to be cute. Just throw strikes. Put the ball over the plate. If they hit it, they hit it, but don’t try to throw some kind of fancy pitch you haven’t mastered yet. Throw strikes. That’s the heart of good pitching.

My task is to draw them into the story, and deliver the Word as it was and as it is. Might not be unique. But it will be real.

Seasonal Preaching

We're there already.

It's the holiday season - saw the first Christmas ad yesterday on TV, Bunny got her first "Black Friday" spoiler emails. Yep, the blur that is the American holiday season is here. I don't know about you, but I feel a little bit like the guy in the Capital One commercial - you know the one - where he's looking out across his deck and into his backyard and all of a sudden a Claymore sword thunks into the wood - followed by spears, more swords, and arrows.

Veterans Day
Thanksgiving
Advent
Christmas Eve
Christmas
New Years

They are all there, looming over my preaching preparation for the next few weeks. Here in America's Philippi, Veterans Day is a big deal. I'll definitely have to address it in pre-sermon time, perhaps show a video. In years long past, I'd have devoted a whole sermon loosely tied to some topic about courage, devotion, or faithfulness. People loved them, but they weren't anywhere near what I need to be doing - sparking transformational change in Jesus.

I never do Thanksgiving any more, even though I used to explain America's Pilgrim roots, talk about the miracle of their survival, even lay out Squanto's travels and how he was providentially placed.

There have been years I rigidly followed Advent and the Lectionary portions, years in which I did character studies of the parties involved in the Incarnation story, years where I traced the names of Messiah - well, I've done Christmas a lot of different ways.

Still praying about how to approach this year. For some reason I am feeling a kind of awe I haven't felt before - not about what Jesus found here, but what He left there. There's a "shock and awe" quality about the Incarnation as reflected in the accounts and the reaction of Herod, the shepherds, Joseph and yes even Mary that might be fertile ground.

We know the story - backwards and forwards. But how would someone outside our preconceived notions receive it - if they knew the Holiness and Majesty of God?

Stay tuned.