Christmas Changes Everything

Good morning, and happy Christmas to you.

Thank you so much for choosing to come and celebrate Christmas with us here at NorthernLife.

As Hamish suggested a couple of minutes ago, Christmas is many things.

Christmas is tradition, Christmas is family, Christmas is shopping, let's face it.

Christmas is receiving and giving of gifts.

It's warm fuzzies.

Christmas is a child waking up before the crack of dawn, looking down his bed at the empty pillow slip that was there the night before.

At least that's my memory.

Christmas is Appletizer.

My parents didn't drink, so that's my memory.

Of Christmas or many other big celebrations.

But I think all of us here know that Christmas is actually about the celebration of the birth of jesus, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.

And so this morning, I'd like to spend our short time that we have in God's Word, explaining why jesus is so significant and who he is.

jesus is God.

jesus is human.

jesus is God with us.

It's what the text we heard read to us, told us a minute ago.

And if they are all true, those truths, that changes everything.

jesus is God.

When people think of the angels arriving at Christmas, they often think of them speaking to the shepherds or Mary.

But as we heard Jack read for us, an angel came and spoke a very unique and important message to Joseph.

And we heard about it in Matthew 1, 18-23.

And from that passage, we find these truths about who jesus is, that he is God.

He is human.

And he is God with us.

We're told in verse 20, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

He is God.

But the most direct statement came in verse 23, where the angel quotes Isaiah, the prophet from Isaiah 7, 14, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means God with us.

The Jewish religious leaders and scholars had known about this prophecy for centuries, but no one actually thought it meant that God would become a person.

The God of Israel was the God who created the universe, who created everything.

How could he become a person?

But that's what Isaiah was meaning.

That's what Matthew is quoting.

Christ literally means that he is God with us.

Mary is pregnant because God really is the father which makes jesus God.

This Christmas, I want to ask you a question.

Are you ready to believe that?

What would it do to you?

To your life?

To your eternity?

If you believed what the angels said, what Matthew tells us in the New Testament, if you believed that jesus is and was God, the God who spoke the universe into existence, jesus is God, well firstly, if you believed that, it would be an intellectual watershed.

A watershed moment is a dividing point, a point in time from which things will never be the same again.

To believe that jesus was and is God changes everything.

It takes faith to believe that jesus rose from the grave, but arguably, even more faith to believe that he was God.

Christianity requires a step or maybe even a leap of faith.

But I would suggest to you that we all take a leap of faith.

Many years ago, I was teaching scripture in a school to year 10 students, and I was getting to the point where I was talking about the Christian world view, how we understand the world and what jesus has done for us all in his life, death and resurrection.

I was talking about the leap of faith that's required by everybody to believe that, that he could rise from the dead and die for the sin of the world.

I finished, and a guy, I remember his name, he was called Michael, and he said, we've heard your understanding of the meaning of life, can I say what I believe?

I said, sure.

So I moved out of the way, and he walked up and he grabbed the chalk, is a hint of how long ago it was.

And he went on the whiteboard, and he drew a line and a stick figure, and he said, this is life.

And then he drew the stick figure horizontally, and said, and then we die, we live, and then we die.

And then he drew arrows coming out of the stick figure with C.

He said, carbon comes out, and that's life, my friends.

Life, we die, we rot in the ground.

And then he did something very interesting.

He tapped on that, and he said, you can either believe this, or you can take a leap of faith and believe what Jono is telling you.

He did call me Jono because I wasn't Mr.

Shanks, for whatever reason in the scripture class.

And I said, thank you, Michael, and he sat down, and I said, what did Michael say that was wrong?

And everyone had all the classic answers.

He didn't say this about jesus.

And I said, no, no, nothing to do with that.

What Michael said, which was wrong, was he assumed that everyone started where he was when he said, you can either believe this, or take a leap of faith to believe the Christian story.

Michael didn't realize that he'd already taken a leap of faith.

Not everyone starts with what he believed.

We all take a leap of faith.

What evidence do you have for what you believe?

If you think the concept that jesus could be God is so strange, why do you believe what you believe?

We all take a leap of faith at the core of the Christian faith is this idea that jesus is God.

It's called the incarnation.

God become human.

At the core of our faith as Christians is a miracle.

A God-fathered child in a woman's womb.

And if you can believe the incarnation, and it will take faith to believe that God became one of us, it will change everything.

It's an intellectual watershed moment.

because anything's possible if God could become one of us, amen?

Anything's possible.

Anything that is miraculous could happen if God could do that.

Michael, from school scripture, spoke to me afterwards, and he was a little shaken in a way because he understood what I had said, and it was true.

And I think it's a good point when I reflect on that moment so many years ago, realising that jesus is God is not just an intellectual watershed, it's a personal crisis, and it might be for you, if now is your time to investigate thoroughly the claims of jesus.

It's going to change you.

It's a fork in the road.

It's a personal crisis.

It's certainly what happened in the life of jesus.

He evoked mixed reactions to him.

Some wanted to kill him, and others fell down and worshipped him.

Christmas changes everything if jesus is God.

I wonder if for you this is a once or twice a year journey to come from home to a local church.

If that is the case for you, it's so good to have you with us.

But I wonder, is God speaking to you today?

Have you maybe this Christmas, 2023, had the proverbial rug pulled out from under you in life?

Have you had a couple of years maybe where you didn't need God and all that mumbo jumbo about Christianity and spirituality?

But when your relationships with significant people have changed, maybe you've lost people, maybe you've lost a job, maybe you're looking at the world around you wondering, is there, there's a lot of things happening in life that are challenging.

I wonder, in fact, I'm confident that some of us in this room are here because God has specifically drawn you to hang out with some people who believe that jesus is God.

And I want to, I don't encourage you and even challenge you to press into that.

Why has God brought you to church?

To hear what we think is good news, good news for you.

jesus wasn't only God, he's also fully human.

Verse 18 tells us, This is how the birth of jesus, the Messiah, came about.

His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

Mary is the mother of jesus.

jesus was born a baby who fed and pooped and bled and grew, slowly but surely, a human in every way.

He was God, but jesus was completely and fully a human being.

In fact, in the New Testament, in the Book of Hebrews, we read, jesus is fully human in every way.

In every way, Hebrews 2, 17.

I mentioned before that sometimes life throws us curveballs.

When things are going well, it's easy to feel like you're a card-carrying member of the human race, isn't it?

You have a sense of belonging and acceptance and value and purpose.

And you know, hey, it's a grand thing to be a human being.

But then things happen in our lives, and we experience suffering, and we get a phone call from the doctor that is different, with a different answer than we hoped for.

And we can be suddenly plunged into part of our journey of life that is terrifyingly lonely.

And people will come up to you when you're in a hard place in life, and they will give you words of sympathy, but I wonder if you have experienced those words and felt they're a bit flat, because they're not with you in your lonely journey, because suffering so often is incredibly and terrifyingly lonely.

But then, then you meet someone who's got the same diagnosis as you.

Have you had that happen?

You meet someone who has walked through the dark pathway that is ahead of you, and they came out the other end, and they're a survivor, or they've been through in some other way, not health related, what you've been going through, or you're about to walk into, and what do their words mean to you?

They're powerful, aren't they?

because they get it.

They have been where you're about to go.

jesus knows what it is to be human in every way.

Have you been betrayed in your life?

Have you experienced loneliness?

Have you been destitute?

Have you faced death?

So has he.

So has jesus.

Some say you don't understand.

I have prayed to God for things that are really important in my life, and he has ignored me.

excuse me.

He's ignored my prayer.

Well, if you read the Bible, in the Garden of Gethsemane, jesus cried out, Father, may this cup be taken away from me.

And he was turned down.

He knows what it's like, jesus, to experience the powerlessness of humanity.

You might feel like you want to say, but God has abandoned me.

Well, what do you think jesus was saying on the cross when he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Can I suggest to you that jesus, as fully human, means that God has been to all the dark places that we will ever go and beyond.

And what does that mean for us?

You can trust him.

Amen.

You can trust him.

You can rely on him because he knows what you are going through and he has the power to comfort and strengthen and bring you through.

The angel said to Joseph, the Virgin will conceive and give birth to a son.

They will call him Immanuel, which means God with us.

jesus is God.

He is human.

And what that means is jesus is God with us.

It's what his name means, the name given to him by the angel, Immanuel, God with us, the God who spoke the universe into existence.

Apparently, the Bible says wants to be with you.

Immanuel, God with us.

He wants to know you.

He wants to guide you.

He wants to protect you.

I know that takes some faith to believe.

That's what the Bible teaches.

But he can't get close to us because of sin.

He's perfectly holy, and we're not.

And so this creates a real problem.

God wants to be with us, but our sin gets in the way of that happening.

You know, Christmas was not a performance for God to show that he had the power to become human, to sort of teleport down, go, here I am, and then Star Trek style teleport back to safety.

Christmas was the beginning of the great, courageous, unfathomable journey of the God-man, jesus Christ, fixing our problem of sin so that we could be with God.

The angel said, she will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

The destiny of jesus was always to make God with us possible.

The Bible says these wonderful words in 2 Corinthians 5.

It's one of the letters that the Apostle Paul wrote to a church in Corinth in Greece.

Now, all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the Ministry of Reconciliation.

Namely that God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them.

And he has committed to us the word of reconciliation.

Did you hear that?

God was in Christ on that cross when jesus died at Easter.

That's the point we've been making here.

The problem is humanity's problem.

So humanity had to be represented on that cross.

God, man.

But God's the only one who could fix the problem.

So God had to be there to fix it.

God was in Christ, fully human, representing all of us.

jesus was our representative.

And yet God had to be there to make it work, to fix it all.

The God, man, jesus Christ died for our sin so that he could be with us.

When we put our faith in that finished work of what God did on the cross in jesus, we can be forgiven of all of our sin.

The sin problem is taken away, and we can be with God, which is his great desire for us.

Now, will it involve courage for you and I today, if we were to move towards the with God life, to follow jesus Christ as our Lord?

Well, one of the most challenging aspects of the Christmas story that most of us haven't noticed as we've read it, was there for Joseph when he had to surrender his right to name the child.

In a patriarchal culture, like this one in the first century, it was the father's absolute right to name his child.

The angel came and took that away.

The angel said, You are to give him the name jesus.

And by refusing to let the father name his child, the angel was saying, Joseph, if jesus is in your life, you're not his controller.

He, this child who is to be born, is your controller.

He's your Lord.

Christianity is the with God life.

It is to know jesus Christ as our Saviour because he died for our sin.

But it's also to know him as our Lord.

We don't name him.

We don't make him some power that we need.

For when we need it, he names us.

He's the Lord.

Christmas is traditions, family, lights, shopping, presents, holidays, but all of those things pale into insignificance to the one true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is a celebration and an honouring of the birth of Christ, who was God come to earth to become a human being, to die on a cross and rise again so that jesus could be Emmanuel, God with us.

And I would put it to you today that that changes everything.

That changes everything.

We're going to hear a beautiful song that talks about the arrival of God in human form.

And after you have an opportunity to reflect and think about what we've looked at today, I'd love to just grab the microphone and pray a prayer of blessing over you this Christmas morning.

And then we're going to finish our service.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God, we're in awe of what you did in our Lord jesus.

When you arrived in human form and died for our sin on that cross, and conquered death by rising again.

And Lord jesus, we know you are one of us, a resurrected human being in heaven now, interceding for us before the Father.

Lord God, would you come by your spirit today and arrive in a new way?

I pray for those here today who are on a journey of faith.

They're curious.

Some are desperate.

And Lord God, I want to acknowledge that you are the God who knows every story in this room and we're so grateful.

And I pray Lord God that you would bless and you would reveal yourself to those who need you.

Lord, would this Christmas be the one in stories in this room where they found salvation?

Lord God, for those who are lonely and need your friendship and grace and protection and comfort, would you be their shepherd?

Lord, for families that are dislocated that need your peace and your reconciling work, would you do that in the name of jesus?

Lord God, most of all in this church, as we come to another year end, we give you all the praise for the good and gracious things you've done in our lives and what you've done through us as a church.

We want it to be all for the glory of God.

So now, Lord, as we sing again, may you receive all the praise and honor that is due in your name.

We ask this in jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

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