Luke 2:1-20 + Micah 5:2

Discussion Questions

1. Why would Jesus willingly become one of us—taking our sin upon himself and paying the penalty for us? How will we respond? Will we go and tell?
2. How can we bring fresh eyes to the familiar story of Luke 2—making sure that our familiarity with the text doesn’t breed indifference to this greatest good news ever?
3. During the clamor of Christmas, what are some practical ways to pause and dwell on the true meaning of it all?

Transcript

Normally, we study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. Most of you know in the Advent season, we take the time to refocus a little bit on the themes of Advent. We do have some extra copies of the scriptures. We’ll be looking at Luke Chapter 2. I wonder if someone would jump up and grab a pile of these, just see if anybody who needs a copy, raise your hand up real high? If you are preferring to follow along on your device, I think there’s a QR code up on the screen right now with some notes and quotes. And also, we always want to be mindful of the fact that we’ve got folks who are online joining us for worship on Sundays from literally around the world.

This week we heard from folks in Chicago, Illinois. So Chicago, if you’re out there…. Omaha, Nebraska. How about any from Nebraska? Okay, three of you. That’s good. And that’s in the room, so we don’t know who’s out there. Also Jaipur, India, we’re so glad that you folks are joining us and folks in Seoul, South Korea as well. What a wonderful thing to have this technology and be able to spread the message of the Gospel and the hope of Advent and the Christmas season, as we do through our worship services during Advent.

“The church has a recovery program of sorts for lost wonder and trampled anticipation leading toward Christmas. That recovery program is called Advent, which means ‘appearing,’ and it comes from the Latin word adventus.”
Matt Erickson

Matt is a pastor up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I thought that was quite insightful.

This Advent year, we have looked at several different aspects of Advent, but we summarized it saying we want to:

1. Commemorate the birth of Christ.
2. Saturate in and celebrate the life of Christ
3. Anticipate the return of Christ

So we look back, we look forward, and in the middle we are also here, and His presence is with us, wherever the two or three are gathered in His name and we have that quota here this morning as well as with those who are online with us.

In the first week of Advent, we looked at Isaiah 7:14 and Matthew chapter 1, “The Dawn of Redeeming Grace.” We saw that the promise of Isaiah 7 was a Sign, a Son and a Savior. That was echoed and reinforced and shown to have been fulfilled as we read from the first chapter of the first Gospel, all of which was predicted in Isaiah 7 and fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ.

In the second Sunday of Advent, Pastor Tommy led us through his sermon, “The Joy of Every Longing Heart,” focused in on the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace from Isaiah 9 and we also looked at Matthew Chapter 4.

Today, I want to take a look at one of the birth narratives. That’s Luke Chapter 2, so you’re going to want to turn there. I’ll also read from Micah and that’s one of those ones where we’d have to stop for five minutes while everyone went to find Micah. It’s in the place where all the pages are still stuck together in your Bible, but it’s a great book, it’s an awesome book and I’ll put the one verse that I want to read. I’ll put that up on the screen in just a moment. First, let me pray for us as we prepare to read God’s Word.

Grant to each one of us, O Lord, our God, a mind to know You, a heart to seek You, wisdom to find You, conduct that is pleasing to You, faithful perseverance in waiting for You, and a hope of finally embracing You one day. We pray this in the Name of Jesus. Amen and amen.

So here we are, “The Incarnation of the Son of God” is what we’ll call our study today. As I say, I’ll put Micah 5 up on the screen for you right now. Micah 5, “But as for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you One will go forth for Me to be ruler in Israel. His goings forth are from long ago from the days of eternity.”

Bethlehem Ephrathah that’s listed there, it’s like the last name of this particular Bethlehem and it just distinguishes it from another Bethlehem that’s also in Ancient Israel, the one up in the territory of Zebulun. So here, Micah identifies this Bethlehem as the town where King David was born. And when he does that and when we connect Jesus to that verse in Micah 5 you’ll see it really finds its fulfillment in Jesus, the One who is to come.

In Micah, we have the where, the who, the what and the why of the event we call the Incarnation. Where? Bethlehem Ephrathah. Who? One—not just a “force,” but a person. Will do what? Will go forth. And what kind of person and why? Because He’ll become a ruler whose throne will never end, whose origins are in eternity itself. This makes really interesting reading when you start to connect the dots between that kind of a prediction and Jesus that we’ll read about in Luke 2.

So let’s do that. Let’s jump to that story that you know so very well. I’m reading out of the New American Standard Version translation of the Bible. You may have another version. It’s going to be similar to this. Most of you will be so familiar with this story. I would say even if you’re here today and you’re not a believer or you’re watching online, you’re not a believer, you probably know this story, at least from Charlie Brown’s Christmas story. Kim and I watched it again just about a week ago and we’re like, “Oh, that looks so good, man.” And last year, I can’t remember if I said this a couple of weeks ago, but last year I remember we were in New York City and we went to see The Rockettes, which I don’t tell everybody I do that, but man, they laid out the Scripture and this story was told in its entirety, preserved like it is right here, so let’s read it together. Like I said, I think so many of you’ll be quite familiar with this.

“It came about in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus…” He’s the first of the Caesar emperors that will have this Roman Empire. He reigned from 26 or 27 BC all the way around about to 14 AD. “It came about that during those days…” So here, Luke is actually putting it in spacetime history in a region of the world that we can actually know about. “A census was taken of the inhabited Earth. This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.”

Some of you who are nerds and geeks like me about stuff like this will know there’s some confusion over what the date would’ve been for that census and when Quirinius was actually the governor of Syria. You’re welcome to go explore all of that. I’m not sure we’re going to be able to solve it—2,000-year-ago history should have some mystery about it. Any reasonable person should expect that we won’t know everything, but it’s not essential to our salvation, so I want to keep reading.

“All were proceeding to register for the census, everyone to his own city. Joseph also went up from Galilee from the city of Nazareth to Judea to the city of David, which is called,” there it is, “Bethlehem,” and this is Bethlehem Ephrathah, okay? “because he was of the house and family of David in order to register, along with Mary who was engaged to him and was with child.”

Those words don’t usually go together in a sentence back in that day and time, and in some cases, in our own day and time as well. But back in that day and time, to say you were engaged and you were pregnant would not have been something anyone could have fathomed, just wouldn’t have happened. Pregnant came after marriage. And so, this is really important that Luke is saying this why because Luke’s a doctor. We know that from Colossians 4 and we know that Luke, if anybody, would have researched this really, really well and he knew Luke, if anybody knew exactly how young women become pregnant. And so, when he writes this kind of information there, as a doctor who’s researched it well, he’s saying, “This happened this way.”

“And it came about that while they were there, the days were complete for her to give birth, she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped Him in cloths and laid Him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.” Again, you’re welcome to explore this. There’s some of talk and ink spilled trying to decide what was this inn was. There was no room that’s being mentioned. What was that like? In our mind’s eye, we have a picture of this because we’ve seen in various cartoons or various depictions of the Nativity story. We’ve seen it happen. And yet, there’s a lot that we see in our plays that’s not here. I don’t think we’re going to find an animal here and so let’s just keep working.

“She gave birth to her firstborn son, wrapped Him in cloths, laid Him in a manger because there’s no room for them in the inn. And in the same region,” I love this part, “there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terribly frightened. And the angels said to them, ‘Do not be afraid,'” (the most often repeated command in Scripture: “Do not be afraid.”) “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which shall be for all the people. For today in the city of David, there’s been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you. You’ll find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” This is the second time the manger is mentioned, the second of three times. “Suddenly there appeared with the angel, a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest.'” We sing it. (singing) “Glory to God in the highest.”

I wonder if the choir director in heaven, when he’s getting the angels altogether for the rehearsal for this, said “Hey, let’s pull this together. You all get over here. Soprano, tenors, you all stand together. There’s going to be a dude in a few years that’s going to show up on the Earth and he’s going to write this piece of music, but let’s preview it.” And I wonder for that angel who led that choir that night got them to sing something like that. That was just, I mean because “A great multitude of angels,” I don’t know how many angels that is, but that’s more angels than I personally have ever seen. That’s a lot of angels and they sing, “Glory to God in the highest on earth. Peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

“When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another,” and they must have had to pick themselves up off the ground and dust each other off and pinch each other, make sure they weren’t dreaming, “‘Let’s go straight to Bethlehem then and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us,’ and they came in haste and found their way to Mary and Joseph and the baby as He lay in the manger,” (third time). “When they had seen this, they made known this statement which had been told them about this Christ. And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds went back” (they returned) “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen just as had been told them.” That’s just such an amazing story. I really do love this.

Hey, I want to thank everybody. Look around the windows here. I want to thank you for contributing, those of you who give your Nativity scenes to our church and our displays here at The Village Chapel. I don’t know whether the online folks can see these or not, but I hope you’ll take time to walk around after the service and read some of the little cards that are under each one of the Nativity scenes and you’ll be able to get a little bit of the background, a little bit of the story. There were a couple of Nativity scenes that didn’t make the cut here at The Village Chapel and some of you guys bring those kinds of things in and I think the card on this one said, “May the faith be with you,” something like that, I’m not sure.

This one really didn’t make the cut. This is the Irish Nativity. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the gifts of the three wise men they brought were a little cluster of clover, some stew and a little keg of Guinness there. So that’s not appropriate for Jesus or really any baby child at all. So just wanted you to know, and by the way, I have a little Irish in me, so I’m not poking fun at anybody that isn’t myself.

Hey, listen, how many of you ever played a part, just as a little kid or whatever, in a Christmas play? Raise your hand. Have you ever had any part? Okay, anybody? Who was Mary? Anybody ever get to play Mary? Okay, we got one, two. All right, how about Joseph? Any Josephs? All right, how about maybe one of the animals that weren’t mentioned in the story but that seemed to be in the scene? All right, how about the three wise men that also aren’t mentioned in the story there? And we’re going to come to that story, by the way. Oh, angels. We got some angels? Okay, good. We got lots of angels. That’s so beautiful. I was a shepherd boy once. I was a grumpy shepherd though. (And I got to be honest, that picture on the screen is actually not me… Okay, so now you’re grumpy, a congregation of grumpy people!) But I did do this same thing though with the bathrobe, I had a towel I think wrapped around my head, that sort of thing, played that part. We have these things and we have these symbols all in the window and we have all kinds of different symbols that help us retain and remember and reflect upon the story of history, something that actually happened.

Luke, when he opens up the entire book of Luke, he says right there at the beginning, those first four verses, ‘I’m writing history,’ is what he says, ‘and I went to eyewitnesses and I interviewed them and I examined everything really carefully.’ And Luke the Doctor says, ‘A virgin was pregnant and had a child.’ And Luke the Medical Man of Science says, ‘Some angels unzipped a hole in the heavens in the night sky and one of them came through first and started talking.’ And then unbelievably, a whole bunch of them burst through and started singing, and they did it in the Judean Hills and their entire audience was just a bunch of despised blue collar workers, shepherds that in that day and time that’s just the way it was in their society. They weren’t the educated ones. They weren’t the ones who were revered and respected businessmen or any of that sort of thing. These were some really simple folk whom some people would never expect anybody to care about or want to invite into anything. And these angels come and they go, ‘Great news and we’re giving it to you,’ and then they run and they go looking for it.

So what do we learn here? I just want to highlight a few things. This is the Incarnation of the Son of God. I wanted to call it that. By the way, I came up with all these clever titles. I was thinking, when I need something really artful and poetic, The Remarkable Ordinary or I think I called it, my first point, “A Divine Invasion” was going to be the name of the sermon, but we need to be theologically astute enough to be able to say this word, “Incarnation.” Say that with me, Incarnation. It means something. God became one of us. I think because those kinds of terms come and go, Incarnation, justification, sanctification, salvation, I want to take a break from your communication, we wear people out with our long words.

My mom says she watches the sermon every week and she’ll tell me when I use too many three and four syllable words—“It was good and everything, but you use those words, I can’t really hang with those words, I don’t know what they mean.” So mom, if you’re listening, we’re about to find out what Incarnation means, okay? And she is listening, folks, so you all be good.

“Divine Invasion,” let’s call it that for now.  As we’ve said so many times here at TVC, Jesus did not have to come. He didn’t owe it to us. He didn’t look at the world and go, “Oh, man, I think I owed … Those guys down there deserve.” No, no. He didn’t owe it to us and we didn’t deserve it, and yet, He came. He invaded the rebel planet, the dark rebellious world of sinners, including people like me and people like you and people like the shepherds and people like Mary and Joseph needed a Savior too, including the religious leaders of Jesus’ time desperately needing a Savior even though they were religious as they could be followed all the rituals. Some of them had the Old Testament memorized and you can have your head full of data and your heart be completely devoid of any connection with God. I know this because I’ve stuffed my head before with stuff and my heart has been far from Him in some of those seasons and is important for us to know. Jesus took the initiative. Jesus came for us when we weren’t even asking Him to.

Some of you know that better than others in the room. When you look back on your moment of conversion, if there was a moment or the arc and curve of a season where the Lord was drawing you to Himself, calling your name and you don’t know exactly when it was, but you just know that now you believe the Gospel to be true, that Christ came, that Christ died for your sins and that your believing and trusting and hoping in Jesus makes a difference in your eternal destiny. And you don’t know when that happened. You might be sitting here, you might not know that, but it is, make no mistake, a divine invasion. Jesus and the Trinitarian God took the initiative and came for us when we weren’t even looking for them. I think it’s so important for us to be aware of that, the Creator, the Ruler of the universe, the One to whom every single soul will give an answer one day.

He’s the one that rolled up his sleeves and came to Earth with the intent of saving those who would repent and believe. I ask you, is that you? I hope it is. If it’s not, why not? Please come to Him. Please turn to Him. I beg you. He took the punishment for your sin, for my sin. And I know the Christmastime we’re supposed to talk about the sweet little baby Jesus. We’ve got songs I think that’s saying things like, “No crying He makes.” I got news for you. I’m pretty sure He made a lot of crying. I’m sure his diapers had to be changed. I know you don’t want to think about that, but I’m just telling you, this God, Almighty Creator, Sustainer of the universe, Ruler of the universe became one of us. He condescended to become one of us, a real one of us, so that He could take our place on the cross and lay down His life for us. And some of us don’t, I don’t know, we just don’t like to think about that much, but

“Despite our efforts to keep Him out, God intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities, a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked no entrance and left through a door marked no exit.”
Peter Larson

Yeah, virgins don’t have babies, tombs don’t have their stones rolled away, and yet, Jesus enters the world and leaves the world in ways that we would all think were impossible. C.S. Lewis calls it the central miracle, and he says,

“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this… There is no question in Christianity of arbitrary interferences just scattered about. It relates not a series of disconnected raids on Nature but the various steps of a strategically coherent invasion, an invasion which intends complete conquest and ‘occupation.’”
C.S. Lewis, Miracles

He is coming for you if He hasn’t already got you. Fair warning. The fact that you’re even here today, the fact that you’re even listening online, the hound of heaven is seeking you. He’s after you and He was seeking me before I turned to Him and believed in Him. And I didn’t realize that until well after I had turned to Him and believed in Him. But it blows my mind all the more that He was actually after me before I turned to Him. And I want you to know, He is after you if you don’t know Him today. He’s coming for you one way or the other. The Incarnation of the Son of God was a divine invasion and it’s a glorious wonder. And we see that here in this passage, don’t we? It’s wonderful, it’s beautiful, it’s mysterious, lots of questions when you read through that passage, right?

It’s powerful. You bet. The shepherds, they were trembling in fear. And then the angel, of course, the first thing it says is, ‘You don’t have to be afraid. We’re not here just to scare you. We’ve got good news for you, great news for you.’ Notice the various categories in which the Glorious Wonder manifests itself. It’s glorious because it’s a historical event. First of all, Augustus Caesar, he calls for the census, which is to assess potential taxes and to conscript some males to come and join the army at the right age, so we got to figure all that stuff out as we go around the whole Roman Empire. And so that’s happening. It’s mandatory. They’ve all got to be a part of it.

There’s a real man named Joseph who leaves the real region Galilee, and the city of Nazareth, that’s a real city. Joseph heads to his hometown in Judea, Bethlehem, a real city again. Connected to the ancient promise of the Messiah, as I said earlier. He leaves betrothed, but as far as we know and we don’t really know when they actually had their ceremony, “Do you take Joseph for your… Do you take Mary?” Probably that happened somewhere in Bethlehem, I don’t know. And they’re probably in Bethlehem for a little while, but Jesus grows up in Nazareth. And how long did they stay here? Surely, I’m not really sure how long there, but my point is this, it’s a historical event. It’s not just a fairytale with fake names of fake places in a fake timeframe. No, this is history.

It’s also a glorious wonder because it’s of the virgin birth and that medical reality that Dr. Luke points out right here and embraces. And if the Infinite God could become one of us, we should expect it to be quite unusual. So there’s the glorious wonder of that medical aspect of it as well. Then the social aspect of it I think is also a glorious wonder. Shepherds, that’s who the angels sing to that night—shepherds, lowly shepherds. Not to mention, of course, the Incarnation. Here’s God. Here’s the Trinity up in heaven conversing, ‘Let’s see, Jesus, Son of God, You’re going to go down there. Let’s do this. Let’s put you in the royal line of David. Okay, check. A box is check. Why don’t we have You be born in a palace? No, no. In a little manger and a little … You’re going to be laying in this cattle trough,’ and that’s actually because it’s mentioned three times in this passage, I think that’s the only really special, unique thing that the shepherds could say was a sign. Because the fact that somebody had a baby wasn’t a sign, lots of people having babies. The fact that somebody would wrap a baby in swaddling clothes, that’s not really a sign of anything special, but a baby lying in a cattle trough, that’s probably relatively, even back then, there’s not that many I would think probably that did that. And so they are told to go there. And this is where Jesus comes in a peasant couple, in an insignificant little town, in an insignificant country that’s a pass-through nation. Empires have run over top of it, left and right at that time, some of the oppressive Roman government. There’s nothing fun happening there politically or economically if you’re a Jew, and they’re barely allowed to practice their own religion. That’s even governed in a lot of ways.

The social and religious context for this is actually to me a glorious wonder, that God would choose there and then to those people to manifest himself. And the first heralds of the greatest good news, I think in the entire Bible—well, I’ll go with the Old Testament prophets, first (the Lord is speaking through them) and then I’ll go with the angels here and then the shepherds because they run to Bethlehem to see if it’s true. Did you notice the urgency, how eager they were, ‘Let’s go see. Let’s go check this out!’? And then they tell everybody and everybody is literally… Their minds are blown.

Verse 17 says, “Everyone marveled,” everyone who saw it were just marveling at the whole thing. “They wondered about it.” Verse 18, “All the things that were told them,” this is just brilliant, I love the way, and if you look at the social context for all of this, I love the way one person articulated it:

“In a culture that uses this season to get children to dream about how their lives would be made better by possessing a certain material thing, where Christmas has been reduced to a shopper’s nightmare and a retailer’s dream, it is vital to draw the wonder of our children away from the next great toy and toward the wonder of the coming of our great Lord and Savior, Jesus.”
Paul Tripp, Come Let Us Adore Him.

I highly recommend that one to you!

How many of you in the room love to shop? It’s really okay if you do. I’m not going to shame anybody. Raise your hand if that’s you. Okay, it’s not very many. I don’t feel like you’re being honest. How many of you hate to shop? Raise your hand. See, haters are bold and I’m one. I’m one. I feel it should be mandatory in every retail outlet at least in the West, I think there should be a husband’s chair. They got a few. And Kim and I were just up visiting my mom in D.C. We took a little bit of time and we’re walking around a little bit and we were in one particular store, a little fussy for me, but they had a chair for me. And I’m like, “Okay, we can shop here all you want.”

But man, the thing is it may be a retailer’s dream, but it is indeed a shopper’s nightmare at Christmastime, isn’t it? The local news reports of all the people that broke out into fistfights and all that sort of thing because that one little PlayStation or whatever, it was the last one and parents were back and forth and fighting over the whole thing and all that. It’s just really amazing to see that. I mean, part of me wants to say, “Hey, World, you can have December 25. Let’s find another date, so we can get back to the Incarnation and focus on that a little more.”

I don’t have the power to make that happen, but I can suggest you as your pastor, take the time, make the time in your household, in your own heart and mind, make the time to dwell on, to allow the Lord to show you how wonderful, how marvelous it is that He became one of us and that He did that for you. I hope you’ll do that. I hope the Incarnation won’t be missed by any of us. As Dorothy Sayers said,

“The Incarnation may be devastating or rubbish, but if we call it dull, what in heaven’s name is worthy to be called exciting?”
Dorothy Sayer

I agree. This is the God who made all of the galaxies, the Milky Way Galaxy. You can look this up if you want. There are billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy, and I looked it up, the James Webb Telescope and all those sites you can go visit, there are billions of galaxies in the known observable universe and the one who designed and made them all became like us, a human being to save us.

And that’s how much He loved you. Think of yourself, if you decided, “You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to go down to the beach and I’m going to become a single grain of sand,” and it’s not even … I mean what God did is much bigger than this, okay? Immeasurably bigger than this, but if I did, if you did, if we decided to become a grain of sand, we’re changing everything really about ourselves, aren’t we? And then we’re becoming this little teeny speck of sand. It’s just mind blowing to think of the Infinite God becoming one of us. Why would He do that? That’s a glorious wonder. And why did He do it the way He did it?

I think He wants you and I to know, no matter where we come from, whether we are the wise men that have eventually come from afar who were probably wealthy and probably well-educated or whether we’re the shepherds who are on the hillside, they’re barely making enough money to make ends meet and barely knowing where their next meal’s coming from and hardly just simple people or whether you’re Joseph and Mary living in a social scandal of being a pregnant virgin. No matter where you’re at in life, He came for you, He came for me and I think that should be a glorious wonder to all of us.

The last thing I want to say is it’s The Greatest Good News Ever. Why is this important? What is this greatest good news ever? I don’t know if you notice the intended scope of the angel song. Look at verse 10 and the angel said, “Do not be afraid. Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy, which shall be,” say it for me, “for all.” I love the word “all “in the Bible. It’s one of my favorite words. It’s a great powerful three-letter word, “all.” It’s for all people—all. And the shepherds are sitting there going, ‘All? You mean all? You mean me?’ because they didn’t think of themselves as the people that would receive that kind of news or that kind of a gift. “Good news of great joy, which shall be for all people.” All.

I don’t care where you’re from, what you’ve been doing, how far you’ve drifted from the Lord, how mad you might be right in this moment at God. You’re included in all. Somebody say amen. I’m included in all; that’s mind blowing. And when we all get home on that first day, you’re all. We’re going to be going around saying that, “Look at you. You’re part of all.” And that good news is for you, that good news is for me as well, so I don’t know where you’re coming from or where you’ve been, but this is the greatest good news of all time because it’s for all.

“The Gospel narratives are telling you not what you should do, but what God has done. The birth of the Son of God into the world is a Gospel, good news, an announcement. You don’t save yourself. God has come to save you. Christmas shows us that Christianity is not good advice. It is good news.”
Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas

See, a lot of religions and even some quarters of the Christian church are just handing out good advice, “Follow these rules. Maybe you can please God and balance out the moral scales and then you will finally earn your way into heaven.” And grace is opposed to earning. It’s not opposed to effort, but it is opposed to earning. We don’t earn anything. We have to bow the knee, lift up the empty hands of faith and receive as a gift that which we cannot achieve on our own. And that humbles us. That means pride goes. That means there’s no boasting for any of us to do at all.

Christianity, not good advice, it’s good news. In the Incarnation of Jesus, the Son of God, He entered human existence, so that He could put on offer to every human soul—rich, poor, doesn’t matter what color your skin is, doesn’t matter where you’re at right now, how far you have traveled down the dark road of sinful activity, it doesn’t matter. This good news is for you right now. If you hear it and you recognize it as good news, simply turn to Him right now. There’s no reason you can’t. His arms are open wide. His are not wagging fingers. His are open arms for you and for me.

The implications of God coming to dwell among us are transforming. It means that there are no insignificant or pointless lives. It means that the events and the choices of an average day can have eternal weight. Just going to the post office, just going to the grocery store, just coming to church can have eternal weight. Some of us are so bored with life. We were talking about this the other day. We’re so bored in our affluence in the West. We have so much of everything. So now what we have to do is let’s figure out a way to create our own reality. If we can create some of our own reality, maybe then we won’t be bored.

See that? And I’m not opposed to you having the latest whatever, all that fun stuff. I’m not talking about that. I’m simply saying one of the reasons we’re chronically dissatisfied and bored is because we’re looking to the wrong stuff and overlooking the right stuff. The right stuff is right in front of us. You look up in the heavens at the night sky and you see some of those … Just all you can see is just a little bit of those billions and billions of stars in the Milky Way, but you can see some of them and they point to Someone and they generate inside of you a bit of awe, a bit of wonder. And to some of you whose hearts minds are open a little bit more, perhaps a numinous experience where you hear God calling you, calling your name, drawing you to Himself.

How will you respond to Him? He has come for us. Jesus has come in a divine invasion to bring the glorious wonder of the greatest good news ever to us. And like the shepherds then, you can come and see. You can run there and see, but then you’re going to be going and telling as well. And we want to continue to do that in the advent season.

So, as you think about all of this and as the Lord leads you, you may want to say something to someone else about Jesus, about the Gospel, about the Incarnation. What if you at the watercooler, you said, “How many of you know what an incarnation means?” or whatever? If you start a conversation about some of that or you could say, “Hey, our preacher was talking about incarnation. And it was interesting because it was something I hadn’t imagined how big God is and how little he had to become and why He did that.”

And sometimes you could get people drawn into some of those curious aspects of it all and begin to share.

“The nub of the matter is that we have been chosen to be the bearers of good news for the whole world and the question is simply whether we are faithful in communicating it.”
Lesslie Newbigin, Evangelism in the City

I want to be like the shepherds. Look at verse 19. “Mary treasured all this stuff, pondering this in her heart.” I love that about her. Verse 18, the shepherds told a bunch of people and they wondered about it, but 20 is the clincher, right, on this one? The shepherds went back. They returned. Where’d they return to? Work. They went back to work. What’d they do for a living? Well, did they start a 501(c)(3)? No. Nonprofit? No. No, they went back to tending sheep. They went back to their sheep.

And I can’t imagine the sheep, I love this, but all along the way, they’re telling their other colleagues in the shepherding business about what had happened to them. They’re glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen just as had been told to them. They are transformed. Their lives become a living testimony for the Gospel, glorifying and praising God even as they’re going to work. The Gospel transforms even the most mundane of tasks.

So, when I was thinking about this past, I was thinking, “Well, how should we respond? How did the shepherds respond?” They were filled with wonder. They worshiped. They came to the manger. They came to the Nativity scene as we call it and worshiped. And then they went back worshiping. They became worshipers. That’s what they were now they are living worshipers and we are as well.

I wonder how many times some of us have thought that God has forgotten us. Some of us have thought our work is meaningless. Some of us have hoped for something else and fixated on something else so much that we’re now mad at God because He hasn’t made something happen the way we want it to or perhaps we’re confused about something. And I wonder how much our lives would be transformed and changed if we saw the value, the meaning and the purpose of our lives, not in what we do, not in what we know, not in some aspect of money, sexuality or power, earthly power, but we actually saw our identity wrapped up in the personal work of Jesus and the Gospel and began to actually think of, “Well, my full-time job, my very being at the core of who I am is I am first and foremost a worshiper of King Jesus who came on a rescue mission to this planet and He has saved me. And now, no matter what I do for a living, no matter where I go, no matter how I spend this afternoon, I’m going to be looking with a keen eye for an opportunity to give praise and glory to my Lord and to my Savior.”

Are you ready for wonder? Are you ready for worship? Are you ready for witness? And some of you go, “Well, I hear the story. I know you’re excited about it, Pastor Jim. That’s good. You get paid to be excited like that.” And that’s true, but after 22 years of doing this, I can’t fake it. It’s not worth faking. And what’s really true for me is that, to be on the team that we have, to be working together and to be sharing the treasures of this, the spiritual riches of this story, and to know that some of you come in here hungry like a sponge to soak some of the truth up and to see Jesus and to know Him and to be changed and transformed by the Gospel, that’s what makes it worth it. That’s what makes it a wonder. The Lord is moving.

If you go in search of wonder, just for wonder’s sake, you’re probably not going to find it. It’d be like a greased watermelon in a swimming pool. You’re not going to be able to grab a hold of it. If you turn to Him, wonder comes as sort of a byproduct of turning to Him. He’s the one that can blow your mind. Not me, not any new device, not any new toy. He’s the one that can fill your heart anew with wonder. Let’s pray to Him. 

Lord, thank You for this passage. I pray that You write it in our hearts. Draw us to Yourself, dear Lord. I’d love to hear angels sing. I’d love to see the night sky ripped open and all of that, but more than all of that, I would see Jesus. I would want to know Jesus. I want to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus. I want to know the presence of Jesus in my life. His presence will mean joy and wonder and hope and life to me. So Lord, come and fill your people anew. I pray in Jesus’ name and for his sake. Amen and amen.