Bridge Church Vancouver

Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus

• The most extraordinary event in all of human history

We are not just celebrating the birth of a good man, or even a prophet

We are celebrating the INCARNATION – Where GOD BECAME FLESH IN JESUS

    “Emanuel”  =  God with us

Matt 1:15

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"d—which means, "God with us."

Because Jesus was born as a baby

• In Jesus, I see God reveal himself in a way I can accept and understand – I understand a baby

God breaks in and integrates into humanity in a way I understand – he is not some mystery man who comes out of no where – he is not some guy who walks into an epiphany, wakes up under a tree, or has some wild dream

God breaks into humanity in the most normal and extraordinary way to reveal himself – in a baby.

God reveals himself – I see God in the face of Christ

2 Cor 4:6

6 For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"a made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

What is God like?  - for a Christian, God is revealed in Jesus Christ – In Christ we have the full image of God

Origen compared the incarnation to a small statue – a scaled down version of the real thing – it allows us to discern it’s features more clearly. 

In the incarnation God becomes tangible – like a light that comes on

Imagine you are in a dark room – you are enclosed in this room and you have grown accumstomed to the darkenss and living and getting around in your dark room.  The darkness no longer scares you. 

Someone knocks a hole in the wall and puts in a glass window – Jesus becomes a window into God.  The window lets the light in and the whole room is illuminated.  You are also able to see outside the room for the first time, a world that has always been there but we could never see.  Jesus is the window into God – He is the light of God to illuminate our life – through Jesus we see God – God is revealed because God broke a hole into humanity and placed Jesus as a permanent window between our dark existence and God’s light.

Perhaps the window is not as large as you like – but it is the window we have

Perhaps it is not where you would like it to fit the decorating scheme of your dark room and so we have to adjust our life to the window. 

Perhaps it is less clear than we would like (1 Cor 13:12)

But God has made available a new and real way for us to know Him. 

We know what it is like to be in a dark room and have the curtains pulled back – light streams in and floods the room; we see a beautiful sunrise before us perhaps that is what you feel when you read .

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understooda it.

• In Jesus, I know that God knows what it is to be me

God humbles himself to make himself known to us.  In Jesus God not only lays aside his abilities to take on human flesh but God reduces himself into 6lbs of flesh – a baby.  

Christianity does not teach that man must climb some ladder into heaven in order to find God and to be with him, but Christianity teaches that God comes down that ladder inorder to meet us and take us back with him.  We don’t have to become like God before we can encounter him, because God became like us first. 

Jesus came as a baby to show he became like us and meets us right wherever we are – no preconditions

Matt 1:15

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"d—which means, "God with us."

• God who is with us is also For us...

Rom 8:31

If God is for us, who can be against us?

The birth of God’s Son as a baby demonstrates and proclaims that God is on our side.  He has committed himself to the cause of the salvation of a sinful mankind. 

God is not a distant ruler – aloof from the affairs of creation – but passionately concerned to the extent that he  Takes the initiative to break into my world

• Takes on the limitations of humanity

God has entered into our human situation – he came as a baby, grew into a man and lived among us as one of us.

God knows what it is to be his human creation – an astonishing and comforting thought.  We are not talking about God becoming “LIKE” man, as if he were putting on some kind of disguise that he could pass himself of as a man – we are talking about the God who created the world entering into that world AS man and ON MANS BEHALF in order to redeem him. 

God did not send a messenger or a representative to help the poor creatures that we are – but he involved himself directly. 

God is not like a CEO  who issues orders to his employees from some luxurious penthouse office in the sky but he comes down and works and lives with us to help us succeed. 

He knows first hand what it is to be frail, mortal, afraid  and human, to suffer and to die.  We may not be able to explain suffering but we can say that God took it upon himself .  Jesus became the man of suffering. 

Isa 53:3   He was despised and rejected by men,  a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

• God suffers

The suffering and pain of the world simply will not go away, none of us will avoid it and we have every right to dismiss anyone who would try to tell us that its all going to be good. 

It is right that we work towards the alleviation of misery and suffering, recognizing that the vision of it’s total elimination is utopian.   Through history, the world has struggled to deal with suffering –  There have been four approaches to it

1. Suffering is real and it will not go away – but death comes in the end and in death there is an end to suffering  and eventually we find peace
2. Suffering is an illusion – it is really not there but imagined
3. Suffering is real but we can rise above it and recognize that it is to be conquered. 
4. 4.    The Christian answer – God suffered in Christ

God knows what it is to suffer and we have a sympathetic high priest (Heb 4:15) – He is with us in our suffering – we are not alone

He helps us bear our suffering and our suffering has a purpose

Our life is not about us alone – and there is a great purpose in suffering   

2 Cor 1:3-4

3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.

We can relate to someone who has shared our problem – who has already been through what we are going through and has triumphed over it. 

One way of deaing with suffering is through empathy- you can emphathize with another persons problem or fears even if you have not experienced it yourself.

But the incarnation speaks of Gods Sympathizing with our suffering  - not empathizing  - as if he had not experienced it first hand.  God sympathizes in the sense of he is suffering along side with us and we can turn to God who knows and understands. 

There is a great promise:

Heb 4:15-16

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Because Jesus was born as a baby – we have one

• In Jesus, God leads me into a relationship with Himself

He does not reveal ABOUT  himself  -  but REVEALS  himself in Jesus

      A Revelation that is personal, not hypothetical or philosophical – He comes as a baby. 

Babies are very relational.  Babies can be philosophical before you have one but after that they are very personal and relational

Jesus is not a set of propositions or list of statements that we are required to accept or reject; but a person.

In Jesus we can KNOW God, not just know ABOUT God

God does not encounter us as an idea or philosophy but as a person

      All other religions – Islam, Buddism, Siekism, New Age, even Judiaism says we can know about God through the teachings and propositions of a book or teacher or prophet

Jesus was not a prophet – someone who tells others about what God wants them to know

Christianity says you can know God because God became human and took on flesh.

You can know a president, or royalty or celebrity but that doesn’t mean you know them.  For someone to be known means they want to be known, there is a willingness to be known on their part. 

This last week we saw a poignant example in the life of Tiger Woods – who did not want the world to know aspects of his life. 

God goes further, he takes the initiative in his approach with us in disclosing himself to us – all that he wants us to know.  God reveals his love for us and his desire to enter into a self-disclosing relationship.

• Gives me one to follow
• At Christmas when we celebrate Jesus birth – we have the opportunity to look into the face of Jesus and realize we are peering into the heart of God – It leads me to one of two responses –
• He knew it placed us in a delimina – a choice

He longs for us to be in a relationship with him – he has done everything there was to do, everything that could be done

And he even makes it possible for everyone in all creation to look into his heart =

Rom 1:19-20

since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent,c nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

Our choices are

1.   11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him =

We say “I DO NOT WELCOME YOU BABY JESUS – I DO NOT NEED YOU

OR

2.   12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God

           We say “YES, COME IN LORD JESUS”