The Mystery of Christmas

In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you are highly favored. The Lord is with you." But Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end.

Let's thank the Romberger family for reading this morning's Advent scripture, lighting our candle. Thank you, Mike, Jane, Caleb. Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you. My name is Mark, one of the pastors here, and we are so glad that you joined us. We're entering the second week of Advent, and if Advent is somewhat new to you, the word simply means "arrival," as in the arrival of someone or something significant, kind of along these lines.

Some of you know I live in a little village called Corolitos, and two weeks ago, we had someone arrive of note. We were visited by none other than Clint Eastwood. Yeah. He came to the Corolitos market and bought a sandwich and rode in on a horse even. It was pretty... No, that didn't really happen. But he was there. If you... Okay, so we don't have a whole lot to celebrate in Corolitos. Not a lot happens there. That's part of what we like about it. But if you were to go there, and you probably should because they have such great bacon and sausage and the like, you'll notice a picture of Clint Eastwood and my friend Jose, who's one of the butchers there, right there on the meat case, and so we're just kind of basking in that right now. That's what we do.

But of course, of infinitely greater significance is the advent of Jesus Christ coming into the world in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. And that's what we are celebrating here. And if you'd like to be a part of this Advent season and would like to participate actively in that, you can go to our website, TLC.org, and if you click on the banner that looks like what you see on the screen right now, you'll be able to download a daily devotional. It's free. And then also, if you'd like to sign up for our daily video devotions, and you haven't already, they get sent right to your smartphone. There's instructions in today's message notes telling you how to go about doing that.

So join us for this Advent time as we not only look forward to the birth of Jesus Christ, but we are reminded of the promise that He will come again. Last weekend, Val kicked off this Advent series with what I thought was a powerful message. She shared about, yeah, we should appreciate Valerie. And the stories she shared from the trip to Jordan were just amazing. We weren't here, so I watched it this week on our website, but we were actually up in Bend, Oregon. We spent Thanksgiving and into the weekend with my best friend's widow and her two boys, Sharon and Joseph and Jacob. And it's been a priority since Phil died a little over, well, about a year and a half ago to spend time with his family as we have opportunity. We had just such a great, great time.

We got to go play in the snow. There's pictures of us playing. This is right at Mount Bachelor, which is this massive ski resort that we're going to open the day after Thanksgiving. And what we discovered is that you can actually go there pre-season and slide down their hills so long as they don't know that you're there. So that was a, those are good times. And then we also, for the second year in a row, we got our Christmas tree while we were up there. And you might be thinking, well, why? It's a little over 10 hour trip from here to Bend and back. And that's if all goes well. Why would I strap a tree on the top of our car and drive all the way down here with it? Well, here's why. Because up there, when you want to get a Christmas tree, you go to any store, you buy a permit for $5 and then you just go out in the forest and cut a tree down. It's just awesome. There's no Christmas tree farm or anything like that.

Yeah, it is cool. In fact, I have this idea next year if we do this, I'm going to bring a U-Haul truck and there'll be a little order form out at the info desk. I'll be sure to give you that insider Twin Lakes deal. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Obviously, we do not go up there for the Christmas trees. We go up there because we love Phil's family. And whether you have to travel a little way or a long way, there's nothing like being with people you love in person. Despite all the ways that we have to connect and communicate in our modern world, nothing says I love you quite the same way as being there.

Some of you probably did the same thing. You got on a plane or you got on a long road trip. You kind of suffered through all the hassles of travel because there is some suffering involved. This trip reminded me years ago on a similar trip about eight hours into it, our son Luke, who was four years old at the time, he just kind of had enough. And he calls out from his car seat behind us. He says, Mommy, Daddy, I've got bottom titus. Some of you know what that's like after a long trip. But again, you do what you need to do in order to show up. And that's really the big idea for today's message is that love draws near. Love is willing to travel.

In fact, you might want to write that down at the top of your message notes today. Love travels. Because that idea is really helps us. It's a key to understanding and appreciating on a deeper level the mystery of Christmas. Now the mystery of Christmas is not something that we'll ever fully unlock in our life here on earth. But we can enter into that mystery in a deeper and more profound way. And when we do, it fills us with awe and joy and wonder. And that's my prayer for every single one of us here today, whether you're in this room or over in venue watching online, public access TV. That is my prayer.

And so with that in mind, I'm going to ask you to bow with me in prayer and ask the Lord to do his thing in our lives today. I thank you for the promise that your word does not return to you in vain or void, but that, Lord, it has the capacity, Lord, to open our minds and our hearts in new and deeper and more significant ways. And so, Lord, that's my prayer this morning. I pray that we would have a greater sense of who you are in your majesty and your glory and that we would also then have a greater appreciation for what it means that your son would be born in the flesh. We thank you, Lord, in anticipation of what you have for us today. And I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

When Matthew and Luke write their Christmas narratives, the stories that we often hear at Advent and stuff like that in their gospels, you could say that they wrote those stories from the ground up. In other words, they wrote them from the perspective of ordinary human beings, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, the wise men, even crazy King Herod. And while the angels do make an appearance and they certainly have a role, the overall perspective is from ground level, ordinary human beings. The characters that fill our nativity scenes and the characters that we so often think of when it comes to Christmas.

But John writes another Christmas story and it's often overlooked because it doesn't have any of those characters, except for one, Jesus, of course. And what John does is John wants to pull our perspective from here on earth, from ground level, he wants to pull our perspective as high and even higher than you can imagine. Yesterday when I arrived here at church, there was a guy out in the parking lot, he was flying a drone. He had his little controller and had a big monitor on it and he could see what the drone could see. But I looked up, I'm like, where is it? And so then I asked him, I said, do you know where your drone is? He goes, no. I can see what it sees, but I have no idea where it is. And I don't know if it ever came down. I might end up on the hood of your car or something like that.

But imagine that drone, if it just kept going and going and going, which it appeared to be doing, goes out into the farthest, deepest space beyond, even beyond the boundaries of space and time. That's how far John is going to take us. He's going to take us all the way to the highest heaven where we get this window into God's own being. And as he pens these words, he writes some of the most mind boggling words you're ever going to find in all of scripture. And so I want you to buckle your seatbelt and you've got to put on your thinking cap and take a deep breath because we're about to dive into the deep end of the pool. Are you ready? Are you ready balcony? All right. Here we go.

John one, starting at verse one. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God. And the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Now some of you knew that that was coming because you've read John's gospel before. Others of you, this is new to you and you're going, well, first of all, Mark, I didn't even really know what that means. And secondly, what in the world does that have to do with Christmas? Well, it turns out a whole lot because what John is doing here is he's setting the stage. He's giving us a sense of who God is and how far God would travel to become one of us. And so it's this majestic, epic view.

Now you don't have to be a Bible scholar to notice that the word in this passage is highly significant. Mentioned three times just in the first verse alone. And so we have to ask ourselves who or what is the word? John uses the word logos. That's the Greek word. And word in English is a good, that's probably the most appropriate word to translate that with, logos to word in English. But there's so much more nuance to it. It not only means word, but it means speech. It means message. It means reason and so much more. And so if you look to the Old Testament, in the Old Testament, you could summarize the word or the logos as referring to God's word in action. I want you to write that down. God's word in action. Because when God speaks, things happen.

You look at the very first chapter of the Bible in Genesis 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And how did he do that? He spoke, let there be light and boom, there's light. And so on and so forth because his word is active. In fact, it's no accident that John begins his gospel with those same three words you find at the very beginning of Genesis, in the beginning. He's going to make a connection here for us, helping us understand the significance of the word that he goes on to talk about. Perhaps he even had Psalm 33 six in mind that says, "By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made." So there it is. The word is active in creation, which John is going to reiterate right here in verse three. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing has been made.

Well, the word is not only active in terms of creation, but it's also active in terms of revelation. And in the Old Testament, you'll often see in places, I gave you a couple examples like Jeremiah 19 nine, or excuse me, first King 19 nine and Jeremiah 1 four elsewhere, Hosea one, where it says, "The word of the Lord came to so and so." You ever seen that before? The word of the Lord came to so and so. The word is like God's agent, communicating what God wants those people to know. So there's, again, there's this active nature of the word. In fact, it takes on even a personal nature when you get to the book of Proverbs in chapter eight, and into chapter nine in particular, the wisdom of God's word, it talks like a person and says, "I call out to all humankind, come hear what I have to teach and instruct you." And later in chapter eight, wisdom personified says, "I was there at the creation, I like a master builder." And so now we have this larger concept of word being active, revealing, personal.

Well that's the Jewish tradition in the scriptures, and so all that's packed into John's mind and gives us clues as to why he would start his gospel the way he does. But then John's also writing this in the context of a Greco-Roman world where Greek philosophy in particular has had huge influence. And Greeks had an idea of what the logos was as well. Their philosophers would basically describe it as cosmic reason in nature. Now that's kind of a technical term, but when the Greek philosophers, when they looked at the physical world, they thought there has to be some kind of reason behind it, some kind of intelligence, something that gives it order and shape and form. Not a personal God per se, but something behind it and they strained to understand what that might be and they called it the logos. You could say it was like the soul of the universe to their way of thinking, and it was a guy named Heraclitus, about 500 years of Jesus, that used the word logos to describe this cosmic reason.

Even the Stoic philosophers, you've heard of stoicism, they really took this logos idea and ran with it. In fact, you could really boil down stoicism to the desire to live your life in tune with the logos of the universe. But these ideas, they have trickled down right into our very own day. I mean, you've heard people say something about, "Well, the universe must be against me," or, "The universe is with me," or, "Hey, you just got to put it out to the universe," right? And this is even the so-called law of attraction that New Age writers will talk about where if you send out some sort of intention, some desire to the universe, the universe will conspire to grant your wish or your desire so that these ideas are still with us, albeit in a more self-centered way, which shouldn't surprise us.

The Greeks wanted to conform to the universe and now we want the universe to conform to us. No surprise there. You'll even see this, perhaps the most common example that you would see of this. It's not a perfect one, but how about in the movie Star Wars, the idea of the what? The force, right? And in the very first movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi, he meets Luke and he says this. He says, "The force is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the universe together." That last phrase, "binds the universe together," man, that's not coming from George Lucas. That's coming from Greek philosophy. And so this is all part of the culture that John is in.

In fact, by John's time in the first century, many Greeks had given up on the fact or the idea that there was even a coherent universe, that there was even a logos. The whole movement of hedonism grows up on the idea that they've abandoned that, that there is no meaning. So what? You might as well just maximize pleasure, minimize pain. You know, eat, drink, live a happy life. And again, that idea surrounds us to this day. So now John, with one eye on his Old Testament tradition as a Jewish man and as a believer in Jesus Christ and knowing the significance of the logos in scripture, but seeing the interest in it, in his culture around him, these Greeks straining to see what is behind the universe, he employs this word to give us a glimpse into, again, who Jesus is.

And the theme of John 1, and in fact, the rest of his gospel, is this, that the word is the complete revelation of God. Meaning that God wants to reveal, he reveals through Jesus Christ. In other words, the logos is not a principle. The logos is a person. The logos is a person. And this is why Jesus in chapter 14 can say, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father." Now he's not saying, "I'm the Father." He's saying, "I perfectly reveal the Father because that's what the Son does." Now if your brain is kind of starting to hurt right now, it's because we're touching on the mystery of the Trinity. That there is one God, scripture affirms. But the same scriptures affirm that that God exists in three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. John wants to lay the groundwork by having us focus on this.

And our brains kind of struggle, and it shouldn't surprise us that God is beyond human comprehension. So I'm aware that we might need to kind of come up for air here and see just how relevant this is to not only just everyday life, but especially this time of year. But just to sum up what we've seen in just these first three verses, in fact, just really the first verse, we learn this, that the Word was preexistent with God. There never was a time when the Word was not. So you can go back as far as you want in your imagination before anything existed and the Word already was, because the Word is eternal, which means that the Word was co-existent with God. The Word was with God. And again, if this sounds like this kind of technical theology, John is laying the foundation for the stunning words that come next, that the Word was co-equal with God.

In other words, the Word was God. Everything that makes God God, the Word possesses. And this is so huge because John leaves no room for us to imagine that at Christmas 2,000 years ago, that some religious guru was born, or some great teacher or prophet, he leaves no room for that. He leaves no room for even the idea that, well, Jesus was divine, but kind of in a small G-God way, but there's the big G-God and he's kind of his underling. Now, John just rules that all out. But under the inspiration of the Spirit, he affirms the full deity of Jesus Christ. And then he does this. After establishing that foundation, it's almost as he is now. Now, check this out, because this is going to blow you away. He says in verse 14, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from God, full of grace and truth."

Now talk about love being willing to travel. Wow. This Word, eternal Word that created the universe. In fact, this is a picture. You might be led to think that those are stars. This is from the Hubble telescope. Every one of those lights that you see, those are stars. Those are galaxies. Those are galaxies. And the Word that created that, and black holes and nebulas and suns and comets and even created our fragile little earth full of birds and trees and fish and puppies, especially puppies. Right? And the Word delighted in even giving them their distinct little puppy smell. That that same Word would become this, a human embryo, so small that you wouldn't even be able to see him with your naked eye. I mean, how do you respond to that? With awe, wonder, worship that God would want to be in relationship with us that much?

I mean, it's no wonder that the angels, they just burst into praise and say, "Glory to God in the highest." Because if anyone had an appreciation for how far God traveled, it was them. And so they just, "Oh, glory, that His favor would rest on these people, that He would travel that far." Now I want you to bear in mind, before anything existed, God had a really good thing going. God was not lonely, God was not needy, but the Son came anyway. He came anyway. And what kind of reception did He receive when He arrived here on earth? Not a real good one, did He? He came knowing that we were going to nail Him to a cross, and yet He came anyway, which means this, and this is a thing that has just been blowing my mind as I've been studying this this week, the mystery of Christmas is not only that God became human.

Now that is stunning enough in and of itself, that God would become human, but the mystery goes beyond that. It's that He would want to, that He would want to. I look at my own life and I think, "There's nothing about me that would make me lovable to God." It's not like He looks at Mark and there would be all sorts of great things that I could just tick off to say, "Well, here's why you should love me, God, because I'm just such a great guy, I'm so virtuous and all these things, far from it." Have you ever thought to yourself, "Well, I guess God's okay with me." I mean, He must really love some people, but when it comes to me, I don't know that He carries a picture of me in His wallet. He's reserved that space for Billy Graham and Mother Teresa, but for me, He probably just kind of tolerates me.

Have you ever kind of felt that way? He's kind of tolerates me because I know myself, or let me put it another way, let me describe it this way. Have you ever looked forward to a special gathering, maybe at the holidays or something like that, and you're looking forward because you're going to be together with the people you love most, maybe family or friends, and you just can't wait for that day to arrive. Then you get word that your sister has invited her annoying college roommate, she's going to be there too, and you're like, "Oh." There's going to be the uncle that is kind of odd and makes everyone a little just, "Oh, boy, we've got to deal with him." You're not going to buck the system, but you're not as excited anymore. It's not going to be as fun.

Now, for the record, there are some of you here that have actually been at gatherings with my family. I just want to make it abundantly clear I'm not talking about you. This is purely for the purposes of illustration here today. But maybe you feel like to God, "Well, He invites me to His table, but I'm probably like the annoying college roommate. I'm like the weird uncle. He just kind of tolerates me." But here's the point of Christmas. Here's the mystery of it all. Jesus didn't come to earth so He could just snap up all of the first round draft picks, okay? All the people that we would think would be just bright and brilliant and beautiful to God. No, who did He come for? Jesus came to shepherds. He came to outcasts. He came to losers. He came to prostitutes and to tax collectors. He came to addicts. He came to people who could never live up to their own ideals. He came to people who have impure thoughts and have led impure lives. He came to us. He came to you. He came to me.

And God loves you more than you can imagine and so He declares His love in the strongest language possible. He declares His love in person because love travels. Verse 18, John says, "No one has ever seen God but the one and only Son who is Himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made Him known." You want to know who God is? You really want to know who God is? Get to know Jesus because the better you know Jesus, the better you know God. He is the one who perfectly reveals God to us, who has made Him known. And I want you to notice something else about this verse here. Notice it says that the Son is in closest relationship with the Father. In the original language, literally it says, "In the bosom of the Father." Now this might seem like a strange question to ask but how many people have access to your bosom? Not many.

I mean maybe your spouse. I know that's a little uncomfortable but think about it. It is because it's an intimate place. It's an exclusive place. But again maybe your spouse can just snuggle up next to you that way. Maybe your kids but then as they get older even that changes because it's intimate. It's exclusive. It's the place of deepest love and that's where the Father and Son, they invite us into that kind of love. They offer to share. God offers to share that kind of love with you and with me. So yeah, amen. Amen.

Now I don't know where you are today. I suspect for more than just a few of you, Christmas just magnifies what's wrong in your life. Christmas magnifies the hurt, the loss, the thing that's missing. And so you don't feel joy. You don't feel grief. You feel with greater intensity the thing that hurts, the reality of the divorce, the broken relationship, the presence of some kind of disease or illness that is slowly taking someone from you that you love. You feel all the more the weight of decisions that you made that you regret and yet then you're living in them right now. Christmas just magnifies that. And so you wonder to yourself, does God really care? Can God really make a difference in my life because it doesn't seem like it does have any meaning. It doesn't seem like it does have any purpose.

In fact, is there really some kind of logos who could give coherence to all the strands of chaos that my life represents? Can God really pull that together into something that still has meaning and purpose and joy? Well, I'm here to remind you this morning that the emphatic yes came to us in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago in the form of a tiny vulnerable baby. This means that Jesus is going to wave his hands and everything's going to be perfect in your world. It's all going to just be rainbows and sunshine. But he's going to be with you always. And you will be able to live in the kind of love that he shares with his father. He says, I will take you into my family, into my love. And yeah, you'll have, you know, things will happen in your life, but I will be with you. And as you become drawn into the life that I offer you, you will find meaning. You will find joy. You will find significance. You will have hope that you didn't know you could ever have.

And so now I just want to leave you with this reminder that if you ever wonder if God's heart is big enough for you, big enough for you, remember how small God became for you. Because love draws near, love travels. That is the mystery of Christmas. What's left for us is to open our hearts and our lives and invite him in. Why don't we do that right now as we go to prayer.

Hey Father, we thank you so much for the goodness and grace that you have bestowed upon us in your son Jesus Christ. And Lord, my simple prayer this morning has been that you would fill us with a renewed sense of awe. If we can say it's renewed, if we've been a Christian for some time, maybe even longer than we remember and we're used to this season and these stories and these scriptures, Lord I pray that you would just all the more explode the sense of joy and awe and wonder and worship, that our hearts would just cry out glory, glory to God that he would do this.

And if this is all new to some of the folks in this room or who are watching next door in venue or online, public access TV, whatever and however people might be tuning in, but this is new. Lord I pray that the reality of who you are, that this great awesome eternal God would love us so much that he would become one of us, living the life we could never live, dying the death that we deserve to die and giving us eternal hope through his resurrection. Father, we thank you that in coming to us, Jesus Christ, he lost nothing in terms of what it means to be God, but he took on everything in terms of what it means to be human. And so Lord, you understand us at the core of our being. I pray that that gives us much comfort, much hope, much joy this morning. Pray this in the matchless name of Jesus Christ, our savior, our Lord. All God's people said, Amen. Amen.