A Christ-follower with a limp: birth of Jesus

Sunday, December 19, 2021

He's the YOU you need!

“God made Christmas happen; friends make Christmas beautiful, music makes Christmas festive; giving makes Christmas joyous, love makes Christmas.” William Arthur Ward

According to this year’s data the most played Christmas song is Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas, followed by Wham!’s Last Christmas, and Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me. Some top songs make indirect references to the religious aspect of Christmas, but most stick to love, the weather, or an occasional chestnut. Globally, the most popular Christmas song to mention Jesus is Boney M.’s Mary’s Boy Child/Oh My Lord, which comes in at No. 71. It’s followed by Nina Nesbitt’s O Holy Night at 79 and Josh Groban and Faith Hill performing The First Nöel at 90.

The presence of Jesus in popular Christmas music varies widely by country revealing differences in musical taste, holiday traditions, and the spread of Christianity by missionaries, markets, and immigration.

Though it’s not the intent of the song, Mariah Carey’s, All I Want for Christmas is you has the right goal – it’s just the wrong “you.” Many believe that if they had someone to love or to love them, if they had someone in their life, some “you” then Christmas would be perfect. Experience demonstrates that a human “you” won’t satisfy. The only “You” that will truly satisfy our heart’s greatest longings is the YOU who came on that first Christmas 2,000 years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Two millennia later tragically most of the world still doesn’t know who that YOU truly is. While Jesus has been acclaimed as the greatest religious leader to ever live, the most influential person to have walked on this planet, and unique to the degree that no one can be compared to Him, the true Jesus is still an unknown. Considering Jesus Christ merely on the basis of an exemplary life and His superior moral teaching will never remove the stumbling blocks to Christianity raised by an unbelieving world. The real test of what one thinks of Jesus revolves around who He claimed to be and what He accomplished during His brief mission to this world. Without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ life is an empty stocking.

John Blanchard estimated that, of all of the people who have ever lived since the dawn of civilization, there have been about 60 billion people that have walked this planet. Of those 60 billion, only a handful have made any real, lasting impression or have actually changed the world. And in that handful, there is One who stands head and shoulders above all of the others—His name is Jesus. More attention has been given to Him; more devotion has been given to Him; more criticism has been given to Him; more adoration has been given to Him; more opposition has been given to this one person than all of the others combined.

Every recorded word that He said has been more sifted, analyzed, scrutinized, debated—every word—than all of the historians and the philosophers and scientists put together. After 2,000 years, there is never one minute on this earth that millions are not studying what He said. Here’s a person who lived in a minuscule, tiny little land two millennia ago; and yet, His birth divides the centuries—BC and AD; Before Christ and Anno Domini, the year of our Lord. Even the more modern BCE, which attempts “religious neutrality” and to deny the impact Christ had on this world, still begins with Christ’s entry into this world of time and space.

He never wrote a book and yet, library after library could be filled with the volumes, the multiplied millions of volumes, which have been written about Jesus. He never painted a picture, so far as we know; and yet, the world’s greatest art, the world’s greatest dramas, the world’s greatest music, the world’s greatest literature has Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, as its source. He never raised an army, yet multiplied millions have died for Him. He never traveled more than fifty miles from His birthplace and yet, His testimony has gone around, and around, and around the world. He only had a handful of followers that followed Him in His ministry; and yet, today, over 30% of the world’s population names His name—the largest such grouping on Earth today—Jesus of Nazareth. A public ministry of only three short years and yet, here we are, 2,000 years later, saying, “Jesus, Your name is wonderful,” because His name is. He had no formal education. He didn’t attend a university or seminary yet thousands of universities, seminaries, colleges, and schools are built in His name. No one can call himself, herself, educated who does not understand Jesus Christ. As historian Kenneth Scott Latourette said: “Jesus has had more effect on the history of mankind than any other of His race who ever existed.”

Who is Jesus? He is many things but the reason that He came was to be our Savior. There is only one Savior, Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12). In His Son, God sent the greatest gift for sinners like us. No wonder the Apostle Paul exclaims, “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” (2 Cor. 9:24).

The greatest event in all human history is the coming of a Savior from heaven to earth. Without His coming, there is no meaning to history. Jesus came into the world to save the world and us from divine destruction.

Why do we need a Savior? Because we are all guilty sinners. We need a Savior to take the guilt of our sins and to die our eternal death. That’s why Jesus died on the cross. All have sinned, including the virgin Mary; we all need a Savior. The shepherds of Bethlehem represent all sinners. To them, God announced that He had sent a Savior—His greatest gift to mankind. In Him, we receive grace and salvation.

A missionary, Gene Dulin, tells of standing in Austria, looking at a hand-carved nativity scene. The figures were a bit larger than life-size. It was one of the most beautiful that he’d ever seen. As he stood contemplating the meaning of the nativity, a grandmother stopped with her three-year-old grandchild. She stooped over and began talking with the child. She pointed to Mary, then to Joseph, and to the baby. Dulin says that while he couldn’t understand her language, he knew she was telling the story of Jesus to her grandchild. Then Dulin added, “For 2000 years parents and grandparents have passed on the story of Jesus. It has changed millions of lives and the whole world.” And it still does! That’s the gift of the baby in the manger but He didn’t just come to be born. He was born to die so He could be our Savior. Is He your Savior?

Can we help you spiritually? Can we help you know Jesus better? Please check out more resources on our church's web page, Gracechurchwi.org. Or, call us at 262.763.3021. If you'd like to know more about how Jesus can change your life, I'd love to mail you a copy of how Jesus changed my life in "My Story." E-mail me at Carson@gracechurchwi.org to request a free copy. Please include your mailing address.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Happy 250th!

“God is not an encyclopedia whose task it is to satisfy our curiosity.”

Jacques Ellul

You probably didn’t know this but last Thursday, December 6^th, was the 250^th Birthday of the encyclopedia. On December 6th, 1768, the 1^st edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica was published in Edinburgh. Other encyclopedias existed before the Britannica, but none of its predecessors attempted to systematically cover all of the major subjects of human knowledge. The original three volume publication promised “accurate definitions and explanations, of all the terms as they occur in the order of the alphabet.” The 2^nd edition increased to 10 volumes and soon became the standard, earning a reputation for its rigorous editorial standards.

Some people have tried to read the entire encyclopedia. Very few have succeeded. A.J. Jacobs read the entire 15^th edition, about 40 million words, on nearly 230,000 topics. He wrote about the experience in his 2014 book: “The Know-It-All,” saying, “I’ve definitely forgotten a lot, a huge amount, 97, 98 percent maybe, but there’s so much stuff left in there…”

In 2012, after 244 years of publication, the Britannica announced that it would no longer publish print versions, focusing instead on digital products. Though it’s now in a digital format, today’s Britannica has 44 million words in 32 volumes at about 1,375,000 words per volume. All of this reminds me of the last verse in the Gospel of John, chapter 21 and verse 24: “Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

Though we know much about the last three years of Jesus’ life, we know very little about His birth. While it’s been the subject of countless dramatizations and speculations, the historian Luke gives it all of one sentence: “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” The Gospel of Mark doesn’t say a word about Jesus’ birth. The Gospel of John only focuses on His deity and eternality.

It can almost be frustrating. If most of us had written the story of Jesus’ life, we’d have explained a lot more about Mary and Joseph and why Mary was traveling with Joseph to begin with. There would have been many details on why no one found a room in any inn or at the very least in Bethlehem had welcomed them into their home. Much more than the simple “because there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:6).

Why wasn’t there a better place for them to stay than a barn, who was with them when that baby was born, and so many other questions? We would have done a lot more investigating and reporting, filling in all of those details and removing most of the speculation. We wouldn’t have gone all Kitty Kelley, but a little David McCullough would have been nice.

But in doing so, we would have drowned the account in needless, even distracting detail. Often when it comes to the Bible, God doesn’t give us all the details we want, but He always gives us the details we need. When it comes to the birth of Jesus, we get all the details we need to understand one thing with the utmost clarity: Jesus comes quietly, even insignificantly.

Luke opens this part of his account of Jesus’ life with the name of Caesar Augustus, the mighty emperor, the man who can speak a word and make millions of people do his bidding. With a mere word he can force his citizens to travel significant distances to do something as simple as register for taxation. This is Caesar, the strong, Caesar, the proud and Caesar, the powerful. He’s the greatest emperor of the greatest Empire and the mightiest man on the planet. But then, Luke switches his attention to an infant, born in the most ignominious circumstances. Born to a virgin, born away from home, born in a barn, laid to rest in an animal food trough. The contrast is both powerful and undeniable.

We would imagine, of course, that the Messiah would be born high and rich, a son of great privilege. We’d expect that He would be born in circumstances more befitting a king. He should have been born to royalty, not to peasants. He should have been born in a palace, not a barn. He should have been born surrounded by the finest doctors who would have safely ushered Him into the world.

But no, everyone in the entire town turns away his parents, even though it’s obvious that Mary is about to give birth. They have nowhere else to go, so He is born in a stable and laid to rest in a feeding trough.

Why? Because God will teach us something vital through Jesus. He will teach us that we see this world completely backwards. He will teach us that the way to be great in God’s eyes is to be nothing in the world’s eyes. He will teach us that the way to exaltation is through humiliation, that the way to go high is to go low. He will teach it first and best through His very own Son, “who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” He came as the least because He came for the least.

Do you feel small, insignificant? Maybe just a number? Do you feel that you don’t really matter? You do. The One who left heaven to come to earth 2,000 years ago reminds us that as the world thought that He was insignificant, He came to this earth in love for all of the “insignificants.” He came for you and He came for me! He was the first Christmas gift and the only one that you will ever need.