Three Questions of Christmas

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Lord, thank you that you condescended.

It's a big word, it just means you got down on our level.

You left the sanctity of heaven and came to the insecurity of earth.

And you came for a reason.

And tonight you're going to show us that in the Bible.

We're going to leave here in just a few minutes with a very clear understanding of why you left heaven and came to earth.

We use big words of the church like the incarnation, which means God taking on flesh and being fully God and fully man at the same time.

You condescended.

And for that we're grateful.

Lord, we don't need the smoke of another man's ideas.

We need the light and the heat of revelation that comes from your word and by your spirit.

And so we ask for that now as we culminate our Advent journey here together.

We ask for this in Jesus' name when everyone said, Amen.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

You can have a seat.

I want to say thank you for being here if you're one of our guests.

Tonight is not a one-off service, it is the culmination of the past month.

And I want to read from Luke chapter two.

Uh uh and I want to talk about the three questions of Christmas.

This is a very familiar short section of Luke chapter two, starting in verse one.

It says this, in those days of decree.

Let me let me pause right here.

Listen just for a second.

Don't talk.

Hear that?

Some of you are trying to just quietly slip your hand over your kids' mouth and just kind of press it.

That's okay.

I mean, some of them are old enough to know better.

Some of them are just that we say it like this right here: the cattle are low-wing, just like in the manger, okay?

Uh and so don't be embarrassed if your kids axe out.

If you need to step out and whip them, step out and whip them and come back, okay?

We'll be here, okay?

We we we we we believe it.

No, I'm just kidding.

Uh just relax and enjoy, okay?

Here's what I'm saying to you: God speaks a language you understand.

And some of you, this is the first time you've been in church in a long time.

You may be here because you're visiting family and they said, Hey, we're going to the Christmas Eve service, and you're like, and you said, I don't have any dress clothes.

They said, That's okay.

Our pastor doesn't dress up.

Uh, though one of you sent me an email and said, Would you please dress up for the Christmas Eve service?

So I put on a mock turtleneck.

There you go.

Nothing makes a pearl snap look better than a mock turtleneck.

Amen.

Just relax, okay?

God speaks a language you understand.

Let me allow me to demonstrate.

Luke chapter 2 says, In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

This was the first restoration when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and all went to be registered, each to his hometown.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and the lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.

And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swallowing cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the end.

There's three questions that Christmas asks us every year.

And the questions are simply this what happened?

Why did it happen?

What does it mean for you?

What happened?

Why did it happen?

What does it mean for you?

I'll take the first one first.

What happened?

Yeah, in verses one to five of Luke chapter two, what you see is there's in there's their style of writing in in journalism that's called the inverted pyramid style of writing.

And basically what that says is you start off with the most important details, you put those first, and then they descend in order of their importance.

And so they didn't have this back when the Bible was recorded, but it's what you see here.

Let me demonstrate before you look on the screen.

You see it's kind of inverted, and the way people thought back then, the most important thing, Caesar Augustus, he's the ruler of Rome, big guy Quirinius, who's the governor of Syria, Joseph, Galilee.

This is the order in which they're named.

Joseph, Galilee, Nazareth, Judea, Bethlehem, city of David, Mary, and then child.

They might as well just say Phoebus.

It has no name or nothing, just oh, a child.

She was great with child.

Here's one of the things about God.

Not only does he condescend, but he speaks a language that we understand.

He doesn't mind being this almost appearing to be insignificant.

And it's the most significant thing that has ever happened.

And so when you ask the question, what happened at the incarnation when God took on flesh and came into the world, tumbled into the world and was laid in a manger, what actually happened?

Well, here's a simple response to the question: the time came.

The time came.

That's what the Bible says right there.

It says after it gives all the stuff, it says in verse 6, and while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.

Now, when the Bible says the time came, it's not talking about pregnancy, but it's talking about purpose.

It's not about, oh, her water broke and then she got going.

Some of you were out shopping, it was chaotic, and everybody I heard talked to this week, or really the past couple days, complained about how crazy it is.

And I'm like, hey, it's not the world's fault that you waited until Mary's water broke to start your Christmas shopping, okay?

You can't manage the world when you get there.

You just be quiet, get what's left, and then go home.

Okay?

But what happened?

The time came.

Again, not in terms of pregnancy, but in terms of purpose.

And God, if he's anything, he is a God who is pregnant with purpose.

Everything he does, he does on time.

That's why the Bible says the time came.

Now, many of you are coming to the end of the year, and you may not want to, but you will think about, reflect back on your year and think about what it was like, how to do it to have a good year, a bad year, to be finishing the black, how far in the black, were we in the red, what's going on, all that kind of stuff.

And some of you have been praying and asking God for some things, and look at me, they haven't happened yet.

And don't come to the conclusion that God is saying no.

Maybe God is just saying, it's not time yet.

It's not time yet.

One of the things that keeps your faith alive and leaning in the right direction is that you understand God's time and timing.

The Bible says they got there and the time came.

So what happened?

The time came.

Second question: why did it happen?

Why did it happen?

Gets a little more personal here.

Most people's response to this question is centered around the wrong thing.

It's centered around the way God feels about them.

Most people would say, oh, because God loves us.

True statement.

God does love you.

Absolutely.

Not the driving motivation for the incarnation.

Not the driving motivation for the reason Jesus leaves heaven and comes to earth.

Okay?

I would say it's safe, it's easy.

I'd also say it's a little bit intellectually lazy if I was to be honest.

If you just say, well, Jesus came because God loves us.

Here's why that's lazy.

It requires very little of you.

Okay?

Just stay with me.

You're like, okay, I got my hand on one kid, I'm holding another one down with my foot.

This is simple to get, Mom, okay.

You understand this.

That requires nothing.

It's like your husband's, I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

You're like, oh, I love you too.

When you first get married, that works.

Get married, be married about 10 minutes, and you say, I love you, and she's like, clean the kitchen.

Okay?

And that means nothing.

Just saying it means nothing.

Same way with God.

See, Jesus comes in the world not because of the way uh God feels about us.

Of course he loves us, but look at me, don't miss this.

Jesus comes into the world because of what God knows about us.

One of the primary differences between us and God is we are ruled by what we feel.

God is governed, he is ruled by what he knows.

And what God knows is put on display in the incarnation more than anything else.

And so for us to acknowledge the driving factor of the incarnation has incredible ramifications for our life.

And so let me just take this opportunity to remind all of us today the primary reason Jesus came into the world is very simple.

Here it is to save us from our sins.

That's what the Bible says.

You say, What do you mean?

If you go back in the very beginning, when in Matthew chapter 1, that the angel appears to Joseph and he says this.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

It says in Matthew chapter 1, verse 20, but as he considered these things, now I want you to look up on the screen and look at those two words, these things.

Matthew 1:20

As he considered these things, as he, Joseph, trying to get his head around these things, what are these things?

The Bible says so much with so few words, it's easy to miss it.

What he's trying to get his head around is that his girlfriend has said to him, Hey, by the way, I'm knocked up, I'm pregnant, and God is the father.

And Joseph is like, say, what?

Come again, excuse me.

Run that back.

Hello?

Get your stuff and get out, no?

Maybe he's like the great theologian Hardy.

He's leaning over his head, waiting in the truck.

Uh what?

Yeah.

You see, we're not shocked by that.

We're not shocked.

There's kind of like, oh yeah, of course.

I mean, poor Joseph gets a short end of the stick because no one goes, oh my gosh, as he considered these things.

He's trying to wrap his, he's thinking, okay, I'm gonna put you away, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna divorce you, no contests, okay.

You go your way, I'll go mine.

It's okay.

I'm keeping my CDs, okay?

Uh it says, Behold, an angel of the Lord appeared.

Look what the angel says.

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, said, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife.

For what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

And notice the last part, for he will save his people from their sins.

See, what motivates God to leave heaven and come to earth through the womb of a virgin is not because he loves you, not what he feels about you, is because what he knows about you.

He knows that the thing that separates you from him, the thing that separates me from God is sin.

We don't we talk about a lot of words at the Christmas season, but we don't talk about sin.

And yet this is the reason for the incarnation.

You say, I don't know what you mean.

Without that, uh there's no repentance, there's no regeneration, there's no change, it's just you coming to the end of the year, making a survey, trying to do better, trying to stop doing bad, eat more salad, less red meat, exercise.

You're gonna get some running shoes tomorrow, you're never gonna run.

Okay, new ballots got a nice cup heel.

Great, highly recommend them.

You're gonna run once, okay?

Then you're gonna walk back home and go, well, these go well with khakis.

Anyway, it's not just what the by the way, it's not just what the angels said, it's what the Bible teaches as well.

You say, What do you mean?

It's all through the Bible.

To remove sin from the incarnation is to take mission out of the trip.

People say, I'll go on a mission trip.

Well, if you don't factor sin into understanding the manger, then you don't have a mission trip.

You just have God taking a trip.

For example, 1 John chapter 3, verse 8 says, This the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.

1 John 3:8

No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God's seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he's been born of God.

It's that last part I want you to just choke on, okay?

Aren't you glad somebody said that at a Christmas Eve homily?

I want you to choke on this lyrical splinter right here, boys and girls.

He said, He cannot keep on sinning because he's been born of God.

Did you lose your capacity to sin this past year?

Did someone cut you off at traffic and you got out of your truck and walked up and knocked on the window?

How big old boy are you?

No, you knocked on the window and just said, Hey, you know what?

I would like to use an improper gesture and some certain words, but I'm finding it more and more difficult to sin, so I just want to say, you go first.

Yes.

Can you feel how unnatural that is?

Can you imagine getting mad at your wife, men?

And you're just all just torqued up and you're just ready to go.

And she's like, Well, is there a problem?

You know, the problem is I can't sin like I used to.

So I've got a lot of unprocessed emotions in here, and I'm gonna have to clean the whole house and vacuum to burn off this emotional energy.

But if I could just sin like I used to sin, I would throw a fit, call you names, compare you to your mother, and storm out.

But I just can't sin like I used to.

Now, that sounds crazy, doesn't it?

But the Bible says this is why Jesus came.

Why did it happen?

It happened.

So God could so invade your life and my life that we cannot keep on sinning the way we used to.

And again, imagine losing that capacity.

See, this underlines the difference in how we think about our sin and how God thinks about our sin.

The Bible says, hey, you can lose the capacity to sin with every passing day, month, week, year, whatever.

Here's the difference in the way we think about it and the way God thinks about it.

We want forgiveness for sin.

God gives freedom from sin.

Big difference in the two.

So you got two questions down.

One question to go, hold the kid, you're almost there.

If you're with me, say amen.

I'm not gonna say who, but one lady I think has got her foam in her kid's mouth.

Stop talking.

Uh it's okay.

Let your kid talk.

Two questions.

What happened?

The time came.

Second question, why did it happen?

Because sin.

All of us are guilty of that.

Thirdly, what does that mean for you?

Now, here's where we use, I could use a lot of big words.

I could talk about atonement, justification, propitiation, and you would go, Wow, that cat's got degrees.

But if I was going to explain the atonement, I mean, excuse me, uh, if I was going to explain the incarnation, Jesus leaving heaven, coming to earth, here's what I would explain to anybody.

I explained it to somebody this past week because every once in a while, here on Sundays, if you're visiting, I use big words so people know I got an education.

But this kid came up and he said, Pastor Neil, what is the incarnation?

And I said, It's real simple.

It just means this God was willing to get involved.

And he looked at me and like, some of y'all are looking at me like, yeah, the incarnation just means God was willing to get involved in the nitty, gritty details of your life that Johnny Cash thing about, in that great song, A Boy Named Sue, a kicking and a gouging in the mud, the blood, and the beard, down there where people do life.

God's willing to get involved.

Yes.

He said, What do you mean?

Allow me to demonstrate.

I was a senior in high school and this happened.

I remember it vividly.

It was January the 13th, 1982.

Air Florida flight number 90 took off from Washington National, and it took off and it was a little heavy and was sitting a little low in the back.

And the back of the plane, the tail of the plane, clipped the 14th Street Bridge and it slammed the plane down into the frozen Potomac River.

Chaos ensued.

Paramedics started showing up, ambulance started showing up.

People stopped on the bridge and were watching.

Five people survived out of that whole plane full of people.

Five people rose up.

There was a big mass of ice and luggage floating, and they were all grabbing onto that.

And people got there.

The rescuers showed up, by the way, in rubber rafts, and they were trying to paddle the rubber rafts through the frozen river until the helicopter comes within four minutes.

They had a helicopter on the way.

They got there, but they didn't realize that most of the people, their arms are broken.

They've dropped this little life ring and they've tried to hold on to it, couldn't hold on to it.

They got one lady out, got another guy out, got another person out.

The last lady left in the water that everyone was concerned about was a lady named Priscilla Torado.

She was a young mother and she was in shock.

She said later, I had jet fuel in my eyes, I couldn't see, and people were calling out to me, and I was trying to swim, but I couldn't get anywhere.

Also, another name you need to remember, Priscilla Torado is one.

The other one you really need to remember is Lenny Skutnik.

Yes, Google it when you get home tonight.

Lenny Skutnik is the reason presidents have a special guest at the State of the Union address.

We'll come back to that in a minute.

Lenny Skutnik is a 28-year-old man on the way home from his job in the Congressional Budget Office.

His job, talk about, I'd like to have this.

His job was to print and distribute the federal budget every year.

That no one reads.

Thousands of pages.

That's what he did.

And so what I'm saying is that the world will look at him and go, he's just a nobody, just a common ordinary guy.

He is on the bridge, he sees this lady, the helicopter, she can't get the life, they got the life ring, she gets her arm in it, flops out three different times.

He goes down on the shore, people are standing there.

Meanwhile, rescue workers are rowing their rubber boat into the ice.

And people are screaming, you gotta get to her, gotta get to her.

And all of a sudden she goes under, she comes back up.

He said, I looked in her eyes and I saw she's not gonna make it.

And Lydny's got it.

People everywhere.

One man takes his coat off, takes his sweater off, and runs and dives.

If you Google it later tonight, you can see Lenny come into the camera.

He dives in because the news crew is there filming it live.

He dives into the icy water, swims out there, and grabs her and then gets her to the shore, puts her up on the shore, and saves her life.

Now, why am I telling you that?

Here's why.

Because the Bible says that God stripped off some of his glory to leave heaven and come to earth.

Why?

Because he was willing to get involved in your life and in my life, in your love life, in your financial life, in your relational life.

He wants to be involved.

There's not an area of your life, he's like the seagulls in finding Nemo.

All he says is, mine, mine, mine, mine.

It's all mine.

And look at me.

If you're not willing to do that, you don't want him.

You don't want him.

You do not negotiate.

Love does not negotiate the terms of its surrender.

Then he didn't get out there, and she goes, Did you vote Republican or Democrat?

You have a Biden sticker on your truck.

No.

See, when you understand that we all are Priscilla Torado, we are blind flailing out there, about to go under.

And all of a sudden, somebody strips off glory and comes running.

This is the incarnation.

This is why the manger is such a big deal.

This is what God came for.

He's willing to get involved.

He wants to get involved.

So you got to ask yourself this year.

I want you to do two things in just a minute.

I'm gonna I'm gonna voice a prayer.

Before I do, I'm gonna be quiet.

Miracles never cease.

Amen.

Don't say that so joyfully, you jerks.

Yes, amen.

You you were quiet.

Yeah.

I want you to ask yourself two questions.

Number one, I want you to remind yourself you made it this year.

Yeah.

You should pause every once in a while and kind of go, huh?

You know that six months ago I was like, ah, but I made it.

Yes.

Yes.

And secondly, I want you to look at next year and ask yourself, what would it look like if you and God, you you kind of came to some agreement where you either say to God, I need you to take over or I need you to take this back.

And God was more involved in your life this next year.

What would be different?

Because three questions you gotta ask yourself before you go to bed tonight and when you get up tomorrow.

Number one, what happened?

What happened?

Why did it happen?

What does it mean for you?

Let's pray together.

Just take a moment, if you would, right now, and just ask those two questions.

What happened?

Why did it happen?

What does it mean for you?

The gospel of Christianity is not advice, it's news.

That God stripped himself of some of his glory.

He came to this earth to be involved in the nitty-gritty details of your life, the intricate workings of your life.

And he's saying to you, I want to be that involved.

So just take a moment and just talk to God in a language that you understand.

Because what happens after the part that we read is there were shepherds out in the field, and they came.

God appeared to them and said, Hey, you don't have to be popular, you don't have to have a bunch of followers on Instagram.

I speak a common man's language and he pierced these shepherds, and he says, This is what's going down.

And you guys are gonna be part of the people that spread the news.

And so what happens is the shepherds come and they see exactly what happened.

So one of the things we like to do here at Grand Parkway is we like to commemorate this thing.

We have shepherds that are coming even now, and we commemorate the passing of this peace.

See, it's no good if we keep it to ourselves.

And some of you, your prayer needs to simply be this God, I'm not gonna keep it to myself.

It starts with a bunch of men in a field, and they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on, and so forth, and so forth.

And so now we'll commemorate that what we call the passing of the peace.

As your candle's lit, just turn around and light someone's candle behind you, and they'll basically make their way back into the seats in the back.

And as we're doing this, let's rejoice and remember.

Be still for a minute.

Light is to be experienced and seen, not just talked about.

If you're a Christian, Jesus would say to you that you're the light of the world.

You have the capacity to illuminate the darkest spaces and places, and that is also your responsibility.

Let this be a reminder to you.

This is how it started, and this is how it continues.

The light continues to be passed from one to the other.

We'd like to conclude our service with a spoken blessing, so don't hold your hands out.

I don't want you to pour wax on your neighbor.

But before I speak this blessing over you, and the lights come up and your kids go absolutely shark raving crazy.

Let me remind you, we have one service tomorrow morning at 10:30.

You're welcome to join us.

If you have other plans, be there guilt free.

Amen.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.

And by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

In the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Bless you.