Her Treasured Experience

Our scripture reading this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke chapter 2,

Luke 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2 pages 1 to 20, pages versus, not pages, 20 pages, that would be a lot,

20 verses, Luke chapter 2. In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus

Luke 2 · chapter mention

that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when

Quirinius was governor of Syria and all went to be registered each to his own

town. 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 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 swaddling cloths and

laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn. And in the

same region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock

by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the

Lord shone around them and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said

to them, fear not, for behold I bring you good news of great joy that will be for

all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior who is

Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in

swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a

multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying glory to God in the

highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. When the angels

went away from them into heaven, the shepherd said to one another, let us go

over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made

known to us. And they went with haste and they found Mary and Joseph and the baby

lying in a manger. And when they saw it they made known the saying that had been

told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the

shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things pondering them in

her heart. And the shepherds returned glorifying and praising God for all they

had heard and seen as it had been told them. This is God's holy word. We're in a

Christmas series on Sunday mornings in December looking at four episodes in the

life of Mary. We've called it Jesus the Son of Mary where we look at what happens

in her life to understand something more about the son that she gave birth to

Jesus. And this we just read is the Christmas story itself, the very birth

of Jesus. So the department stores, all the stores are playing jingle bell rock.

That's the vibe of Christmas in the city. But this is the real Christmas story, the

one that we just read about. And the shepherds at the, in the second half of

the story, the shepherds come to Mary, Joseph and the baby and it says there

were others there. And they tell them what they had seen and what they had heard

from the angels out at the night when they were tending their sheep. They heard

from the angels this song we now call it in Latin, the Gloria and exchelsis deo.

Gloria got in the highest peace on earth. That's the song they heard. And they come

and they tell the people and it says in verse 17, 18 that when they had told

them verse 18 everybody who heard it wondered at what they had heard. So the

people that are there at the birth scene, they wonder meaning they are amazed, but

they don't quite understand. That's what that word there means. But then in the

very next verse, verse 19, it says, but Mary treasured these things in her heart

and she pondered. Now the word ponder there means to take all the pieces and

put them together like a puzzle. So when Mary heard the shepherd's experience,

she thought about her own experience and she remembers Elizabeth and Zechariah's

experience and she's putting pieces together. And then it says when she did

that she treasured these things in her heart. That's what happened to her. She

treasured all that had happened. And when you look at that word treasure to

treasure, it means that it's a verb there. The Greek verb means something like when

you realize there is something in your heart that is safe that can't be taken

away from you no matter what. So it says when she pondered everything that had

happened and she heard the shepherd's testimony, she realized in her heart she

had something, a treasure, something in her life that no matter what could not be

taken away from her. And that's what happened. What is that thing that she

treasured that couldn't be taken away? And we're told verse 14, it's right there

in the midst of the song, it's peace. The angels sang it. They said, glory to God

in the highest, peace on earth. That's the central idea of the incarnation. The

central theme of Christmas, peace, peace on earth. She realized she had it, peace,

and she treasured it. And that's exactly what is on offer in the real Christmas

story. You can have it too. You can have peace today. So let's think about it. The

real Christmas offers you peace. First, peace on earth, secondly, how you get it.

Okay? So first, peace, this peace we're learning about here. All right, the song

Gloria and ex-chelsea's dayo, it's got a vertical dimension and a horizontal

dimension. You know, they said that the myriad of angels appear before the

shepherds and they sing, glory to God. They look up and they say, thank you, God,

for what you've done this night. That's the vertical dimension. Bless your name,

God, for this plan that you've enacted. And then the horizontal dimension. And now

that the baby has come, there is peace on earth. That's what they say. Meaning

what? Okay, so you might think peace on earth. 2,000 years ago this happened. And

if there's one thing that's on earth, it's conflict, not peace. So you know, we

think about the idea of peace. And peace is the opposite of conflict. And you can

have conflict in marriage. You can have conflict in the family. You can have

conflict amongst friends. You can have conflict in your workplace. You can have

conflict amongst your siblings. If you have a relationship, there is

conflict or it's coming. And then conflict gets more and more and more. And we

talk about war. And there's conflict right now. There's war in Gaza. There's war

in Ukraine. And we pray for peace. And we long for peace. And you say, there's 2,000

years since the angels sang peace on earth. And I don't see a lot of peace in

the world. What kind of peace is being talked about here? Then there's inner

peace. Is this inner peace? Inner peace is emotional well-being. And it's the

type of peace that we're all desperate for. It is the secret of life. The secret

of life is that if you can find yourself in a place emotionally where you have

inner peace, you will be safe. You will be secure. You can handle anything. And it's

elusive. So people are selling peace, emotional peace. Right? There's podcast.

There's therapy. There's counselors. There's bookscalore. And people sell it.

There's a market for it because we desperately need it. We desperately want

it. Inner peace. If we could have it, we could have everything. And it's

incredibly elusive. You know, you can have great circumstances in your life and

no peace at all. You can feel terrible. And you can be in the worst of

circumstances, stepping into the brink of hell and earth, hell itself right here

on earth, and yet have peace. Peace is mysterious. It's elusive. How does it

happen? And people want it so badly. Is that the peace that the angels are

singing about here? We long for peace in the midst of conflict. We long for inner

peace, emotional peace. Jesus Christ, it was born in the middle of history to

bring both, but that's a different discussion and a very nuanced discussion.

And that is not, that's not what the angels were singing about on this night.

What is it? The department stores Jingle Bell Rock, Mariah Carey, every other

song, All I Want For Christmas is You. That's the vibe. But when you come to the

real Christmas story, this is, this is the real Christmas story. Look at it with

me to find out what the peace is. It's verse eight. The shepherds are out in the

fields and it's nighttime. They're out watching over the flocks at night. They

are in the dark. There is no electricity. The stars are out. The moon is out, but

they are in the dark. And then all of a sudden, verse nine, it says, the glory of

the Lord shone around them. It's a verb there that means to encircle in golf.

And the word shone, it means light, luminosity. And so it says they're out in

the middle of the dark darkness. And there's a real reason for that. And all

of a sudden, the glory of the Lord appears and it's light. It's luminosity. It

engulfs them. It captures them. It surrounds them. The light pierces the

darkness. And then at the end of verse nine, the very next thing we're told is

that they were terrified. Now that's, that's the short way of putting it. The

literal way of putting it is something more like they having been frightened

were mega afraid. That's what it says. Meaning they were absolutely terrified.

Now, do you remember that in the Christmas story? That the shepherds are in the

darkness. And when the glory of the Lord appears to them, they're absolutely

terrified by it. It exposes them. The light of the glory of God shines into

their life in the middle of the nighttime. And they, the only thing they can do is

be afraid. They know, they realize what's happening to them. Now remember the

angel of the Lord, the glory of the Lord came to Mary and it says she was

afraid and troubled. That was her first experience. The angel of the Lord came to

Zechariah and it says he was afraid and he was silenced. He couldn't speak. What

is happening here? This is the same thing that happens all throughout the Old

Testament. And that's when the glory of the Lord comes into a person's life. When

you have an encounter with a living God, when the light comes into your life,

there's terror. There's fear. That's the kind of encounter that we read about on

the Christmas night. And remember in the Old Testament, Uzziah touched the ark of

the presence of God and he died. And God's glory came down to Mount Sinai and

God said, tell the people, do not touch the mountain. Do not get near. Cover your

faces. You cannot look at the light or you will die. This is the shekinah glory

of God and that's exactly what the shepherds are experiencing here. The

glory of the Lord has come into their lives and they're undone by it. Genesis

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3, Adam had sinned against the Lord and when the glory of the Lord comes

into the garden, what does he do? He shakes in his boots. You know, he was

dead afraid and he hid and he was silent. He wouldn't answer because he was so

afraid. And that's exactly what's taking place here. The shepherds are here at

night. They're not looking for God. The light engulfs them and they are terrified.

They're shocked and Mary hears this and she's putting the pieces together and

realizing this is what happens when you have an encounter with the living God.

When the light comes into your life, the very first thing, this is the very first

thing that Christmas is all about. The incarnation takes place. The light comes

into the world because we are in the darkness. The light comes in the world

and we're exposed. We're dark. Our hearts are dark. The

shepherds' hearts were dark. That's why they're here standing in the night and

that means the very meaning of peace on earth that Mary realizes that the angels

sing about is what kind of peace. Christmas is all about one type of peace

and that's that you are an enemy of the living God. You're at war with a living

God. You're in the darkness and when Jesus comes, he comes to pronounce that

there is a way to be at peace with God. That's the meaning of Christmas. It is the

hope of reconciliation with the living God, the God you are made for. That you

are made for the light of God to be engulfed by it. That's actually home.

But as soon as you draw near to it, you have to be terrified because of the

darkness that is within your soul, within your heart. Now, C.S. Lewis in 1941 gave a

sermon about this during the war. He talked about the weight of glory. It's

now an essay and a book with that title, the weight of glory and he talks about it

like this. He says, the vision of God, he says, being in the presence of God's

glory, being in the presence of God's glory, the light, is the secret ache for a

far-off country we've never been to. He says it's the desire for something that

we have never actually experienced. It is what we really desire. We get traces of

it when we experience beauty. But the thing itself, the glory of the Lord, is

the scent of a flower we have yet to find. It's the echo of a tune we have yet to

hear. It's news from a country we have not yet visited. It's the reality that can

break the evil spell of the worldly enchantment. Every human, every single

one of us, remains conscious deep down of a desire which no natural happiness

will ever satisfy. What is it? The ache for the far-off country that is to stand

in the light of the glory of God. And yet, when God's luminosity appears, when God

comes and stands in the presence of a sinner, it's blinding. It's impenetrable.

It's inapproachable, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 6. It is, it gives us chills, you

know. When it came to Moses, he had to step back. He wanted to step forward, but

he had to back up. And God said, take your shoes off, because this is a holy

space. We're pushed back, but we want to go forward. Now, this is the one thing we

must all do today. And we're gonna move on to the second point from here. But

here's what we all must do today. We must all today then understand ourselves in

two ways. On the one hand, why is it that you're not satisfied in this life? Not

deeply, not truly, that you have a far-off ache for something that you have

yet to experience. And it is because you're made for this moment, for the

light of the glory of God to shine into your life, and for you to see the glory

of God, to see the curtain pulled back, and to see the myriad of angels all

singing glory to God in the highest, peace to you. This is what you were made

for. It's the far-off ache. We've got to understand that this is ultimately who we

are, who we really are. And yet at the same time, we can attain it. We cannot

approach it. We can't have it that we're standing in the night in the middle of

the darkness. And one of the biggest dangers, I think, that we all face as

mostly, mostly middle-class people in this room, one of the big dangers is to

think that darkness, the darkness, is the person's condition that's sitting

next to me. Darkness is everybody else's condition. Darkness is the

condition of the people I hear about on the news, but not me. That's the

danger we face. And we've got to be serious. We've got to know ourselves. We've got to

understand ourselves. You might say that when you watch the news, but you

say, that's darkness. I'm a decent person. I'm a good person. But if you were to stand

in the light of the glory of God, you would quickly find out. You would quickly

find out the darkness that's deep within. What's really going on? The light

exposes us. And that's what happened here to the shepherds.

Saint Augustine said, said it well, he said, you will never find rest.

You'll never find rest in your heart until you realize that you've got to rest

in God, in the glory of God. Now, secondly, finally, Christmas is about peace,

reconciliation between us and God then. How do you get it? Charles Wesley, he

understood this really well in Hark the Herald Angel Singh. What did he say? He

said, peace on earth, mercy mild, God and center reconciled, the meaning of

Christmas. The Apostle Paul, he understood it in Colossians 121. He said,

once you were alienated from God and you were his enemy, but now God has

reconciled you to himself by Jesus Christ, the meaning of Christmas right

there. Mary in verse 18, 19, realized that and that was the treasure that she

had found. So if you today come to Jesus and you have peace with God,

you've been reconciled with God, understand that you have a treasure that

can never be taken away from you. You have the very thing you were made for and

it's yours by a gift and it cannot be taken away. Never. That's what she

realized. That's the treasure she experienced. Now, here's three things

you need in order to get that today and to grow into that today. It's always

three, right? That's how God designed it and there's three right here and here

they are. First, we have to do them quickly. First, you've got to see the

reasonableness of believing in the real Christmas. Now, if you were looking with

me, reading with me, you'll have noticed that the first half of this passage,

which is about the very birth of Jesus, the virgin birth, the birth actually

only gets one sentence. So the very birth of Jesus Christ in the Bible gets

a sentence and you see what Luke did instead.

Chapter 2 verses 1 to 6, the sentence about the birth is in verse 7. The

first six verses is nothing but things like Caesar Augustus issued a

decree and Quirinius was governor in that season and this was the first census,

but there were more registrations after that and everybody had to go to the

town that their family lineage was from and fact, fact, fact, all these facts. You

see, Luke is time stamping everything and if you were to go to chapter 3, chapter

3 says, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being

governor of Judea, Herod being the tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip

tetrarch of the region of Iteria and Trachonitus and Lysantius, tetrarch of

Abilene, during the high priest of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of the Lord came

to John. Now, you see what's happening? Luke is time stamping everything and he's

saying, I can tell you the entire political scene and that's how they did

dates back then. They didn't have the dating system we now have and that means

that the very first thing Luke is trying to get you to see is the

reasonableness of Christmas. He's trying to say, this is history. This is not a

legend. This is not a myth. The virgin birth is not a mere story. It really

happened. If they would have had an iPhone this night, the shepherds, the

shepherds could have filmed the whole thing. And you see the very first thing

you need to see to come and experience the peace of Christ is to know that the

Christian claim is that this is history, not legend. That this really happened,

that the virgin birth is real. It happened in space and time. It's not a

mythos. It didn't happen as a legend. Some of us have come into the faith and

received Christ if you're a Christian today or you are coming. You're in the

process maybe a few of you maybe of exploring and you've come in by way of

the emotions. So you've felt a need. That's been largely the aspect

of your soul by which you've encountered Christianity. Some of us based on our

personalities have come into Christianity primarily through the will.

So we've felt the brokenness of our desires and it's brought us to a place

of guilt and we've realized how empty and broken sometimes the things we want

to are and that's brought us close to Christ. But what Luke's doing here is

saying you've got to come to Christianity with your whole self. That you've got to

bring your emotional need for a Savior. The need for a broken will to be

reshaped and reformed. Your desires for a Savior have to be there. But also your

mind that this is history, this is reasonable. It really did happen. And so

you've got to bring all of who you are today to really experience the peace of

Christ all the way to the bottom that it affects your intellect too because it's

incredibly reasonable. It's not a legend that's fundamental to the claim and

that's one of the big things Luke wants us to see here. Now here's the second

thing and most importantly the birth itself and what it means. In verse 12

the shepherds were told here's the way you can find the Savior of the world, the

Christ, the anointed one, the Lord. Here's how you can find him. Go and look in

Bethlehem for one wrapped in swaddling cloths lying in a manger. Now back in

verse 7 she gave birth and she wrapped this baby in swaddling cloths. Swaddling

cloths are very probably strips of cloth that have been ripped from work cloths.

So baby Jesus was wrapped in cloths that were torn from a rag you

would use for working to wipe things away. And then it says she laid him in a

manger. Manger is a word for Greek. I don't know why exactly why I always

translated as manger. It's a feeding trough and so Jesus was laid wrapped in

work cloth and laid in a feeding trough. You know remember the hymn born in

flesh the godhead. See? Hail the incarnate deity. But it doesn't go as far as it

could have gone. Layed in a feeding trough sitting on the muck and the spit of

all the animals. That's where he was laid. And that's the condition of his birth.

It says that there was no room for him in the inn. But that's just the word

guest room in Greek meaning that it could have been an inn. It could have also

just been that there was nobody in the town that had a spare room. And so first

century houses were built where the animals resided on the bottom ground

level and the people lived above them. And so very very probably Jesus was born

on a first level ground level of a first-century home where the animals are.

And that's why he's wrapped in work cloth and put on top of the muck of the

feeding trough. Why? You know that that's what the angel said go to Bethlehem and

that's what you'll find. That's the condition of the savior of the world. And

you've got to really look at that. You've got to really think about that this

morning. That's so important. Why? Peace with God is why. Reconciliation with God

is why. How do you get yourself out of the darkness? And one of the early

church fathers, St. Ambrose, he said, when you look at the story here, there is no

baby. There is no royal baby wrapped in Tyrian purple. The royal color. And John

Chrysostom, he said, surely if Jesus had willed it, he might have come moving the

heavens, making the earth to shake, shooting forth thunderbolts. But such was

not the way of his going. His desire was not to destroy but to save, not to

trample upon humanity. Therefore he is not only man but he's poor. And he's

chosen a poor mother who had not even a cradle where she might lay her newborn

child. So she laid him in a feeding trough. I've never given birth, but

I've been there for it. And I've been there for at least, not at least only four

times for birth, only for it. And one thing I do know about giving birth is

that nobody, I don't think, I don't think any mother giving birth wants the

conditions of the birth to be this. Her baby put in a feeding trough on top of

the muck and the spit of the animals, right? Nobody wants that. No parent wants

that for their baby. But that's what he got. Why? Because his birth condition is

the sign of our condition. He was born into the darkness. He was born into

poverty. He was born into the condition as a sign of exactly what the

shepherd's experience. That when the light comes into the world, the darkness

is exposed and he took it on. He lived into it. It was the very condition of

his life, his poverty in the midst of this night. And even more than that, his

birth condition, even more, here's the meaning of Christmas. His birth condition

is the sign of his death condition that is to come. Remember, Adam, when the glory

of God appears to humanity, the light shines, what does the human

being do? The human being is silent. The human being hides. The human being in the

midst of the garden of God has to get behind a rock and say, woe is me, don't

get any nearer, oh Lord, or I will die. That's the condition of Adam, the first

Adam. The second Adam comes and at the end of his life, he also goes to a

garden. He entered on that fateful night into the garden of Gethsemane. And when

God encountered Adam, Adam was silent and he hid. Jesus Christ went to the

garden and he was the first to speak. He stood in the open. He had to tell the

soldiers, come and arrest me and take me. You see, Jesus Christ entered into the

garden, the very same garden where Adam hid. And he stood in the open. He was

exposed. He came to stand in the darkness. He came to go into the darkness. You

know, he came to give himself. The light of the world came to become totally dark.

He came to be engulfed by the darkness. That's exactly what took place in the

cross. You see, his birth condition was nothing but the sign of his death

condition. Peace on earth. Reconciliation with God is all because he plunged

himself into the turmoil and the darkness so that you could have peace. You

could be reconciled to God. It's the meaning of life. It's the meaning of

everything. It's the meaning of your existence. Now, let me close with the

final word. Third, very briefly. Let me say, there's a way to see why this really

is treasure for you today. Why Mary, you know, what does it mean that Mary treasured

this in her heart that she realized, I have got something. I've got something

here. Peace on earth in this little baby, my firstborn son. Most of us, most of us

are, we all, we're modernists. We live in the world, but we don't really believe

day to day that if you were to pull back the curtain, there would be a multitude

of angels singing, glory to God in the highest and peace on earth. We don't really

believe that. But that's reality. That's the real world. That world is more real

than our world. And if God was to pull back the curtain for us for just a

moment, we would see the reality of Gloria and ex-chelsis Deo, the multitude of

heavenly hosts singing to God. It's here. It's just behind the curtain.

That's what we learn about here in verse 13 with the shepherds. Now, that's the

real world. That's the most important thing. The most important thing is your

relationship to God. Do you really believe that? If you were to pull back the

curtain and see it, you would. If the curtain, the shepherds finally got it.

When the curtain was pulled back, they realized the most important thing in my

life is my relationship to the divine, to God. That's the most important thing in

your life, above all else. And that means that if you behold the baby of Bethlehem

as your savior today, plunged into darkness so that you could have life,

peace with God, if you've got that, you know, you can have peace anywhere. You're

gonna have peace anywhere you are because you've got the peace that

you need, the reconciliation you really need between you and God. Some of you

are at the top of your game right now. Things are going really well. You made

partner or you're about to, or you think you probably will. You're 25 and you're

ambitious and one day you're gonna get it. Or you're gonna become a

consultant and you're gonna be at the top of your game and you're gonna

have a family and God's giving you that. You've gotten the things in

life that you were ambitious about and you hoped for. If you are not

reconciled to God through the baby born on this night who died for you, who

punch into the dark, if you are not reconciled to God, if you do not have

peace with God, then none of that matters. You can't really rest. You can't really

say I have peace in my life. And some of you are not at the top of the game right

now. You're at the bottom. You've never made partner and you're never going to

and you know that. You've not achieved the things you wanted to. You've not

had the life you were hoping to have. And for all of us at some point, the thin

ice that we're standing on will finally crack and we will have terrible

circumstances in our lives. In some way, shape, or form. If you have

reconciliation with God, peace, you have treasure that can't be taken away from

you. You have everything. You have everything you need no matter what goes

on in this life. Mary realized that. She was poor. She was desperately poor. And

she had something that could never be taken away in her firstborn son, peace

with God. Let's pray together and ask that God would teach us that this day.

Lord, we pray Father, now that you would teach us what it means to have peace with

you. That we would really comprehend our lives as existing in the light of our

enmity against you and yet our hope that in Jesus we can be reconciled,

justified, utterly at peace. No conflict. So I pray today for somebody here that if

they don't know you that yet, if they're for the first time wrestling with that

truth that you would buy the Holy Spirit, bring that home to their hearts right

now. And for all of us Christians here that have professed our faith that we

would rest today, not in our circumstances but in the treasure that

can't be taken. Peace by the blood of Jesus. So we thank you. We thank you. We

thank you for it. We thank you for the gospel and we pray that we would live

through it and out of it and we pray in Christ's name. Amen.