God With Us: Hope in the Christmas Mess - Sermon 25th December 2025

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So we're reading from Matthew chapter 1, verse 18 to the end of the chapter.

Matthew 1:18

This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about. His mother,

Mary, was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together,

she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to

expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a

dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as

your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,

because he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

The virgin will conceive and give

birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him,

and took Mary home as his wife.

But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son,

and he gave him the name Jesus.

Well, Merry Christmas, everybody. We've heard a little bit from Andy about the

theme, the idea of mess. And if Christmas is nothing else, it can be,

it often is chaotic, it's crazy, and sometimes a little messy.

I wonder in your home, in your family, in the people that you are around,

your roommates, the people that you work with, I wonder if the various relational

dynamics that you interact with.

I wonder if your natural role, the one that you fit into most comfortably,

is the role of the tidy one or the role of the messy one.

I wonder if you are more naturally the one drawn to order and neatness,

or I wonder if you're the selfish one.

That does what they want when they please wonder if you're the uptight nerd

or i wonder if you're the one that just doesn't care about anyone or anything,

i wonder this morning if you'd be willing to point to the people in your family,

as to what roles they might find let's why don't we try that now in your family

in your home either with a hand up because you're going to own it or with a

finger point of condemnation, put your,

hand up if your natural role is the tidy one, hand up or pointing to,

handing up or pointing to.

The tidy ones.

Yeah, look, that's natural, I'm being pointed at by both wife and son in that

regard, the uptight, fastidious, sometimes an eldest child.

Put your hand up if you're willing to own it or point to the person or people.

Who more naturally take up that role of the messy one. Why don't you do that

now? Be willing to own it or point to, yeah, that's right, Phil.

Yeah, own it. You own it. You got to own it. You got to own it.

Now, I've done my best to characterize each of these in the worst possible way,

which is a little bit unfair, but one test of this can be on a Christmas morning,

perhaps if this morning gifts were exchanged and wrapping paper began to hit the floor,

ripped up and thrown in all different directions,

how long was it for you before enough is enough?

I'm picking it all up or actually I'm going to create a system.

It's going to be a box or a bag. Like, hey, everyone, everyone,

when you finish, put it into this box or bag.

That way, the mess can be contained.

Who played that role in your family this morning? Sometimes it changes. Sometimes it changes.

Mess is an interesting thing. Essentially, mess is the accumulation of things

that are not where they are supposed to be.

Maybe for you and the way that you are wired, maybe for you,

a tidy space equals a tidy mind.

Maybe that's why you prefer order and systems and tidiness.

You are the tidy one. They are the messy one. That role is theirs.

You think you're a normal, regular, chill person, and then all of a sudden,

food is being thrown from the high chair, banana is being mushed into the carpet,

and yes, I may have noted the next part of this sermon, as I wrote at home in

my lounge room, all of a sudden toys and books and cricket bats and balls and

Pokemon cards and colored pencils and Lego and hats and blocks,

are everywhere and anywhere.

But there are different types of mess in our world, aren't there?

Maybe you feel like on occasion you are messy with your emotions.

Maybe you've said the words or thought the thoughts or felt the feeling of, I really messed that up.

Maybe you were playing sport and you were the reason why it all went wrong for

your team and you thought, I really made a mess of that.

Maybe it was an exam and you thought, I'm going to do pretty well and you realized

that you didn't read the questions properly and you made a mess of it.

Maybe a deal at work was going to go well, but it was you and what you said

and the way you conducted yourself that made a mess of things.

Perhaps in your life, you know, the feeling of having a relationship,

a friendship, some sort of connection with another person that is no longer what it used to be.

And as you reflect on that, and as you feel the pain of that,

you realize that somewhere along the way you messed it all up.

Well, just like your home or your car or your workplace, we live in a world,

where there is mess, where things are not where they're supposed to be.

In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, it tells us how God created the world,

and then he looked upon it and he described what he saw as being good.

It was tidy. It was in a state of things being where they were supposed to be.

But Genesis also tells us the story of the ways that mess entered into our world.

The mess of sin and suffering.

When and where and how humans then and human still now, don't always put things

where they're supposed to be.

We don't always place love and peace and kindness and humility and obedience and goodness on.

In the places and in the ways that they're supposed to go,

where in our world it was as god described as being good things began and continue

in some ways to have mess in them.

We live in a world as you probably have worked out by now where people feel

pain where sickness and death and disaster and heartbreak and loneliness,

where rejection and grief and failure and broken relationships and suffering exists.

It's real. You felt it. In your journey, you felt it. It's part of the human experience.

Every single one of us are both sufferers and contributors to the mess in our world.

And I'm not sure how you have suffered in your life. I'm not sure in what ways,

this world has hurt you. But I know that it has.

And I know that it hurts. I know that we carry wounds with us all the time.

But in this life where we hurt inwardly, we also are people who hurt others outwardly.

The jagged edges of our particular personality, The jagged edges of our family

history And trauma And all the things that we bring Perhaps even today To the table at Christmas,

We poke people with the things about us That don't quite fit with other people,

We aren't just sufferers in this mess We are contributors to this mess as well,

We sin against each other And we sin against God,

Author Larry Crabb.

Puts it like this. Certainly we struggle as victims of other people's unkindness.

We have been sinned against. But we cannot excuse our sinful responses to others

on the grounds of their mistreatment of us.

We are responsible for what we do. We are both strugglers and sinners.

Victims and agents.

People who get hurt and people who harm.

In a lot of ways, that is the state of play of what it means to be born as a

human being into this world. And it perhaps begs the question,

what does God think about all of that?

The one that made things in a certain way to be a certain way,

what does he think about all of that?

If God is the one who created the world and left it tidy for us to look after,

what was his response as we, step by step, made a mess.

There's a book in the New Testament called Philippians, and in chapter 2 of

that book, it tells us that Jesus,

before he was born, before the nativity scene, that before all of that,

he was the eternal Son of God.

That his very nature and form and essence was God.

Equal to the Father from all time and before all time, he sat enthroned in divinity.

We should not be mistaken on Christmas morning to look at the manger and think

that's where the story began.

It says there about Jesus that though he was in the form of God,

he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.

But he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness

and being found in human form, he humbled himself.

The gospel of John puts it this way, that the word, the eternal son of God became flesh.

He became one of us.

The message of Christmas is that God did not and does not leave us in our mess.

That, in fact, actually, he stepped down from privilege and comfort and moved towards our mess.

He entered from outside of the mess into the mess of the world,

and the nativity scene captures this perfectly, especially the way that we have,

over time, developed it and.

Had this story that we read to our children, that we understand that picture,

that image of Jesus born,

surrounded by animals and strange people bringing weird gifts with no room for him.

What we need to understand is that even if Jesus was born into the most comfortable

of circumstances, surrounded by all the medical experts into a palace with all

the blankets and the pillows, with everything as good as it possibly could have

been, even if that was the image

that we celebrated at Christmastime.

That image would still be an image of humility, because from where Jesus stepped

down from to where he came, it was nothing short of a humble descent.

But I think that God sort of designed it so that this nativity scene.

Forces home, rams home this image of humility.

Jesus surrounded by animals and tangible, unhygienic mess placed into a manger.

We've got one up here on stage.

That's the drama of the nativity, that Jesus stepped down into our dirty, broken world.

And while each of us, when it comes to the mess of this world,

have suffered and sinned, Jesus didn't sin.

For the first time, somebody came and did not contribute to the mess,

but he did suffer in the mess.

He didn't contribute, but he suffered.

And by doing so, Jesus shows us the great plan of God, the instigation of the

great cleanup plan, the great tidying plan.

And we need to understand that Jesus isn't just a nice idea that can make us

feel a little bit better, but Jesus is the ultimate difference maker.

He is the one in whom we place our hope.

But also, and significantly, and I really hope this morning that perhaps you

might see this a little bit,

that on this Christmas morning, that Jesus gives us an example to follow,

a pattern to which we can subscribe to in our life,

that in your life, the unique circumstances of your life, Jesus born into the

manger is a pattern to which you can actively subscribe to.

Jesus challenges us to follow in his example of humility and servanthood.

The birth of Jesus challenges us to take responsibility for the ways that we contribute to the mess,

but also challenges us to embody, in some ways, that baby in a manger,

that in the ways unique to our lives.

We would, where possible, leave our places and moments of comfort,

our moments and places of privilege,

and move towards the places of mess and untidiness.

That we would subscribe to the pattern of being a positive force in this world.

The Christmas story is interesting. Joseph and Mary is interesting.

Joseph, who essentially disappears from the Gospels after this story,

stands quietly at the center of the Christmas story.

And it is easy, I think, to miss just how confronting of a moment this is for

him, particularly I think because it's a different culture and a different time.

I think also because Mary had it way worse.

But Joseph was put in a situation and Matthew tells us plainly that when Mary

was found to be pregnant before she was supposed to be pregnant,

that this totally rocked Joseph's life plan this wasn't a theological puzzle,

it was a deeply personal crisis I wonder if in your life anything has rocked your plans.

Anything has been so big that it changed everything.

That you had this neat, tidy idea of what your life was going to look like and

be like, but something changed it, rocked it.

For Joseph, all of a sudden in jeopardy was his reputation, his future,

his sense of righteousness, his understanding of what faithfulness to God might look like.

All of a sudden all of that was thrown into confusion.

He loved Mary, yet the situation appeared to place her in direct violation of,

the law then, and it placed him in an impossible situation.

And this is real mess. Mess where there's not any clear answers.

Mess where it feels like no matter what you do, you're going to make it worse somehow.

And what's really interesting to me anyway is that Joseph in this story doesn't

respond with outrage or self-protection like you or I probably would if we were in this situation.

Matthew describes this as someone who is wanting to be faithful and good,

but he also doesn't want to punish Mary about this situation.

And in the midst of his confusion and in his world being rocked and in the mess,

that is swirling around in his mind about what his life is, he chooses mercy.

He plans to just quietly and discreetly exit the situation Before even an angel

appears into the story Before he's given an explanation Before he's even given a sense of clarity,

He moves towards humility and restraint.

And then God speaks to him. And this is where I think if you were to think about

your life, it might change the way that you expect God to turn up for you in your mess.

Because then God speaks to him and God doesn't say, oh, sorry about that.

I'm going to just remove that mess from your life.

No, God speaks to him and he says, hey, the mess is actually bigger than you

think. This is more complicated than you think.

And instead of fixing the little mess that Joseph thought was there for him,

he actually invites joseph deeper into it the angel that appears to him doesn't

tell him that it's going to be easy or simple he doesn't tell him there's a misunderstanding,

that will be quickly resolved no instead joseph is told,

don't be afraid take mary as your wife anyway,

and by the way that baby it's going to save people from their sins.

The theme of Christmas in this

story is that God doesn't actually let us either just sit in our comfort.

No, he invites us to step into scandal and misunderstanding and vulnerability and risk.

And Joseph wakes up and he obeys.

And as I said, way worse for Mary.

She in this story is confronted with a mess that is even more personal and more

costly If Mary was somebody that cared about what other people thought about

her Well, she was going to have to let go of that pretty quickly,

Whatever peace she might have had in her life It was about to be gone forever,

Her whole life for the rest of her life Was going to be surrounded by glances

and whispers She was going to have a lot of unanswered questions,

And she would constantly, for the rest of her life Be reminded that obedience

to God had placed her In a position of vulnerability and shame and mess.

And Mary carries the Son of God Not in comfort or clarity But in trust and surrender and courage,

And so this morning, on your Christmas morning I wonder if you can do the hard work of imagination.

You can do the hard work of thinking about the people that you interact with,

the worlds that you step into.

And as we step back and we look at the Christmas story, I wonder if you might

consider the ways that God is inviting you deeper into mess,

deeper into complication.

I wonder if you might be invited to see that Jesus isn't just a nice story that

makes us feel better for a moment.

But it is a pattern that we are invited to subscribe to.

That Jesus was born into misunderstanding and scandal and poverty and brokenness,

and a lot of unhygienic practices.

From the manger all the way through to the cross, and we have both actually up here.

From the manger to the cross, Jesus enters into the world as it is in its mess.

And as Savior, He deals with the sin element of that.

He provides for you even today forgiveness and restoration,

that you can know your Creator, that you can walk with Him, that you don't need

to fix the mess in your life before you come to Him, no, simply come to Him as you are.

But be aware that when you do so, He's also going to invite you to live a different way.

To stop avoiding pain and discomfort, but to more and more be someone that moves

towards others with humility and mercy and love.

Christmas reminds us that God is with us in our mess and that because of Jesus,

the mess in your life and in every life does not have to have the final word. Let me pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for your son, Jesus. We thank you for him born in a manger.

We thank you for not only what he does for us But what he invites us to do for

others Lord, we're sorry for the ways in our life That our jagged edges Our incompleteness Our,

emotional and spiritual untidiness Impacts those around us Lord,

this morning, on this Christmas morning Forgive us,

help us And move us forward, God In the ways that you would move us forward Amen.