Because of Bethlehem

I'd like for us to look at a passage out of Matthew chapter 1, the words of the angel to Joseph in verses 20 and 21.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

We're going to read the passage.

I'm going to say a prayer, and then we'll get to work.

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.

And 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.

Have mercy, O Father, upon our teacher today.

His sins are many.

Grant that we might see Jesus.

Just Jesus.

Through Christ we pray.

And all the church said.

Well, I tried to blame my behavior on the holiday traffic.

It was the day after Thanksgiving, that busy Friday, and the shoppers had turned the thoroughfares into controlled chaos.

I tried to blame my behavior on my state of mind.

We had spent the day planning a funeral for my ever-weakening mother-in-law.

In fact, I was driving the car leaving the cemetery.

I tried to blame my behavior on the reckless, illegal U-turn made by the teenager.

The green turn arrow had given me permission to make a right turn onto the boulevard.

The teenager made an unexpected hairpin, surprise, and did I mention illegal U-turn around the median, cutting right in front of me.

We nearly shared paint.

I honked at him.

And I confess it wasn't one of those polite tap-tap.

This is me over here, type honks.

It was more of a honk, you see what you almost did.

He drove a low riding exhaust puffing, loud, jalopy, that dated back to the 1980s.

It needed a better muffler.

And it needed a more polite passenger.

Because I noticed that out of the passenger side of the car, after I honked, an arm came out the window.

And he waved at me with one finger.

I sped up.

Thanks to a stoplight, within moments I was side by side with the perpetrator.

My driver's side was just a few feet from the passenger side.

And so I lowered my window.

I looked down on him, literally and metaphorically.

And he looked up at me.

He was just a kid.

He wore a baseball hat, shoved down over a mop of black hair.

Kind of scrawny, wiry kid.

Not a whisker on him.

He looked up at me, I looked down at him, and I said, You need to watch that wave, son.

And he looked up at me and with a wry, crooked smile, said, Ha, make me.

Maybe in middle school or in high school, there was a brew ha after the graduation party.

I kind of got caught up in a scuffle.

Maybe that was the last time anyone said make me to me.

I mean, that's what a teenager says.

Then again, he was a teenager.

He was a scrawny, adolescent, testosterone-fueled kid, feeling his oats, riding shotgun in his buddy's muscle car.

He was a teenager.

As for me, I'm sixty plus years old.

I'm a pastor.

I write Christian books.

I am supposed to be a source of calm in this chaotic world.

Every voice in heaven was saying, Drive on, Locato.

All the angels in unanimous chorus were singing, Drive on, Locato.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were saying, Drive on, Locato.

But I didn't listen.

I looked down at him again and I said, Now what did you say?

And he said it again.

Make me.

So I said, Okay, where do you want to go?

His eyes got the size of hamburger patties.

He couldn't believe I said that.

You can't believe I said that.

I couldn't believe I said that.

He said, All right, um, let's settle this at the shopping mall.

I said, Are you kidding?

There's too many people there.

You follow me.

All of a sudden, I was an expert on where to go to duke it out.

At that moment, the light changed.

I accelerated.

They did not.

I looked in my side view mirror, and through my side view mirror, I could see in heated exchange between the driver and the passenger.

Of course, I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I had an idea.

Something like.

You think he's serious?

Well, I don't know.

He looked pretty mad to me.

Oh, I don't know.

You think he's packing?

Well, he may be.

I don't know.

What do you think about to do?

I know what I want to do.

And all of a sudden the blinker turned and they made a hard left into a parking lot.

And I was so relieved.

I drove the rest of the way to my in-law's house thinking, Lucato, what did you just do?

What got into you?

I'd like to blame my reaction on the holiday traffic or on my state of mind or on that teenager.

Did I mention his turn was illegal?

Did I say that?

But you know, the truth is I can only blame one thing, and that is the punk inside of me.

I let the disrespectful behavior of the kid bring out disrespectful behavior in me.

And for a moment I forgot who I was.

And for a moment I forgot who he was.

He wasn't a creation of God.

He wasn't fearfully and wonderfully made.

He wasn't an image-bearer of God himself.

He was a punk.

And I let his behavior activate the punk within me.

Now the Bible has a word for this.

And you already know it.

And that word has three letters.

S, I, N.

Sin is best defined by its middle letter, which is sin is when I am all about me.

When all I can do is think about me.

Sin is self-centered behavior.

Sin is self-promoting.

Sin is self-indulging.

Sin is self-fish.

And I was born with a sin nature.

So are you.

Congratulations.

No one had to teach you how to sin.

No one had to teach you how to pout.

No one had to teach you how to demand your way.

Somehow you just knew.

When you were a toddler, your parents didn't enroll you in a seminar on how to steal a cookie from your sibling.

Somehow you just knew.

You were born with it.

You entered the world with it.

We all did.

Although I will say that when my eldest daughter was born, we thought we had been given the exception.

Little Jenna was, in our words, just perfect.

She set a new standard for cuteness and cuddletivity.

We couldn't imagine her being anything except a gift from God.

I took a picture of her and I sent it to the baby magazine, said, put her picture on the front cover.

She's perfect, never heard back.

But then after a short time, we began to question even her royal lineage.

I don't know how to say it except to say that she began behaving like her mother's side of the family.

As she got older, she learned the word no.

Where'd that come from?

Jenna, come over here.

No.

And she could even stomp her foot.

Where did that come from?

She was born with it.

We all are.

We're born with this stubborn, independent, self-centered tendency to demand our own way.

Consequently, there are times, without exception, except Jesus Christ, that every human being has looked at their father and said, No.

No.

God says, love all people.

We say, no.

God says, forgive your enemy.

No.

God says, share your possessions.

No.

God says, be anxious for nothing.

No.

Where does that come from?

It comes from that punk inside of us.

That independent, self-centered, selfish behavior.

It's called sin.

You were born with a sinful nature.

You entered the world with a sinful nature.

But listen to me, God entered the world to deal with it.

This new book I've written called Because of Bethlehem is a simple idea.

How is the world different because of Bethlehem?

What happened in Bethlehem that changed the world?

And I would put at the top of that list a sentence, something like this.

Because of Bethlehem, we know the day and the way God saved us from ourselves.

Look again carefully at the words that the angel spoke to Joseph.

He 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.

And 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.

Now we may not see the connection between the name Jesus and the phrase, save people from their sins, but you can bet your sweet December that Joseph saw it.

Joseph, a Hebrew, familiar with the Hebrew language, immediately saw the connection.

Jesus.

The English name Jesus traces its origin to the Hebrew word Yeshua, which traces its origin to Yhoshua, which means Yahweh saves.

And so Jesus was given the name that defined his identity and his assignment.

God saves.

Who are you?

Oh, my name's God saves.

And so the boy walking through Nazareth was called God Saves.

Look who's coming over for dinner.

God saves.

Have a seat.

God saves.

What a great name.

For he was God saves.

He wasn't just godly, God seeking, God worshiping, God hungry.

He was God.

And he was God who saves.

Not just God who cares or God who listens or God who applauds, though God does all of that, but he's God who rescues, who saves.

And not just saves us from bad moods or bad weather or bad day or bad economy or bad politicians.

But God who saves us from our punkish, independent, self-centered tendency, who saves us from our sin.

Now why?

Why was Jesus given the name?

And why did God give Himself this assignment?

Simple.

He's got great plans for you, my friend.

He's got great plans for you.

His plan is that you would be a part of the population for an eternal kingdom.

An eternal kingdom where there will be no death and no sickness and no fear and no anxiety and no worry.

It's a new kingdom.

A day is coming in which he will reclaim every square inch of this universe.

It's rightfully his.

And he will restore it, he will redeem it, and he will reclaim it.

And he will return it to its garden of Eden splendor.

God will have his garden.

And in that garden, the creation will be in harmony with humanity.

Humanity will be in harmony with itself.

We will finally do what we were told to do, and that is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

It will be a new kingdom.

And no longer will we need to say to one another, know the Lord, because we will all know him.

He will walk with us in the cool of the evening, and we will dwell with each other in perfect harmony.

And we will look back on this brief time on earth as if to say, oh boy, we were made for this.

And we were made for this new day.

We were made to be redeemed, to be captured, and to be purposed and to be populated with God's goodness.

Now that's what God is up to.

That's what he's up to.

And that day is coming in which he will rapture his people out of this earth and he will inaugurate a time of tribulation.

And at the end of that time of tribulation, we will descend with him and we will begin that new day.

Now, the word that describes the new kingdom is the word perfect.

It's just perfect.

Perfect.

Every sunset, perfect.

Every day, perfect.

Every person perfect.

Every relationship perfect.

Every worship perfect.

Everything about it will be perfect.

But here's the problem.

We the church, or we the children of God, are anything but perfect.

Right?

I mean, we snap at people at stoplights.

We are anything but perfect.

So what's God gonna do?

Well, I guess he could just annihilate us and start over with a new species.

But he loves us too much for that.

Maybe he could just accept us as we are and populate the new kingdom with imperfect people, but how would heaven be heavenly if the curse is still there?

So his plan has to do with God's safes.

Jesus.

The scripture says, all of God, he was pleased for all of himself to live in Jesus Christ.

This is the gospel.

That for a time on this planet, God himself took up residence in a physical body, every bit as physical as yours and mine, with a toe and spleen and toenails and hair and teeth.

And for a time, God wrapped himself, he cocooned himself in a body of flesh.

And he walked on the earth and he talked to people and he loved people.

He was the picture of how a human being was supposed to be.

No wonder people listened when he spoke.

That was God speaking.

And no wonder the water held him as he walked.

That was God walking.

No wonder the listen, the winds listened when he commanded they be still.

That was God commanding.

No wonder the bacteria fled when he touched.

That was God touching.

And no wonder ten thousand angels stood in rapt attention.

As he allowed the nails to be driven into his hand.

And he was hung on a cross.

That was God dying.

He let people crucify him for heaven's sake.

And he allowed all the sin of all the world to be placed on him so that a just God could punish the sin so that we would enter into the new kingdom with every sin adequately covered and paid for.

As the apostle Paul said, Christ had no sin, but God made him become sin so that we could become righteous or right with God.

He took all of the sin, all of the stubbornness and independence as if it were the mud of the world, and he took it and he caked his son as his son hung on the cross and he punished it there.

And God made him who had no sin to be sin.

Why?

For us.

So that we in exchange could take on the righteousness of God.

Had he done nothing more, that would have been sufficient.

Had he done nothing more than do a work for us, that would have been adequate.

But listen to me.

Force in you.

And he grows in you.

He expands.

He grows.

He reclaims.

He extends until he takes over everything that is rightfully his, and you are rightfully his because you have been bought with the price, the most precious commodity in the history of the world, the blood of Jesus Christ.

And so now he owns you and he turns your very body into the temple of the Holy Spirit.

And as he has his way with you, he begins to turn your eyes into his eyes, your hands into his hands, your tongue into his tongue.

Even you begin to have the mind of Christ.

You begin to think differently.

He begins to grow and expand until you walk into the room, even Jesus is walking into the room.

And when you drive a car, it's Jesus driving that car.

And you become the hands and the feet in the presence of Christ.

The Apostle Paul said it this way.

He decided at the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his son.

This is what Jesus came to do.

He is Jesus.

God saved.

He diffuses sin's penalty.

He diffuses sin's power and he erases sin's penalty.

And in time, this punk within us diminishes.

And the Christ within us flourishes.

We'll never get to the point that we're sinless, but by God's great grace we will sin less.

And even when we sin, even when the punk rears his ugly head, we have this hope.

We have this great and blessed assurance that the grace that saved us initially preserves us eternally.

The grace that caught us in the beginning sustains us until the end.

We have promises like this one.

He is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy.

You may lose your temper, you may lose your perspective.

You may lose your way.

But oh dear child of God, you never lose your salvation.

Why?

Because you never earned it to begin with.

It was a gift bestowed upon you by a loving father.

And he never saved you because you were good enough, so he won't reject you when you're bad.

It's his decision.

He has already looked at you from beginning to end.

He has already looked at your life from birth to hear, and he has already decided, I want that child in my kingdom.

God saves.

So much so that when John the Baptist saw Jesus, the first thing he said was, look, the Lamb of God.

Who does what?

Who takes away the sin of the world.

He takes it away.

Some time ago, my wife and I were in a restaurant in San Antonio where I serve at a church.

After dinner, uh the the attendant came with the bill, set it on the table.

And as the attendant left, excuse me, a gentleman stood up from his table and walked across the restaurant and introduced himself.

He said, I attend the church where you preach.

I wanted to meet you.

And so we talked for a little bit and had a nice conversation.

And then as he turned to leave, he did this.

He reached down and he took that bill.

He did.

He took that bill.

And he said, I'll take this.

Oh, what a man of God he is.

Wonderful man of God, so mature, spiritual.

Yeah.

He's really moved.

And he walked off with the bill.

The attendant came just a few moments later to pick up my payment.

And I told her, I said, I don't have it anymore.

And I pointed across the restaurant at the gentleman who was still there, gratefully.

I pointed across the restaurant and and I said, He took it.

And the fella held up the bill and waved in agreement.

According to the Bible, there is coming a day in which every human being will stand before the judgment seat of God.

Every single person.

And we will be held accountable.

We will be held accountable for every thought we've had, every deed we've done, every word we've spoken.

We will be held accountable because he is a just God.

But because he is a gracious God, those of us who are in Christ find that thought not terrifying, but actually comforting.

Because at that moment, those of us in Christ will point to Jesus Christ, who will perhaps hold up a list of all of our sins.

And we can rightly say He took it.

He took it.

Amen.

Have you let him take yours?

You'll never be asked a more important question.

Have you let him take your sin?

For some of you, the answer is no.

And if the answer is no, perhaps you can relate to this weariness that comes with carrying your own sin.

The guilt, the heaviness.

You try to run from it, intoxicate it, deny it.

Life becomes an endless attempt to escape.

The regrets and the guilt of life.

You don't have to.

You don't have to carry your own sin.

You don't.

You can live life as a cleansed soul.

Absolutely forgiven.

Because what you did is not good, but who he is is good, and he is good enough to forgive every sin that you've ever committed.

The Bible says that there is now therefore no condemnation.

No condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ.

Or maybe you once gave Christ your sin.

But now you're trying to save yourself.

We church people have this odd obsession with trying to save ourselves.

I remember when I was a Boy Scout, I earned a life-saving merit badge.

It was such a joke because I never saved anybody.

And we Boy Scouts had to practice with each other, but the other Boy Scout didn't want to be saved.

You ever tried to save somebody who's trying to save themselves?

It's absolutely impossible.

I'd say, stop kicking, let me save you.

I wonder how many times Christ wants to say that to us.

Just stop struggling.

Let me do the work.

Let me save you.

You cannot save yourself, my friend.

You may save yourself, I don't know, from running out of gas.

Save yourself from not having any retirement.

You can save yourself from some things.

But you cannot save yourself from sin.

You cannot.

And what separates the Christian faith from any religion that's ever come down the historical pike is simply that.

Jesus Christ, God saves.

He saves us.

We're not good enough to be saved.

We're bad enough that we depend upon Him for utter and complete full service salvation.

And this is the offer of God through Jesus Christ.

He extends forgiveness for the sins of the past.

He gives us power to deal with sin in the present.

And he guarantees absolute deliverance from sin for eternity in the future.

Complete full service salvation.

God saves.

What I did was too ugly or too dark.

I can understand.

For you, I would just say, would you would you mind making that decision in Bethlehem?

Would you make a return trip to the birthplace of Jesus?

Would you take a few moments and go to that little hamlet and stand in that stable and look at Joseph and Mary, weary from the journey, wide-eyed at the promise.

Look at the hay on the floor and the animals on the hay.

And would you look long and hard at that newborn who's been wrapped in barnyard rags?

You know, a good public relations firm would have objected to Jesus being born in Bethlehem.

Well, let's do this in Rome, at least in Jerusalem.

Out with the heads of sheep, in with the heads of state.

Less peasant, more pizzazz.

I mean, doesn't the Son of God deserve a more majestic place of birth?

Is this a mistake?

Or is this the message?

Maybe your life feels like a Bethlehem stable.

Crude in some spots, smelly in others.

And as you look at the circle of people in your world, they sure look a lot like the donkey and the cow.

Maybe you, like Joseph, knocked on the innkeeper's door only to be turned away.

Maybe you've been told it's too late.

Or you're too old.

Or you're too young or too weak or too sick, or whatever.

And you do your best to make the best of your life, but try as you might, the roof still leaks and the wind still sneaks.

And you have more than your share of cold nights.

And you wonder, does God have a place for someone like me?

You make that answer in Bethlehem, my friend.

You go to Bethlehem and you look at Joseph and you look at Mary and you look at that baby wrapped in barnyard rags and you listen as God Himself says, if I was willing to be born there, if I was willing to descend the birth canal of a Jewish girl into the calloused hands of a carpenter, don't you know I'm willing to come into your world?

You see, the moment that Mary looked into the face of God, the moment that God allowed himself to be placed in a manger, the moment that God fed on the breast of Mary, the moment that God became flesh.

All questions about his love for you were removed from the table.

All of them.

All of them.

You can question his decisions, his decrees, you can question his commands, but you can never question the undying, unquenching love that Almighty God has for you.

Ever.

He proved it.

He proved it.

And you can never outsend his grace, and you can never outrun his love.

Ever.

If he's willing to be born in Bethlehem, then he's willing to go into any bedroom, boardroom, brothel.

He's willing to go anywhere to rescue his children.

And he wants to do one thing: he wants to deal with your sin.

That's it.

He just wants to deal with your sin.

Because he, in dealing with your sin, prepares you for an eternal life in a new kingdom.

But he's ever the gentleman, and he will not go where he's not invited.

Welcome him in, won't you?

His power is enough to forgive your sin, and his strength is enough to change your life.

And that's good to know.

Especially in holiday traffic.

And if perchance this message finds its way to the ears of two teenage boys in East Texas, who listen to that and say, I know that guy.

Well, I've got a word for you.

I'm sorry.

What I did was not right.

But what you did wasn't right either.

And I think God is working on us all.

Amen.

Lord, we thank you for the promise of grace, for the coming of Christ, and for the guarantee of salvation, for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the hope of eternity.

Through Jesus we pray.

All the church said.