This Baby Changes Everything

Hi everyone, this is Emma from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our podcast.

Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will change your life.

And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

We're going to try this. Hi everyone. Hey, sorry that was really loud for my left there.

Okay, for those of you who don't know me, we're all doing introductions tonight just to be safe, right?

My name is Tex and I am also one of the pastors here at Encounter Henley.

And again, I also just want to extend my warmest welcome and thanks for you all for joining us here tonight.

Christmas Eve is an exciting time.

If it's okay with you, I'd love to bring a little bit of a message about Christmas and about Jesus because we're at a church and it's Christmas.

So it felt like the right way to go.

One of the things I was thinking about as I was preparing for today is that I realized that when I think about Christmas,

I never ever think about Australian Christmases.

I always think of chunky sweaters like what Pastor Mike is wearing over there, beautiful numbers like that.

I think about hot chocolates by the fire.

I think about, you know, like coming home for Christmas with my arms full of presents and the door flings open and I'm stumbling over my niece or nephew and, you know, there's hugs and the auntie squeezing on the cheeks and all that.

And then that's kind of mental because that's not my reality at all.

That's never been my reality.

We do live in Australia.

And if you are planning on wearing a really chunky sweater tomorrow or drinking hot chocolate in front of the fireplace, I would love to have a little chat with you after the service because I just want to see how your well-being is going over all, you know, we just need to check in on these things.

And I think the reason I think of Christmas like that and when I talk to other people that they seem to think of Christmas like that is because that's this really beautiful like movie-ified Christmas that we've all been fed from the States where it is, you know, snowing and cold right now.

It's not really our reality here.

So it's really highly on, if that's not really my reality, it's really highly unlikely that that's ever been your reality either.

Not for all. I know we've got Hannah up the back there. I'm sure that's been her reality of the cold fireplace.

But like for so many of us, homecomings, be it for Christmas or be it for anything at all, they very, very rarely look like the movies.

To some, the idea of returning home is one of excitement and anticipation. It's full of joy.

And for some of us, it doesn't look like that. It brings with it a sense of dread or fear where we humble ourselves back to our kind of childhood origins because it doesn't matter how old you get when you go home, you are still the kid.

The privilege of rating the pantry that you didn't pay to fill comes with other things, right? So it's just, it cannot be the best experience for people and it can be super uncomfortable.

It can feel uncertain. And unfortunately for some, it can also feel like a sense of obligation.

Now, we rarely think of the birth of Jesus, the Bible story, the Christmas story in that way. But in reality, the origin story of the birth of Jesus actually looks a little bit more like the latter than the former.

We have this move-ified version in our head, but that's not really the way that it went down.

We have this version where Mary and Joseph have nowhere to stay. There's no room at the ends of the baby Jesus.

It is born in a stable wrapped in a cloth, laid in a manger, right? If you are a Christian here tonight, you know that.

If you're not, you know that. You could have resided that. You could have probably gotten us to right here.

But Joseph and Mary's return to Joseph's homeland wasn't born out of desire.

It was born via, as we heard from today's teaching text, via a decree from Caesar Augustus.

So as a result, what we have is a young man and his heavily pregnant betrothed on like a lazy 150 kilometer trek by foot.

For those of you who have had a very pregnant partner, that, I can't imagine, would have gone down that well if that had been my suggestion, like, hey, baby, if we go time to do the Kokoda Trail, right?

That's just not ever going to go down, right? So it's this reminder that that origin, that the homecoming was actually, was actually not born out of desire, but born out of an obligation, born out of an expectation.

The flip in that is that in doing so, it also fulfilled a prophecy.

Mary and Joseph, by the way, are kids, really. Mary's estimated to be between anywhere from like 14 to 16 years old.

So that was my daughter, Cadence, that was up here. She is almost 15. So think of that, if you will.

Joseph's only a few years older. Mary is carrying a pregnancy from before they were married, which, you know, at the time, quite the no-no.

They've actually, from what I can find, they've got no family support in Bethlehem. So they try the inn, which is full, as we all know.

The funny thing is, we actually don't have any reason to believe that even if the inn wasn't full, that they would have been able to afford a room at the inn at all.

Luke's Gospel later actually tells us that when they go to the temple, they give the offering of a poor person.

So what we're finding here is that disposable income is not exactly the name of the game over here.

So they're not dripping in wealth or privilege or support. They are two kids, far from home, fulfilling an obligation.

And I promise, you're like, Jesus, this is quite the Christmas message, right? I promise. We're going to start to turn here.

But what I love is, in a way, is that it's into this, into this period, into this kind of humble beginning. It's into that that Jesus is born.

Swaddled in basic wrappings, laid in a manger, behind an inn.

It's into this where a baby is born who changes everything, where the hope of the world is found.

Honor, power, status and wealth, Jesus is born into none of it.

And the beginnings of Jesus' story actually continue to be echoed throughout his entire life and his entire ministry.

Jesus' whole life was one born on lowering fences, inviting in the least likely.

He made the wealthy nervous and he made the poor hopeful. Why?

So in order to really answer that, we need to recognize there is a real importance in that the fact that we do not sanitize the birth of Jesus.

Because in doing so, when we go to that moverified version of the birth of Jesus, we actually miss the miracle.

The miracle is that the birth of Jesus is marked by the King of Heaven stepping down into the mess of our lives to provide love and hope in abundance.

Now, Pastor Bethany Allen of Bridgetown Church reminds us of this, is that hope in Jesus isn't a rescue from a circumstance that we find ourselves in.

Hope is about God entering into our circumstances with us.

And that's exactly what happened.

God sent his only son down to earth, to us, born as a baby, to grow and to learn and feel and live and experience absolutely everything that we do.

So why do we need hope presented to us in this way and revealed to us in this way?

It's because hope, much like love, isn't a polite sentiment that we just hand backwards and forwards.

The concepts of hope and love don't actually mean anything unless it's personal.

And what could be more personal than knowing and experiencing and feeling everything that you and I have known, experienced and felt?

This action, this decision made to deliver hope and salvation through the humblest of beginnings was the beginning of Jesus offering a mission on earth.

God could have sat on high on a heavenly throne and left us to wrestle with our sin and our doubt and our brokenness on our own, and he didn't do that.

And I love it because the origins of the birth of Jesus are at their very heart, a reminder to us that there are no barriers that keep us distant from God.

That there's nothing in our beginnings, there's nothing in our past, there's nothing in our story, there's nothing in our lives that actually deem us unworthy.

A reminder, again, Jesus was born to unwed parents into poverty, into a stabler, the back of an inn.

None of that, all of that for me, sorry, just wraps up that idea that those are these humble beginnings that don't create a boundary.

Jesus was sent so that through his life, death and resurrection, there was nothing that would ever prevent us from being able to come home.

And unlike everything else we've ever put our hope into, hope in Jesus is actually the only thing that brings with it a guarantee.

Because this hope makes way to an eternal homecoming.

And that's a homecoming that's free of dread, it's free of fear, where anxieties aren't necessary, where the homecoming always looks like the end of the cheap Netflix movie.

Where everybody's happy and smiling and everything goes well.

But it's a homecoming that all began with the humble arrival of a baby.

Pastor Tim reminded us on Sunday, Jesus made his home on earth so that we could come home to God forever.

In reality, that's kind of what the gospel is, what the birth of Jesus has always been about.

It's an everlasting hope founded in humility and sealed with the promise of an eternal homecoming.

That's why we're all gathered here tonight, that's why we sing the songs that we sing, that's why we have the experiences that we have.

And maybe that homecoming, maybe that homecoming is something that you just know to be true.

Maybe it's something you've never considered or maybe it's been an awfully long time since you thought about it at all.

And I just want to take tonight to remind you and allow you to reflect on the fact that this homecoming through Jesus is for you.

It's for all of us, but it's for you.

No matter your story, no matter where you're currently at, Jesus was born as a baby and given for the world so that we always had a pathway home.

And what I really love about this is that this homecoming, this promise, this offering, it's not a one time thing.

Like it's not a take it now or leave it, is that you don't come home once and then get kicked out when something goes wrong or something goes bad or you forget to make it better a few times.

It's not a, it doesn't end when you forget how you got there to begin with.

It doesn't end when you think, feel like that pathway home feels impossible.

Because thanks to a baby born over 2000 years ago, no matter the circumstances or the journey, that door to your home is always open.

Jesus made sure of it.

Now the great Tim Keller summarizes the Christmas message so beautifully for me.

Keller says, Christmas means that God has gone to infinite lengths to be close to you.

So tonight on Christmas Eve, as we gather in anticipation of the celebration of Jesus' birth of hope and of a homecoming.

I want you to think about that line for a second. I'm going to repeat it because I think it bears repeating.

Christmas means that God has gone to infinite lengths to be close to you.

Now God has made huge strides to be close to you and really all that happens from there is you then get to make a choice.

This is the beauty of the way that God has settled this up is that he has chosen to be close to us, but that is not, that has to be reciprocated.

In order to really feel and see and live out the gospel message, you then have to choose to receive that.

You have to choose to see that to recognize it, to accept it.

Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message.

If you felt challenged or need prayer, we'd love to hear from you on Instagram at Encounter Henley.

Or if you're interested in how you can support this ministry, please go to our website, EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

Thanks again for listening. God bless you.