Come Home to Jesus

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.

Welcome to church, if you don't know me, my name is Tim, I'm one of the pastors here.

Towards the end of year 12 I came home from a basketball trip to Melbourne and I got into a row with my parents.

I've been away for a week and the first thing I wanted to do when I got home was to go and see my girlfriend.

I just wanted to see her. A week is a really long time when you're 17 and you're infatuated.

But there was a problem and that problem was that my girlfriend lived just outside the middle of nowhere, far out into the country in a place called Balaclava.

My parents, they weren't having any of it. You're not driving into the middle of the night, into the middle of nowhere at this time.

You know as a kid and even as a teenager, it's inconceivable that your parents were ever teenagers.

It's like they just dropped and appeared out of thin air the moment you were born and they never experienced any of the joys or horrors of teenage years.

So I said what most teenagers say at some point in their lives. I said, you don't understand what it's like.

Now as an adult, I can almost guarantee that my parents did understand what it was like and they probably had tried to visit a girlfriend or boyfriend late into the evening.

At least I respected them enough to ask, you know. I mean I needed their car but that is beside the point.

As a teenager, you think that your parents are clueless to how life really works.

You think as an adult they couldn't possibly know what it's like to be a teenager.

But if they walked a day in your shoes, they would let you take their car in the middle of the night into the middle of nowhere.

But there they are, adults standing over you, judging you and your perfectly rational teenage logic.

I wonder how often we maybe not consciously but subconsciously see God this way.

As a divine parent holding the keys of the car just out of reach telling you that you can't go and see your girlfriend.

I wonder how often we see God as a divine being out there, distant, maybe a little judgy, over preoccupied with you being a good person,

who has no idea what it's like to be human, who does not know grief or suffering, who does not know anger or lust,

who does not know pain or sickness, who does not know poverty or heartbreak or homelessness.

And if God walked a day in our shoes, if he really understood what it was like to be us,

would then he cut us some slack.

He'd not stand over us like a parent holding car keys.

If he really understood what it was like to be me then things would be different.

If he really understood what it was like for me, would then he would fix things for me.

I think for many of us who grow up in this Western culture we wrestle with these questions, especially at a time like Christmas.

We're seeing about the Son of God born in a manger when we hear the story of shepherds and angels at a time like Christmas,

when God comes back into our peripheral vision.

Every Christmas those questions about God, they come back up to the surface.

What is God like?

And does he understand what it's like to be me?

And yet, the whole point of Christmas is to tell us what God is like.

Today we're going to look at just one line from the beginning of John's Gospel.

And John's Gospel is one of the four biographies that Jesus' followers wrote about his life.

John doesn't have stories of mangers or shepherds or wise men in the East.

John has a poem to begin his Gospel where the other Gospels they deal with the details about Christmas.

John wants to deal with the meaning of Christmas.

And so we're going to look at half of one verse, John 1 verse 14.

John 1:14

And this verse is about what God is really like.

It's a verse about what Christmas is all about.

This is what it says.

So the Word became human and made his home amongst us.

A Word became human. What's that all that about?

Well, John's not talking about any Word.

He's talking about the Word.

John tells us what he means by the Word at the beginning of his poem in John 1.

He says, in the beginning, the Word already existed.

The Word was with God and the Word was God.

He existed in the beginning with God.

God created everything through him and nothing was created except through him.

In the beginning, before anything was created, the Word was there.

So the Word can't have been created by God.

The Word was with God, so the Word is not the same as God.

And the Word was God.

So the Word is both distinct from God and a part of God, one with him.

And it was through this Word that God created everything in cruel creation.

So here, John is painting a picture of the Word as uncreated, yet one with God, but distinct.

And it's through this Word that the universe is created.

What's John getting out here?

Well, let's look at the creation of the world in the first book of the Bible, which is Genesis 1,

where God creates the universe and see what we can find.

What we find here is God speaking creation into being.

He says, let there be light and there is.

He says, let there be sky and there is.

He says, let there be dry land and flowers and trees and there is.

He says, let there be stars and planets in the cosmos and there is.

He says, let there be fishies in the sea and there are over and over and over again.

God speaks creation into being and his words create life, all life as we know it.

In my house, when I say, let the dishes be done, it doesn't just happen.

I have to go and do it.

And I know if I ever walked into a room and declared to ash my wife, let the dishes be done.

They certainly will not be done by her and how dare I.

When we say something, it doesn't mean it's done.

Most of the time we have to go and do it.

For us, there is a difference between our words and our actions,

because I can say, I'll do the dishes and then I can not do them.

But for God, his word is his action.

What he says is done. There is no gap between his word and his action.

They are one and the same.

This is what God says through his prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 55.

It is the same with my word.

I send it out and it produces fruit.

It always produces fruit.

It will accomplish all I wanted to and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

It's a power of the word of God.

The word of Tim returns empty constantly.

But the word of God does not.

It accomplishes whatever it pleases.

And in Genesis we see a pleasing God to speak creation into being.

And it's this word, it's the creative force that gives life to the universe.

This is what Psalm 33 says,

The Lord merely spoke and the heavens were created.

He breathed the word and all the stars were born.

So the word became human and made his home amongst us.

So this is the word.

The word that is God but is distinct from God.

The force of life that creates the universe, the word became human.

And he made his home amongst us.

This is an incredible thing.

When you read that verse in its original language,

what's translated in English, made his home among us,

when you read it, you see something that you miss in English.

The word made his home among us or another translation that's dwelt,

it literally means to tabernacle.

Now some words are simple words and some words are loaded words.

They come with deeper images and meanings.

And this happens all the time and everywhere in the Bible.

There are these loaded words and phrases and they deepen the meeting

when you notice what else in the Bible they are pointing to.

And tabernacle is a loaded word.

Because just after the plot of the Prince of Egypt in the book of Exodus,

God tells the Israelite people to pitch a tent in the wilderness

and it's called a tabernacle.

And he gives them very specific instructions

and they build it down to the very finest detail.

And after some drama, because there's always drama, it's finished.

And when it's finished, a cloud descends on the tabernacle

and the glory of the Lord fills it.

God's presence fills it.

And the Lord speaks to the people and he speaks to Moses from within the tabernacle.

This tabernacle, this tent,

was a very place where God's presence would come to rest

and where God could meet with his people.

John's saying, the Word became human and he tabernacled amongst us.

Meaning that where once God's presence lived in a tabernacle made of

cloth and wood and gold, now God's presence lives in this human being.

Where once God spoke to his people from within a tabernacle made of cloth,

now God speaks to his people from a tabernacle made of flesh and blown.

The Word tabernacled among us, John says.

And just like the Israelites beheld the glory of the Lord,

filling the tabernacle, we beheld the glory of the Lord in this one man, Jesus,

the God, the Father's one and only Son.

This is what Christmas is all about.

This vulnerable, weak baby,

dependent on his mother for life,

asleep in a manger, this baby,

this baby is God.

This is the God who made the universe.

This is the God who made the universe, making his home on earth in Jesus Christ.

This is the God that breathed creation into breathing, into being,

and he is breathing and he's probably crying.

And the glory of the Lord, glory of God, born, is born in the home of animals,

surrounded by food and dung.

And this is what Christmas is all about.

This is good news of great joy,

because God has come to us.

God is with us.

And we might think that God is distant, like some divine parent with no understanding what it's like

to walk in our shoes, to live in this mortal coil, to experience what we experience,

to be vulnerable, to be hungry, to be in need,

to really, really go without, to be homeless, to grieve,

to suffer, to experience trauma, to be lonely, and to die.

We may picture God high and His throne in heaven,

all sunshine and rainbows up there, out of touch, with reality down here,

safe and secure in immortality and needlessness.

And we might be right to think that.

And that might even make some sense, except for Christmas.

Except for this little baby that named Jesus, because in Jesus, God is vulnerable.

God is hungry.

God has need.

God will go without. God will be homeless.

God will grieve.

God will suffer.

God will experience trauma.

God will be lonely.

And God will die.

God isn't out of touch with what life is like, because Jesus experiences it all.

The whole of the experience. God knows what it's like to be us.

And He has walked a day in our shoes.

And if we acknowledge Him, He is ready and willing to give us the peace that only He can give.

Whatever it is you're going through, God is with you.

Whatever you are suffering, God suffers with you.

Christmas is extraordinary.

Why? Why would God do this?

Why would God take the risk of becoming human and making his home among us?

The author of A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine Liengel, she wrote a poem for Christmas in 1973.

And that Christmas, as it is in this Christmas, there was a war in Israel.

There was a war in Bethlehem. And the poem that she wrote was called The Risk of Birth.

I'll read it to you.

This is no time for a child to be born.

With the earth betrayed by war and hate, and a comet slashing the sky to warn the time runs out,

and the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born.

In a land in a crushing grip of Rome, honour and truth were trampled by scorn yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on planet earth, and by a comet the sky is torn, yet love still takes the risk of birth.

Love still takes the risk of birth.

Why would God become human and make his home among us?

Why would he descend from glory into the muck of this world?

Why would an immortal God take mortal flesh?

Why would God take the risk of being born into this world?

Because love takes the risk of birth.

God did it for love.

He did it out of sheer, relentless, passionate love for you and for me.

You see, over and over again, humanity, we separate ourselves from God by choosing to go our own way and do our own thing,

rather than acknowledging God as our Lord and King.

And the Israelites, they saw the glory of God descend upon the tabernacle,

like a cloud of fire, and they continued.

They still, time and time again, they disregarded God's ways and did as they pleased.

And the Bible calls this sin, and sin, it separates us from God.

And this is a big problem, because God is the source of all life.

He spoke the world into being.

His breath breathed life into us.

Without Him, we do not have life.

Without God, without His life, we're like a phone without a phone charger.

At some point, we run out of juice, we die.

And God could have just let us.

We were the ones who kept constantly not keeping up our end of the relationship.

But God loved us so much that He risked birth.

He came in Jesus, and Jesus never went his own way.

He never disregarded God.

He did not sin.

And Jesus made this place his home, and we saw His glory.

And He was the presence of God in human flesh.

And we still rejected Him.

Not only did humanity reject Him, they had Him unjustly condemned as a criminal and hung up to die.

And yet Jesus does not resist.

He lets it happen.

Jesus gives His life away.

God loved enough to risk birth, and it seems like the wrong move.

It seems like God shouldn't have risked it with us.

He was a glory of the Lord made human, and we had Him crucified like a criminal.

And God just lets this happen.

This is the word that was out there at creation that God made everything through, and He just lets it happen.

He just lets Jesus die.

And the pattern of humanity rejecting God is just allowed to continue.

And the Word of God who made His home amongst us is crucified on a cross.

Where is God?

Is He distant?

Surely He couldn't allow something like this if He knew what it was like down here.

But He does allow it.

And He allows it for our sake.

You see, Jesus never sinned, and yet He experiences the result of sin, which is death.

And in doing so, death dies.

The cross seems like all is lost.

It seems like God was wrong to risk it for love, but just at the last moment,

like a victory that is snatched from the jaws of defeat, the cross wins a decisive victory over death.

And Jesus is raised from the dead.

Death is reversed.

And you know what all of this means.

It means that when we're in Christ, when we believe in Jesus, when we accept Him in His way,

and we say, Jesus, You are Lord and King of my life, we have been reconciled to God.

And we can come home to God.

In Jesus, we can come alive to the reality of God again.

We can live with God each and every day of our lives.

And you might think that God is distant and doesn't understand what it's like for us,

that He doesn't know what it's like to be vulnerable, to be hungry, to be in need,

to really go without, to be homeless, to grieve, to suffer, to experience trauma, to be lonely, and to die.

But the message of Christmas is this.

God isn't distant.

God is with us.

God is with us in our vulnerability.

God is with us in our hunger.

God is with us in our need.

God is with us in our lack, in our grief, in our suffering, in our trauma, in our loneliness,

and ultimately, even in our death.

God is with us.

And we can be with God.

Jesus made His home on this earth so that we could come home to God.

That is the message of Christmas.

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.