Christmas Present with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

I'm so glad that you've joined us at one of our venues.

I want you to know you are in really good hands.

If you are at the Holotus venue, Pastor Tony is there to take care of you.

If you're at the Petrenko venue, Pastor Andre is there.

If you need anything, make sure to find them in the lobby after service.

One of the amazing things about Christmas is just the sheer volume of stories it has inspired.

Last week we went through a brief list of novels, movies, and shows.

Things like The Nutcracker, The Polar Express, It's a Wonderful Life, a Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, ELF, even Die Hard.

This just barely scratches the surface of all the content Christmas has inspired.

There's so many great Christmas stories.

However, there's one in particular that has really become a template of sorts.

This classic by Charles Dickens has been told and retold and repackaged and response.

I'm talking, of course, about a Christmas carol.

This novel follows Ebenezer Scrooge as he is forced to confront his past, his present, and his future to help him gain proper context for the life he is experiencing as an angry, cantankerous business owner.

In our series, we're using this same format of Christmas, past, present, and future to fully flesh out not what's going on in 2024, but what happened in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago during the very first Christmas.

Now, if you missed last week, be sure to get caught up when you can.

We look at the past leading up to the first Christmas.

It was an incredibly enlightening journey and showed us that God never forgets his promises.

Today we move on to looking at the first Christmas in real time.

Our job today is to push past the filter of nostalgia, the lenses of liturgy, the traditions curated throughout time and get down to the real nitty-gritty of what took place at the first Christmas present.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you for this season.

We just remember what you did for us, stepping out of perfection and down into the mess of our world.

We thank you for the first Christmas and for what it means to us today.

I ask, Holy Spirit, that we would just have open minds and open hearts, no matter where we're at on our faith journey, that we would allow you to speak to us today.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to get going across our venue, say amen.

Now, over the years, one of the things that we have learned, unfortunately, is that Christmas is a season where mental health often worsens.

Depression, anxiety, loneliness, and other problems increase in intensity for many people.

Now, there are a lot of reasons for this, but one of the reasons is how Christmas is painted as this perfect time in society.

The most wonderful time of the year, we call it.

We see images everywhere of joyful families, gifts, and holiday cheer.

This can create a sense of pressure to live up to these high standards, making it feel like we're supposed to be extra happy and full of love and surrounded by perfect relationships.

For many people, though, reality does not match these idealized images.

Relationships may be complicated, finances might be tight, loved ones might be missing for the first year.

The gap between what we expect to feel and what we actually experience can lead to feelings of loneliness, disappointment, and even sadness.

Instead of bringing joy, the holidays can become a time when people feel like they're constantly falling short.

Think about it.

Every commercial is a reminder that this should be your best Christmas yet, that you should be in love and a wealthy, and you're a horrible parent if you don't buy the latest really expensive toy, that every kiss begins with K, that you should be happy and joyous, and baby Jesus, and sugar plums, and Santa, and I don't know about you, but it can all be exhausting.

It's like this season holds up a magnifying glass to every area of our Christmas story and judges it against the perfect holiday experience.

And that's a lot of pressure that leads to a lot of personal expectations that simply cannot all be met.

This is why during Christmas, depression skyrockets nationally.

The suicide rate jumps several percentage points, people report feeling lonelier than any other time of the year.

Families dive into excruciating debt to keep up with their neighbors or pacify their children, not to mention just simple things like family drama, crappy presents, relational pressures, and more.

The saddest part might be that we have done the same thing with the story of the first Christmas.

We have whitewashed it into a neat, perfect little scene that you can buy for$99 at Hobby Lobby, and you can stick little tiny Caucasian baby Jesus in your front yard.

And by sanding down all the rough edges of the first Christmas, we lose the power of what it actually offers us.

Similarly, in a Christmas carol, Scrooge had to get a new perspective on his current reality to understand how his actions were actually affecting people and to understand what Christmas was supposed to mean to him.

Today we are going to dive into the Bible's most intricate telling of the Nativity.

We're gonna be reading from the Gospel of Luke a little bit of background.

Luke was actually a doctor who dedicated his life to serving Jesus and to accurately telling Jesus' story.

So, with the meticulousness of a physician, he put together an accurate and a historical account that has stood the test of time and even secular, historical, and literary criticism.

Last week we saw that the world was living in deep anticipation of the coming of the Christ, the anointed one.

We hear this angst as they were living in 400 years of silence and great Christmas hymns, like this line from O Holy Night that says, Long lay the world in sin and error, pining, until he, Jesus, appeared, and the soul felt its worth.

That line expresses a world that was longing desperately for rescue.

But as we will see, the world did not expect that rescue to come in the form of an impoverished boy born in a manger.

The people who were waiting for the Christ during the first Christmas were convinced that he would be born in power and prestige, a political and military leader.

His birth would be obvious and everyone would know to look to the seats of power for his arrival.

That is what the world expected.

But the start of the first Christmas didn't happen by national decree.

It didn't happen in a palace or in a seat of power.

It started with a personal conversation between the angel Gabriel and a terrified young girl.

In Luke 1, it says, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee.

And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.

Now Mary is very young, and she has her whole life ahead of her.

It's hard to summarize how terrifying this would have been for Mary.

She had all of her personal expectations set into motion by her engagement to Joseph.

And now, with one visit, that all falls apart.

She finds out she is going to get pregnant, and it obviously will not be Joseph's.

What is she supposed to tell her friends and her family?

How will Joseph react to this?

Maybe you can sympathize with Mary in this season.

Maybe you're facing unexpected complications at the worst time.

Maybe this Christmas you're dealing with the loss of a job, unexpected debt, accidental pregnancy, falling out with family members, a newly diagnosed health problem, things that seriously complicate your Christmas story.

See, 2,000 years later, we put some weird halo over Mary and we paint her as the perfect picture of serenity, as if Mary knew her entire life, this would be her destiny.

Like Mary from childhood just simply counted down the days until she would become pregnant and face the scorn and shame from her entire community.

The first Christmas in reality, if we actually look at the first Christmas present, it was a massive interruption in Mary's life.

And yet, what sets Mary apart is that she received it in faith and embraced what God had given her.

In Luke 1, 38, Mary answered, I am the Lord's servant.

May your word to me be fulfilled.

And then the angel left her.

As we move into chapter 2 of Luke's Gospel, we continue to get down into the gritty details of this story.

It says, In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world.

And everyone went to their own town to register.

And so Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house in the line of David.

He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him, and was expecting a child.

And while they were there, the time came for the baby to be born.

And she gave birth to her firstborn, a son, and she wrapped him in clothes and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

Now, once again, here's the problem with this story.

The problem is you've just heard it too many times.

We've seen the movie, we own the law and ornaments, we are so used to the story of Christmas that we can easily become removed from just how incredible it actually is.

Try if you can to put yourself in Mary's very pregnant shoes.

She had already gotten pregnant out of wedlock in a world where that was not just highly frowned upon, but could be punishable even by death, depending on the circumstances.

Then a census is called that will require Joseph to go back to his hometown of Bethlehem.

Keep in mind, Mary and Joseph were Jewish, and the Jewish people at that time were being ruled by a foreign power, the Roman Empire, against their will.

And now, Mary and Joseph were required to make an appearance in Joseph's hometown in order to make sure that enough taxes are being paid to their oppressor.

This meant practically that Mary was going to have to make the 100-mile trip from Nazareth to Galilee, a hundred miles, literally uphill, almost the entire way.

By the way, she would not be cruising in a night's new suburban.

She would be riding on the back of a donkey.

With all of that in mind, can you even imagine when Joseph got to town and he tried the best western and he tried the La Quinta and he tried the Holiday Inn and he had to come back to the donkey and have the conversation with Mary that there was nowhere for them to stay, and the only place he could secure was a barn.

At this point, Mary knew the child was coming and was coming quickly.

And she would give birth to her promised son.

Not in a hospital, not in a seat of power.

She'd give birth to him in a barn.

Eventually have to lay him, not in a crib, not in his own room, not in anything sterile, but lay him in a manger.

And so you know the story.

That's where Mary and Joseph ended up, surrounded by animals, sleeping on hay, and it was there at the worst possible time, in the worst possible scenario.

All of her broken expectations that Mary gives birth.

He had told Mary that her son would be royalty, that he would someday sit on the throne of Israel.

Was that all a lie?

Shouldn't God have intervened in her circumstances at some point in the last nine months?

Shouldn't she be having this baby in a palace somewhere safe and secure and sterile?

But instead it was there in a dark, germ-infested, smelly barn.

This would be the setting for the arrival of the Savior of the world.

Jesus came and Mary wrapped him in cloths, and she laid him down, not on a throne, but in a feeding trough.

Because in the first Christmas that we have whitewashed and sanded down, in the first Christmas, creation had not made room for its creator.

Virtually all of our angst and emotional and mental discontent comes from broken expectations.

In other words, our life isn't going the way we expected it would.

Maybe we expected that we would be married by this Christmas, but we are still as single as ever.

Or we imagined and expected we would still be married this Christmas, but our spouse has now filed for divorce.

We thought our financial situation or our social dynamics or our career advancement would be different.

In other words, our life is not going according to plan.

You pile on top of that in this season the constant barrage of Christmas marketing campaigns and the highly glossed-over representations of the Nativity story.

And this season in particular can make us feel like we are falling short or even like we're failing.

This is exactly why it is so important for us to really investigate the first Christmas, to get a deeper and a more nuanced perspective on the present circumstances of this moment that changed history forever.

As we mentioned earlier, Mary and Joseph were not the only ones with plans.

The entire nation of Israel had a plan.

They were planning for a Messiah to come, born into royalty, who would raise up and lead an army against Rome.

They were so focused on their plan that they missed the arrival of God's promise.

And we run that same risk.

We can become so focused on our plans, so focused on our expectations that we never stop and ask what God is wanting from us in this season.

That is the danger that you and I run when we want our plans so badly, we don't stop to see God.

The good news is not everyone missed the birth of King Jesus.

Luke tells us that there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, the Lord, and this will be your sign.

You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

Again, we've heard the story so many times.

We already know who the baby in the manger is.

Of course, the shepherds should leave their flocks behind and hustle down to find him in Bethlehem, but the shepherds had not heard the story before.

They did not know the outcome of this, and we miss just how crazy this would have sounded to the shepherds.

The shepherds weren't anticipating the king of kings to be born in a small barn.

I imagine that the angels showed up and they said to the shepherds, Today, a savior has been born to you.

And the shepherds were like, What?

That's crazy.

I say, finally.

And the angels were like, He is the Messiah, the Lord.

And the shepherds were like, Bro, this is what we've been waiting for.

The anointed one who will bring us victory over our enemies and sit on David's throne and raise up an army.

And then the angels were like, You will find him in a town that no one cares about, sleeping in a feed trough, tucked away in a barn, surrounded by animal feces, parented by an impoverished, unwed couple who are far from home.

And the shepherds honestly would have been like, Wait, what?

That's not what we were expecting.

That's not supposed to be the plan.

At least that's what the people thought.

But the shepherds had heard from God.

A God that they trusted, a God who always keeps his promises.

And so they left their flocks and they headed to the stable to meet God in human flesh.

Mary and Joseph and the shepherds, they teach us a deep truth about how to navigate broken expectations.

We have to quit seeking our plan and start seeking his presence.

If you find yourself in a difficult season during Christmas 2024, and you're wondering why nothing's going according to plan, why all of your expectations are being broken, how you're gonna get to the other side of this?

The advice following the lives of Mary and Joseph and the shepherds is to quit seeking your plan and start seeking his presence.

Getting pregnant was not Mary's plan, but she trusted God and she sought his presence.

Marrying a woman who is pregnant with a child that was not his own was not Joseph's plan, and yet he trusted God and he sought his presence.

Having nowhere to lay their heads was not in the plan.

Mary and Joseph did not even want to take a census for their oppressors in Rome, but they did.

And in doing so, they fulfilled prophecy and positioned themselves to be in the right place at the right time.

Now I don't want to fall back into romanticizing this, but giving birth in a barn was not part of the plan.

Mary didn't have a Bible to read.

She hadn't seen the movie.

She didn't know that angels were already bragging about her new baby to a field of shepherds.

All she knew is she was alone with her new baby boy stuck in a dark, disgusting barn.

Then, out of nowhere, the shepherds find her.

But it isn't her that they're looking for.

It's not Joseph that they're looking for.

They are looking for her baby, Jesus.

In the midst of all of Mary's broken expectations and the worst situation with seemingly the worst timing, the shepherds came and they bowed down and they worshiped the king in the feeding trough.

Luke tells us that when this happened, Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

Now I don't think that means that Mary understood everything about her new baby.

She didn't yet understand that he would live a perfect life or perform amazing miracles.

She certainly didn't anticipate watching him die on a cross someday, but in that moment, in that barn, Mary continued trusting God's presence more than her own plans.

In anticipation of the coming of the true Savior and Messiah, the prophet Isaiah wrote, Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.

See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Emmanuel.

In Matthew's gospel, we see this prophecy come to pass.

It says, Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet.

See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel.

But Matthew then gives us the translation of what Emmanuel means, which is translated, God is with us.

God is with us.

That is what changes everything.

God stepping out of heaven and into our world, giving us access to his presence.

See, I am a planner, I'm a strategist.

I actually think this is a gift that God has given me, but over the years, I have learned often painfully that my plans.

Must bow to the presence of God.

And what that means practically is that it is okay when things do not go according to my plan.

It is actually okay when expectations are broken.

See, if we take anything from the first Christmas, it should be that when God shows up, expect the unexpected.

Nobody saw the Messiah, Jesus, coming in the way that he did.

Nobody truly understood the timing.

Nobody thought to look in a manger in Bethlehem, everyone's eyes were on the seats of military and government power.

When God shows up, expect the unexpected.

And things will often not go according to plan, even in your own life.

Expectations will be broken and disappointment will often reign supreme.

But when we look to the first Christmas and we push past all the layers of tradition and all the layers of gloss, what we find is every single person living with and dealing with significant broken expectation and the presence of God redeeming all of it.

That is what Christmas offers you.

It's what Jesus offers you to take all your broken expectations and all the ways that life has not gone according to plan.

And if instead of just seeking your plan, you will seek this Christmas the presence of God.

God can redeem it and use it for his good.

There are a few things that we get to control in this life, but our perspective is one thing that we can.

Maybe this Christmas you feel just like Mary.

You aren't in the place you want to be, you aren't with the people you want to be with.

Maybe you are sick or struggling financially.

Seeking God's presence in this season is about trusting God through your difficult circumstances.

And so how do we do this practically?

Seeking God's presence could be as simple as starting every morning off in prayer and worship for this season.

Prayer helps us get in a rhythm with God.

If you don't know how to pray, just spend some time being honest with your Heavenly Father about what you're thinking and feeling, and then spend some time in silence.

God can speak to your heart during that time.

You don't have to know all the magic words.

There are no magic words.

Your Heavenly Father just wants to hear from you.

He wants you to seek His presence.

There are other ways to seek His presence.

Some of you simply need to surround yourself with better people.

If everyone in your life is a negative influence, everyone is bringing you down or keeping you stuck in bad cycles, then at least for this season, create some strategic separation.

Find people who will fill you up.

Get in community here at MetaCurch.

Perhaps this Christmas, you can seek God's presence by seeking out work that you can do for others.

Volunteer to help at Strong Foundation, pass out meals to the less fortunate, go to the ASPCA and walk some stray dogs, start a jacket drive in your neighborhood.

When we start being God to our community, it lines up our hearts and perspectives with His.

And last, come to Sunday services, come to one of our venues, be around the presence of God in the midst of God's people.

When God shows up, you can expect the unexpected.

And that can be hard.

Because when things don't go according to plan, we often don't know how to deal with it.

And this season, I believe God is encouraging us, don't just seek your plans.

First and foremost, seek God's presence.

As we close service, I want to invite you across our venues to simply bow your head and close your eyes for some time of reflection and application.

There's nothing magic about this.

I just want to create some space for you and for the people who are around you.

And I wonder if you can be really, really honest this Christmas season about what broken expectations you are dealing with.

This is a season where often things like depression and anxiety and loneliness and things even worse than that often skyrocket.

Where are you at this season?

Are you keeping yourself isolated or keeping yourself busy or numbing your feelings with things like drugs and alcohol?

Are you avoiding the feelings that are inside of you?

Is the high gloss of the Christmas season and even the Christmas story drawing such a contrast to your broken expectations that it feels too heavy to bear?

What would it look like for you this Christmas to not just seek your plans, but to submit your expectations to what God may want to do in your life?

What would it look like practically for you to choose to seek God's presence first and foremost?

I also want to speak to anyone who is at our venues today who maybe has never taken the first step of relationship with God, which is putting your faith in Jesus.

Christmas is the moment that God took on human flesh.

John's gospel says the word, the organizing principle of the universe, God Himself, the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

When Jesus came to earth, he came on a mission.

Jesus came to ultimately give his life for you.

Jesus lived a perfect life, a life that you and I could not pull off.

And by living a perfect life, he made himself the perfect sacrifice.

Our sin, all the ways we fall short of God's design and desires for our life.

Our sins separate us from our Heavenly Father.

And yet God loves us so much and demonstrated his love for us, and that while we were in sin, he came down to rescue us.

The story of the cross is Jesus becoming the perfect sacrifice and exchanging his life for mine and for yours.

His perfection for my sin.

And all he asks to give complete forgiveness of our sins and bring us back into relationship with God is for our faith.

And so I want to give you the opportunity to put your faith in Jesus for the first time today.

If you're at one of our venues and you've never had a moment in time where you've made the conscious decision that your hope for this life and your eternal life is in Jesus and Jesus alone, I want to ask you to do that today.

With everyone's eyes closed around you, I want to ask for a moment of courage and ask you to just simply raise your hand.

And by raising your hand, this is a symbolic gesture saying, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

For those who have raised a hand or are raising your hand right now, the Holy Spirit is impressing on you, God is calling you into relationship by very simply raising your hand.

I need you to know that God sees your faith and accepts it.

Which means your sins are forgiven, past, present, and future sins, that you have been given eternal life, a gift that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

And Scripture says you have been adopted as God's child.

And what I want to do is give you a very easy opportunity to acknowledge this decision.

And so for those who raised a hand, I'm going to ask you to repeat this prayer after me, and I'm going to ask all the believers across our venues to pray this as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God, that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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Man, I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.