Christmas Past with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's 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.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

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

If you're at our Petrenko venue, you are in such good hands with Pastor Andre.

If you're here at our Holotus venue, likewise, you're in great hands with Pastor Tony.

If you need anything or have any questions, find them in the lobby after service or get connected with our Connect team.

Now, as a pastor, one of the challenges of the Christmas season is everyone knows the story that you are going to preach on.

I once heard a comedian say that being a preacher is like having to write a book report every week, but it's always on the exact same book.

Now, I relish the opportunity, especially during the Christmas season, because this is the story that represents the most important moment in human history.

The God of the universe, so moved by his love for his creation that he stepped out of his home in heaven and came down into the midst of our brokenness.

The creator, born into creation in the most humble of circumstances.

This moment so cosmically shifted the order of world events that to this day it is still the dividing line of history.

Prior to this moment, history counts down to the king's arrival.

And after the first Christmas, time reset in anticipation of his promised return.

Now, Christmas is also a time that has inspired countless other great narratives, like The Nutcracker, The Polar Express, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, or as my kids call it, the You'll Shoot Your Eye Out movie, A Miracle on 34th Street, Will Farrell's Elf, and look, I'm not even gonna debate this with you.

One of the greatest Christmas movies, Die Hard.

Now, so many great Christmas stories.

However, there is one Christmas narrative that has become really a template of sorts.

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

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

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

Now, since Dickens first published his work, we have seen the likes of Mickey Mouse, Bill Murray, Fred Flintstone, Barbie, Will Farrell, and Ryan Reynolds, Mr.

McGoo, Sesame Street, Doctor Who, and countless others put their own spin on this story.

And so over the next three weeks, we're gonna do our own meta version of a Christmas carol.

Instead of looking at this Christmas, 2024, we're gonna go back 2,000 years ago to the first Christmas.

And by starting at the first Christmas, we're going to look at the past that led up to it, at the future and real circumstances surrounding it, and then the future that it is pointing to.

But before we do that, would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

And during this season, we thank you for coming for us, for demonstrating your great love for us.

I thank you for MetaCurch, one movement meeting in multiple locations, all for the purpose of doing whatever it takes to introduce people to who you are and the real hope that you offer them.

God, I pray for wherever we're at in this season.

Maybe this Christmas is a season of rejoicing for some of us, maybe it's a very difficult season for others.

That wherever we're at, we would be open to you, Holy Spirit, speaking to us, challenging us, and moving us forward into the life that you created us to live.

We love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

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

Now, in a Christmas carol, Scrooge is first visited by the ghost of Christmas past.

He's taken back into scenes throughout his life that help us understand how he developed into the character that we meet at the beginning of the novel.

In this series, we are looking at the first Christmas.

And even if you don't know the story, you kind of know the story, right?

Mary and Joseph and a donkey in a barn, Jesus in a manger, shepherds and wise men, silent night, holy night, eight-pound six-out newborn infant Jesus.

You know the story.

However, while most people could recite a decently detailed version of the birth of Jesus, even most Christians are lacking in all that happens in Scripture prior to his birth that sets this moment up.

And just like Scrooge could not truly understand his own story without a review of key moments in his past, we cannot fully grasp the significance of the first Christmas without doing the same.

And so today we're going to go back.

And by back, I mean like all the way back.

At the very beginning of Scripture, it starts with a bang, more than likely, quite literally.

Both scripture and science tell us that before the creation of the universe, there was nothing.

And I mean nothing.

There was no space, there was no time, and there was no matter.

Nothing existed.

Then, in a moment that scientists have come to call the Big Bang, everything exploded into existence.

The universe, including our galaxy, the sun, moon, and the stars, the existence of time and matter and the astronomically complex conditions for the creation and the sustaining of life.

All of that came from nothing.

No space, no time, no matter.

Now, if you believe in an all-powerful, personal, spaceless, timeless, immaterial God, then you have a very plausible explanation for how this happens.

If you don't believe in anything other than what you can observe, such as a materialist or most atheist, then the creation of the cosmos is like a miracle wrapped in a mystery, stuffed in an enigma.

Why this is important is because the Christmas story is the continuation of the story that God started when he created the cosmos motivated by his love.

We believe that there is a creator and that he created out of his nature, and scripture reveals that God is love itself.

He is the very definition and standard he created out of his love and for relationship specifically with the highest order of creation, which is humanity.

In the garden narrative in Genesis, God is in deep personal relationship with Adam and Eve.

They have full access to God and they enjoy his abiding relationship with them.

However, to fully understand the first Christmas, you also have to see where things went wrong.

Because God is love and created us out of love, he also made us with freedom.

This opened up the possibility for us going astray from our relationship with our Creator, choosing to break the rules that form our relationship with him.

And that's exactly what happened.

In Genesis 3, we read the woman saw the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and it was desirable for obtaining wisdom, and so she took some of its fruit and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

And then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

This was direct disobedience of God's one and only rule.

We ate the fruit.

And humanity has been doing it ever since.

This is the moment that the world fell into chaos.

Brother turned on brother, husbands abused wives, children rebelled against parents, parents abandoned children, government became tyrannical, addictions took control of our lives, everything bad, everything evil, everything painful from this one moment.

Humanity was banished from the garden and now lived outside of relationship with God.

However, even in this moment of darkness, God demonstrated that hope was not lost, that God would continue fighting for us and making a way for us to be back in relationship with Him.

As God was explaining the new state of play in the world, he snuck in an allusion to the future coming of someone who would deal with the darkness that had been introduced into our lives.

God spoke to that agent of darkness in the garden and said, I will put hostility between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.

Then God said something very interesting.

He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.

He will strike your head.

Which causes us to ask, who was he?

The coming of one who would take off the head of the snake and the poison of sin that it had injected into our reality.

See, this was the first of many, many prophecies that are littered all throughout the Old Testament.

Every time the world seemed at its darkest, there was a promise that something miraculous, something cosmic, something that would shift the foundations of reality was coming.

In time, the world became hostile to God, openly disobedient, corrupted with idolatry.

As a part of God's plan, he called out one man, Abram, and he promised to give him a new name, Abraham, and importantly, a new destiny, to be the father of God's chosen people.

Attached to this promise was the ultimate purpose that God had in mind.

In Genesis 12, God says to Abram, I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

The ultimate purpose of Abraham's blessing was to open the door of relationship with God to all people in all places.

This was pointing forward again to the coming of one who would set all things right.

The sting of sin injected into our world that had plagued humanity and separated us from God would be finally dealt with.

As time went on, these prophecies became more and more specific, painting the picture of the one that they had started calling the Messiah, which means the anointed one, and over time would become the Greek word, the Christ.

Prophets began to predict his exact lineage, like when Isaiah said, Then a shoot will grow up from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit.

The spirit of the Lord will rest on him, a spirit of wisdom and understanding, a spirit of counsel and strength, a spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.

The prophet Micah pinpointed where this coming Messiah would be born, not in a massive metropolis or one of the seats of governmental power, but in a tiny, obscure town.

Micah said, But you, O Bethlehem, are only a small village in Judah, and yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, whose origins are from the distant past.

In the 8th century BC, a prophet named Isaiah got even more specific about the birth of Jesus, this time, claiming a fact of the coming Messiah's birth that would make everyone at the time roll their eyes.

Isaiah said, the Lord himself will choose the sign.

Look, the virgin will conceive a child.

The virgin will give birth to a son.

All of these very pointed and specific prophecies, centuries before the first Christmas, were laying the groundwork for the coming of the one who would make all things new, set all wrongs right, and deliver humanity from our bondage to sin.

When governments would grow tyrannical, there was hope in the one who was coming.

God would speak through his prophets and give evidence that the plan was still in motion.

However, the heart of mankind was still rebellious, constantly turning from God, and constantly turning to the things of the world.

All throughout the Old Testament, God was patient and he would woo his people back, often by miraculous means.

When times were at their hardest, people held on to the hope that the Christ, the Messiah, would one day come.

The cycle continued, and eventually God warned the people that their constant rebellion would cause them to live in a period of darkness.

The Old Testament of the Bible ends with Malachi the prophet looking forward to the one who would show up on the scene and prepare the way for the Christ.

See, I think a lot of us read our Bibles as if the last page of the Old Testament happens, a few hours pass, and then the gospels start in the New Testament.

Like there's no break there.

The prophecies end and all of a sudden the birth of Jesus happens.

But that's not correct.

What actually happens is after Malachi's prophecy, the wayward people quit hearing from God for 400 years.

They had finally gone into such rebellion, they had turned their back on God so many times that they quit hearing from God altogether.

This is what we call the inter-testamental period.

It's the time in between the Old and New Testament.

Others, perhaps more appropriately, call these 400 years the silent period.

Centuries of prophecy and promise turned into radio silence.

The people had abandoned God and they could no longer hear his voice.

This season informs many of our Christmas hymns that describe this moment of expectation as the people aren't hearing from God and are desperate for the promise to come to pass.

One of the more famous hymns is, O come, O come, Emmanuel, which says, O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here.

They were in a period of exile, not just because the Roman Empire had come and occupied them.

They were exiled from the voice of God Himself.

We can't really understand the first Christmas without this part of the story.

Jesus did not just break into our reality, he broke through four centuries of silence.

Four centuries of the people losing hope and questioning everything.

And perhaps that is exactly how you feel this Christmas of 2024.

Clinging desperately to the hope of what God has promised, but feeling like there is zero evidence that things will actually work out.

You've been praying for the right romantic partner, and God has just not brought them into your life.

You've been hoping for a better financial situation, but all you have found is more stress.

You are pleading for your kids to find their true identity, and they just keep falling deeper and deeper into the grip of the world.

What do we do when we feel like God is silent?

What do we do when we can't find the light at the end of the tunnel?

How do we move forward when all we have is hope?

Maybe that's the question you're asking this Christmas.

How do I move forward when all I have is hope?

Israel had always heard from God.

They had kings and judges and prophets and priests, all who had heard from God through the centuries, people who could speak on behalf of the Almighty and give direction and comfort and correction, and now there was nothing.

Once again, Israel's rebellion caused them to be conquered, now by the Roman Empire.

Some, frankly, had given up on the coming of the Christ, and others were at the height of anticipation, doubling down on their prayers and begging God to send the Messiah.

Part of what we see by digging through the past that preceded the first Christmas is that Jesus came at the exact right time.

God always has a plan, and scripture calls the coming of Jesus the fullness of time, which just means that all of the conditions were meticulously prepared for Christ's arrival.

Historically, Jesus arrived during a time called the Pax Romana.

This was a unique period of peace in the Roman Empire, and it enabled safer travel and stable communication.

Roman roads and secure sea routes meant that the gospel could move more quickly than ever before.

The empire's legal structure also allowed early Christians to establish communities and travel across vast regions, setting the stage for the eventual rapid growth of the church that Jesus would start.

The people of that time were also increasingly disillusioned with traditional pagan beliefs and seeking deeper meaning.

Even within Judaism, under Roman occupation and with centuries now of silence from God, there was an intense anticipation for the promised Messiah.

Jesus arrived precisely at the peak of expectancy, fulfilling ancient prophecies and offering hope to both Jews and Gentiles alike.

Even the language of the time was perfectly primed for Jesus' coming.

Greek was now widely spoken throughout the known world because of Alexander the Great and all of his conquest.

This allowed the gospel to be communicated across diverse cultures without language barriers.

This common language made the gospel accessible and compelling all across cultural lines.

See, altogether, the historical and social and linguistic and spiritual conditions aligned to show that God's timing for Jesus' arrival was truly perfect.

Even in the 400 years of silence, God was working behind the scenes all of these conditions for Jesus to come at the exact right time.

If we remember, the last prophet of the Old Testament, right before the 400 years of silence, was Malachi.

And Malachi prophesied about the coming of one who would pave the way for the Christ.

In Malachi 3, the Lord says, See, I'm going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me.

400 years later, none other than the cousin of Jesus, John the Baptist, played this very role.

Matthew describes John's role this way: This is the one about whom it is written, see, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, and he will prepare the way before you.

Hope arrived in the most unexpected of ways.

God spoke once again, not through prophets or kings or priests, but by entering the world in the most humble of circumstances.

You see, what Charles Dickens was showing us in a Christmas carol was the power of reflecting on your past.

You don't really know who you are until you wrestle with where you have been.

Scrooge desperately needed the perspective of past pains before he could mature into the person that he was destined to become.

Part of what happens when we take a careful look at our past is we begin to see God's fingerprints through all of it.

There are countless times that God is preparing us, protecting us, guiding us, maturing us.

But in the moment, it's often hard to see.

If you're in the middle of your pain this Christmas season, it might be difficult to see how God is behind the scenes working in your life.

In the 400 years of silence, God was behind the scenes setting the perfect conditions for Jesus to come and to change the world.

Every Roman road that was built, every technological advancement, the setting of a common language, the dispersion of Jewish people around the known world, literally countless things that made the timing of the first Christmas perfect.

Jesus was the promised one who, though Satan may bruise our heels, would ultimately crush the head of sin and death forever.

Jesus was the prodigy of Abraham, who would bring blessing to the whole world.

Jesus is the anchor of hope when the seas of life threaten to take us under.

I asked earlier.

How do we move forward when all we have is hope?

This is how Israel felt for 400 years waiting for God to speak again.

Today we have that answer.

But first, we have to know what hope it is, and maybe more importantly, what hope it is not.

Hope is not wishful thinking.

Hope is not blind luck.

Hope is not reading the tea leaves or playing the odds.

Hope is not wondering pessimistically if something will or will not happen.

After 400 years of deafening silence, hope arrived not in an event or a word or a prophecy.

Hope came in a person.

Hope came incarnate.

The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

God himself, the organizing principle of the cosmos, the uncaused cause, the spaceless, timeless, immaterial, all-powerful creator who made us to enjoy relationship with us, came down and rescued us.

We were the ones who went astray.

We walked out of relationship with God through our rebellion.

But God proved his love for us and that while we were still sinners, he came for us.

Hope is a person.

Hope has a name.

Hope's name is Jesus.

Hope is a guarantee that God never forgets his promises.

When we go to the first Christmas and we look at the first Christmas past and we see all of the prophecies and all of the angst and all the periods of darkness and all of the occupation and all of the worry, what we learn is that God never forgets his promises, that even when we sin and even when we go astray, and even when we turn our back on God, God never forgets his promises.

And even when you can't really see that he's working in this season, even when it feels like all hope is lost, we still have hope because hope is not a feeling.

Hope is a person.

And that person, Jesus, came to this earth.

He stepped out of perfection and down into our brokenness.

And he came to this world for you and for me.

The first Christmas reminds us that God never forgets his promises.

And so if you're struggling this season, let me give you a promise from God that you can cling to in these periods of silence.

Romans 8, 28 says, We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.

The most important word in that verse is the second word, we know.

That is what hope sounds like.

Not we wish that all things maybe possibly will work together, or we assume things might work together, or we're cautiously optimistic that given the right circumstances, God may work things together.

Paul says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love God and who are called according to his purpose.

This is what hope sounds like.

Paul was suffering all of the time.

The Roman church was suffering, often persecuted.

And Paul reminded them that hope is not a feeling, hope is not fleeting, hope is not wishful thinking, hope is found in Jesus.

We know.

We have hope because God came down to us on Christmas.

Hope showed up and made good on every prophecy and every promise that God had made, because God never forgets his promises.

Now, even in the silence, God is working things together for our good.

Our job is to keep hope alive, not by focusing on ourself or our circumstance, but by focusing on Jesus, who rescued us from sin and who made us children of God.

This is how Paul talked about it to the Galatians.

He said, When the time came to completion, in other words, at the exact right time, God sent his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

And because you are sons, God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

So you are no longer a slave, you are a son.

And if a son, then God has made you an heir.

We have hope not because of who we are, but because of who our Savior is and who our heavenly father is.

When we look at the first Christmas past, we learn God never forgets his promises.

God is our heavenly father, and he is the one father who always gets things right.

100% of the time, God keeps his promises to you.

God does not just see you as a member of some religion.

He doesn't just see you as a simple part of his movement.

God sees you as his child, and God is always there for his children.

God has made us promises that even though there will be suffering, and even though the days may get dark, and even though things may get confusing, that we have hope because of Christmas.

See, Christmas was the start of God's great rescue plan.

First, Jesus came.

This is the moment that divides all of history in two.

Then Jesus lived the perfect life that I could not live, that you could not live.

By living an actual perfect life, Jesus became the only perfect sacrifice.

Our sin that started with a tree in a garden, that grew into the rebellion all of us have, scripture says that all have sinned and all have fallen short of God's glorious standard, that sin that is in my life and in your life separates us from God.

But God loved you so much he created the cosmos for relationship with you.

And even though we rebel and break that relationship, he comes and pursues us.

Jesus came to this earth and he lived the perfect life and he became the only suitable sacrifice and he made the sacrifice play.

Jesus exchanged his life for ours.

And when Jesus died, he paid the price of your sins.

Three days later, Jesus rolled away his own stone.

He walked out of his own grave, proving that he could offer us the one thing that could give us true hope.

He could give us life after death.

And all that Jesus asks is for our faith.

We get it wrong when we take the religious route and we think that we've got to jump through the right hoops and we've got to go to the right classes and we have to say the right special magic words.

All Jesus asks for is our faith.

And if you are willing to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is the God of the universe who entered into our world, that he did what he claims to have done, that he died for your sin and rose again three days later, then Jesus promises to forgive all of your sins, past, present, even your future sin.

God promises to give you eternal life, a gift that no one and nothing can ever take away from you.

And by receiving eternal life, you are able to live not just in this world that is full of pain and suffering, but you are now living for the life that comes after death.

Jesus promises that those who put their faith in him are adopted into the family of God.

And you're given a perfect heavenly Father who always gets it right.

And so what I want to do is I want to give you an opportunity to make that same decision today.

I want to give you the opportunity to place your faith in Jesus.

Across our venues, if you would, right where you are, just bow your head and close your eyes.

There's nothing magic about this moment.

Just create some space for reflection.

And I wonder if you're willing to be really honest today.

I wonder how things are going this Christmas.

Is this a season of great rejoicing?

Is everything up and to the right?

Or is this a season of pain for you?

Are there areas in your life where you are suffering?

We all deal with pain.

We all deal with confusion.

We all go through hard seasons.

And in those seasons, where do you find your hope?

I wonder if there's anyone across our venues or joining us online who has never taken the first step of putting their faith in Jesus, of connecting your life to the one true source of hope.

If that's you and you're ready today to make that decision, I want to give you the opportunity to do that.

Perhaps you can feel the Holy Spirit really pressing in on your heart right now.

That is God calling you back into relationship with Him.

This Christmas could be the most important Christmas of your life as you make the decision to come back into relationship with your Heavenly Father.

And so with everyone's eyes closed across our venues, if that's you and you're ready today to make the decision to put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you right where you're sitting to just simply raise your arm up.

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

Which means your sins are forgiven.

You are a child of God and you have been given eternal life.

And all I want to do is very simply help you acknowledge this decision.

And so if you raised a hand, I'm going to ask you to repeat a prayer with 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.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take the next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit.

And you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

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