The Dark Side Of The Christmas Story

Um okay second thing real quickly.

Um uh uh we are asking you to bring today or next Sunday a envelope, a Christmas card with a blessing written in it.

Just a blessing, and uh uh a Christmas a Christmas uh gift card, any amount you want from any main store like Kroger or Target or something, uh put that in the card and then bring it, and we're gonna give that to the three families that we helped this summer remodel their home.

So we would love for you to participate in that if you can.

Um let's see.

Next Sunday, I'm very sad to say, next Sunday is the last Sunday that our church will meet at the Botanic Gardens.

And so that's that's very sad for me.

And I don't even know why.

Because it's been a good spot.

It's a good spot, it's been a great spot for us, and uh the Lord miraculously provided it, and um yeah, it's just been a wonderful place for me personally, and I'm very grateful for this place.

But anyway, next Sunday will be our last Sunday here, and then the next two weeks we will not meet on Sunday.

We will meet on Saturday.

Saturday, December 24th, and Saturday, December 31st, and that's because you know why.

And so, uh, and both of those Sundays we will meet at 1015, but at Kim and Jerry's house.

And we're gonna have special music and we're gonna have breakfast, and it's gonna be very fun, and I hope that you will come and be a part of that again, everyone is invited.

And then the last thing is, I think the last thing, yeah, is that um on January the 8th, which is in my mind the first Sunday of our for our church in the new year, um, we will be at our new location at the Shady Grove School on Shady Grove Road in between White Station and Yates.

And so I hope you'll come and be a part of that.

Did I leave out anything?

You do great.

I can't think of a thing.

Hooray.

All right.

Let me let me read the one of the Christmas story accounts.

You know that the uh the out of the four gospels, Matthew and Luke share with us the uh the advent of the Messiah, the coming of the Messiah.

And um it's very, well, I don't want to get ahead of myself, I'll say that in a minute.

Let me let me read um a part of Matthew's account.

This is how the birth of Jesus, and it's really not the birth of Jesus that he says, it's a very significant word in the Hebrew language.

This is how the genesis of Jesus came about.

Very uh, doubt not that he was very intentional in choosing that word.

This is how the genesis of Jesus came about.

How did the genesis of uh of Jesus come about?

The Spirit of God hovered over that which was barren and empty and void.

Have we heard that before again in the Bible?

Where the Spirit of God hovered over that which was empty and barren and void.

Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

Matthew wants us to see the connection there.

Very, but we could spend a lot of time there, but we won't.

This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about.

His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.

Because Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man and did not want to expose or shame her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, descendant of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.

Because Jesus, simply in the Hebrew language, means Yahweh saves.

That's what that means.

You will give him the name Yahweh saves, Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.

All of this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet, the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife, but he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus.

Ooh, I wish we had two weeks to talk about all that, but we won't.

Not the least of which is trying to move me from the 19th century to at least the 20th century.

And also to help me uh learn to use the language of my culture rather than the language that I really think and feel and believe.

And so she's works on that with me all the time.

And um I could give you some examples.

She doesn't want me to do that, that's why I won't.

Okay.

We're good.

Um but I I've just got to confess to you that I spend uh an inordinate amount of time listening to celebrities, politicians, rock, singing star people, uh uh Hollywood people.

I listen to famous people talk.

And I continually, and I really do, I continually wonder, do you mean what you say?

Do you mean that?

Or are you saying that because it's what you're supposed to say?

It's the right words.

It's you're you're afraid of the backlash, you're afraid of the consequences of not saying the right thing.

Are you saying that because you mean it?

You believe it?

Are you saying it because you're afraid not to, or because it's what you have been convinced you're supposed to say?

It's very important to Matthew and Luke.

Uh yeah, Matthew and Luke.

And also Mark and John, for that matter.

It's very important to them that we get.

They're not trying to present a messiah that they think people want to hear about.

They're not pulling any punches, they're not hiding anything, they're not just saying what is expected or desired.

They're not excluding things out of a fear that it's going to create backlash or negative consequences.

They're not presenting the Jesus in the Gospels that they think people want.

They are presenting the Jesus that is.

They are presenting the Jesus in the Gospels that they actually witnessed and experienced.

It's exactly what the Apostle John said in 1 John chapter 1.

1 John 1 · chapter mention

We are presenting to you the person that we have seen and we have heard and we have touched.

And have our lives have been changed by this person, and that's the person that we are going to tell you about.

It's very important that we see that, but they're not presenting the Jesus that the Jewish community wanted.

They're presenting the Jesus that they actually heard and witnessed.

Any thought?

Okay.

I said this a minute ago, but I'll say it again.

Matthew and Luke present the, they tell us about the birth of the Messiah.

It's very significant that they choose different facets of the coming of Jesus.

Luke chooses certain facts or incidences, and Matthew chooses others by example.

Matthew writes about the coming of the Messiah and its impact upon Joseph.

Luke writes about the coming of the Messiah and its impact on Mary.

Matthew writes about the coming of the Messiah and its impact on the non-Jewish world.

Luke presents the coming of the Messiah and its impact upon the lowest, the people that are on the lowest rung of society.

Matthew presents the coming of the Messiah from through the lens of joy.

He mentions it throughout the narrative of Jesus' coming.

Everybody's rejoicing.

Everybody's joyful.

The wise, no, no, no, I'm so sorry.

The shepherds are rejoicing, the angels are rejoicing, the old people, Anna and Simon, Simeon.

They're rejoicing.

Everybody, when they hear about the coming of the Messiah, everybody rejoices.

But in Matthew, and that's where we're going to camp today, Matthew presents the coming of the Messiah through a very, very different lens.

And it's the lens that the Messiah came into a world that was very dark, very scary, very sad.

A world of oppression and poverty and harshness, brutal taxation, darkness, and danger.

I stopped reading the Christmas story at the end of chapter one just for the sake of time.

But if we continue to read, the very next story that you see in Matthew chapter 2 is about the wise men, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

Matthew 2 · chapter mention

But the very fact that Matthew includes this, this actually took place about a year or so year or two after Jesus was born that the wise men come.

But what the wise men bring when they come is disaster.

Danger and threat to the Messiah and his mom and dad, and not just danger, but disaster to the community that they were living in.

Even with the symbols they bring, frankincense in particular, being embalming.

Associated with death.

Very much so.

They didn't even really know, in fact, they asked, you know, where is this person and what's this all about and what's going on?

They had very, very limited information.

And we sing songs about the wise men rejoicing, but the wise men didn't rejoice in the birth of the Messiah.

That's not what it says.

It says they rejoiced that the star reappeared.

They've not seen the star since they left Bethlehem, uh Babylon.

They just knew from Daniel's prophecies, Daniel was a wise man 600 years earlier, and he said there's going to be a star.

You're going to see an unusual star in the sky, and when you see it, go to Israel.

The star didn't lead them from Babylon to Jerusalem.

That might be in a Christmas card and a song, but that's not in the Bible.

Okay?

So they just go to Jerusalem and they walk in and they go, they don't know what to do, but it's such a large group of people, such a large entourage that the Bible does say that all of Jerusalem was sort of stirred up at this group of wise men from Babylon.

And they go to the king.

Bad call.

You don't ever go to a king and say, Where's the new king?

That's a bad question.

Puts the present king in a bad mood.

And it's exactly what happened.

These wise men go to the present king, which is named Herod, and he's a very insecure, very fearful, very bad person.

Where's the new king born of the Jews?

And then they I'm not going to get into all the rest of the story, but then they leave Herod's pallets, and now where do we go?

And it says they saw the star and they rejoiced.

Not in the birth of the Messiah, but that they saw the star again.

They knew what to do next.

That's the way that worked.

Anyway, I just want to take a few minutes today, and I want us to, Shirley and I, to sort of talk about how the Christmas story would have impacted Mary and Joseph.

Not how it impacts us, but how it impacted the original first two witnesses to the coming of the Messiah.

Try to see it through their eyes.

And it's important that we know that Mary and Joseph grew up in a little town in northern Israel called Nazareth.

It was a very poor little town.

There were probably only three, 350 people that even lived in this little town.

It was a very poor, very small, very insignificant podunk, a dead end.

You didn't want to live there.

Because it was a dead end.

There was no opportunity for people that lived there.

And such a bad, crummy, B-teen kind of a place to live in, that 30 years later, when one of the disciples, Nathaniel, hears that Jesus is from Nazareth, he goes, Nazareth?

Can anything good come from that place?

So, I mean, it was not a place that you, if the if Matthew and Luke were trying to create this image of this great person that was coming into the world, he wouldn't be from Nazareth.

But that's where he was from.

At least that's where he grew up.

And so it was a very poor, insignificant town.

Mary and Joseph's parents would have arranged their marriage five, ten years earlier.

And there came a moment when it was time for them to get married, and the way this would work normally was that they would get engaged formally, and in their eyes, they're already married.

They're married.

And they take a year, and Mary plans the wedding.

Mary and her mama plan the wedding.

And all the aunts, all the cousins, all the ladies in the town would have been involved in the planning of this.

Because truthfully, according to historians, these people were so poor.

If you could think about the fiddler on the roof and how poor those people were, the only joy that these people really experienced was planning weddings and experiencing weddings.

It was a huge deal.

And Mary and her mama and the grandmamas and aunts and cousins and all the nieces would have all been planning this thing for a year.

And while they're planning the wedding, Joseph is building a house.

Could have been next door to his parents, but it would have been in the vicinity, very close.

But he would have spent a year building a home.

And at the end of that year, typically a year, they would get married, and Joseph would take Mary to their new home.

Well, sometime during that year, God sends a message supernaturally both to Mary and to Joseph and says, You are not going to believe what is about to happen to y'all.

And yeah.

And so they both are told that Mary is pregnant supernaturally.

Most of us in this room, almost all of us in this room, would have responded to that announcement differently than Joseph and Mary did.

They would have, or we would have said, because what they understood that everything that they had dreamed of their entire lives was over.

It is a new day for Mary and Joseph.

And all of the plans, all of the work, all of the preparation, all of their dreams were gone.

And this, the one thing they had of value was their family.

Or their families.

And them agreeing to participate in these plans of God, they understood, they're not dummies.

It was going to jeopardize every relationship that they had in their lives.

And it that fear became a reality.

Both to Mary and Joseph.

Because angels didn't come to anybody else.

Right?

Both to Mary and Joseph, to their families, and to their community.

Can you imagine trying to make someone believe that story?

If it were you.

We have no indication that they even tried.

Yeah.

Who who would believe it?

Who would buy that?

Anyway.

Seems to me that there's a moment, maybe lots of moments throughout a life where logic and faith, you know, butt heads, maybe all the time, but certainly we're logic and faith butt heads.

And at that point, we have to choose one.

Logic and faith, you said.

You know, logic and reason and um anything a human being could do of their own will, with you know.

Faith in something, and at that point we have to make a decision.

And my only thought there is that both of those, whichever we decide, both come at a price.

Yes.

There's just a price for both.

Yes.

That's a great question that one path is going to be easy and the other's hard, or one's going to be easy because it's the right path.

Oh, and look, I've chosen the right path.

Uh-oh, things are hard, I've chosen the wrong path.

But both have their cost.

And um, Mary and Joseph, of course, chose faith.

I mean, yeah, but I want to add, I want to build on what you said.

Just because a path is hard, there is a natural tendency by all of us, I think, or most of us, that if it's hard, that means it was the wrong path.

Because if we chose the right path, it would be easy.

Clearly, the stor the story of Jesus coming into the world disproves that.

Jump eight and a half months later, Joseph finds out that he's got to go because of a decree of the literally the emperor of Rome back to his family's ancestor birthplace, which is Bethlehem, which is a suburb of Jerusalem, four or five miles outside of Jerusalem.

And that's where his ancestors are from, one of which was King David.

And he's got to go there and register.

Mary has no one.

She's almost nine months pregnant.

She has no one.

No one will take care of her.

No one will take her in.

No one cares.

And so she has to make the 80-mile journey, probably, we don't know, but probably on a horse or a donkey.

It's uh on a map, it's down, down, down.

Elevation-wise, it's up, up, up.

And it was a very uh difficult journey.

They get to Bethlehem, and uh yes, there was probably an increase of people in town, but that's not why Mary and Joseph had no place to stay.

The town was full of Joseph's family.

Any women, any one of which would have taken them in under different circumstances.

I never thought about that.

But none of them would take Jesus, well, Mary and Joseph in at that moment.

What we do, we don't even know really where he was born, as far as was it a barn, was it a cave, was it just a little like a like a little lean-to shack kind of addition to a house.

But what we do know that Matthew is communicating, he was born in very harsh circumstances, and he came into a world where he was not welcome.

That's the that's the point that I want us to see here.

He was not welcome.

Now you any of y'all that have had babies, you just think about that and how that would have uh no no mom, uh, you think about not being with Rain when she had daddy.

Um mom, no celebration, no showers, no rejoicing, no support, no blessing from the local religious leaders, no home to even take the baby to.

And so they um they decide that staying in Bethlehem was probably going to be a better plan than moving back to Nazareth.

And so they stay in Bethlehem, try to build a life.

It's closer to Jerusalem, very close.

And so there probably was a lot more opportunity for Joseph as a carpenter than in Nazareth.

And so uh they start from scratch, literally, they start from scratch and try to build a life.

Year or two later, these magi come to town, and totally turn everything upside down again, and endanger the baby and his parents, and uh bring great disaster upon the community, the community being primarily people that are Joseph's relatives.

This crazy king sends soldiers to kill all these babies within a certain age range, and most of those babies were related to Joseph.

You think about the guilt that Mary and Joseph would have felt, knowing that indirectly they were responsible for that.

Yes, the wise men brought provision, which they needed to go again, pick up, move 300 miles, probably to Alexandria in Egypt, and uh start over again.

They live down there for a couple of years, they're told move back to Israel.

They pick up again and have to start over, they get back to Bethlehem and they are told, don't, nope, don't stay here, go back to Nazareth.

Oh, goody, the place that is overflowing with gossip and slander and judging and meanness and condemnation.

And yet again, they have to start over from scratch.

Um I really believe that Matthew wants us to feel this, to ponder this.

The birth of Jesus was a announcement, it was an announcement of joy.

It brought joy into the world, yes.

But the coming of the Messiah also brought great pain, great confusion, great loss, great sacrifice.

And the the the well, I've got a couple of thoughts here as we try to land this airplane that you want us to think about.

One is, I believe with all my heart that Matthew wants very much for us to read this story and understand that the coming of the Messiah was never intended to automatically fix all problems, heal all wounds, fulfill all dreams.

Um that is not why Jesus came.

Matthew tells us why he came by the two names that he focuses on.

Jesus.

His name will be Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Not fulfill their dreams, not make all the problems go away, not make life easier.

He came to save his people from their sins.

And his name will be Emmanuel, and he will be with you.

He will be with you.

Even the very prophets that there were a number of Old Testament prophets that announced the birth of the or the coming of the Messiah.

It's very significant that Matthew identifies Isaiah, who was ultimately sawed in half, Jeremiah, who was kidnapped and taken down to Egypt as a prisoner and spent the rest of his life as a prisoner in Egypt, and Hosea, who, I don't have time to get into that, he had a very bad life.

I'll just say that.

He had a very, very bad, tough life.

Christmas does not remove life's problems, life's confusion, life's darkness.

You know, Christmas is an unusual holiday.

It is the best of times for some of us.

And it's the worst of times for some of us.

For some of us, it's the worst season of the year.

And I'm not trying to be a rain cloud or an Eeyore, you know, I'm not trying.

But I do think Matthew wants us to balance the impact of the coming of the Messiah.

Yes, Luke, it brings joy, but it also brings great loss and sorrow and sacrifice and pain.

And we need to see that both are true.

And we can choose to, Jesus.

I don't like that.

That's fair.

But just own it.

I don't, that's not the Messiah I'm looking for.

Okay.

But that's the Jesus that Matthew and Luke present to us.

And I'll just end with this.

As I read and read and read and read and read this story all week long, one of the or two things jumped out at me.

One of the things that jumped out at me was that God did not try to help us from afar.

Again, I hear these politicians, and these, you know, rock stars and movie stars and famous people, and they want to help everybody.

But they want to help you while they're riding in a limousine, flying in a private jet, and living in a mansion.

They want to help, but they want to do it from afar.

They want to help, but they want to do it from a place of convenience and safety.

And I'm that's me too.

That's me too.

But that's not the God of the Christmas story.

His name is Emmanuel.

God is with us.

He came and identified with and experienced the pain and the loss and the suffering and the rejection and the condemnation and the who was talking about.

Oh, Hannah was talking about people being ungrateful.

And how painful it is to try to do good to people and to be given back in gratitude.

Jesus understands that.

Jesus didn't send an angel, he didn't send a prophet, he didn't, he came.

God came to be with us in our pain and in our loss and our suffering.

He identifies with us.

Romans 8 says that God sent his son to be an offering for sin.

He made himself poor so that he could make us rich.

Do you understand how poor Jesus was?

He was born poor, he grew up poor, he lived his adult working life poor, and he died.

He had nothing.

He made himself poor.

Nobody knows what how it feels like to be poor.

Jesus does.

Jesus does.

Hebrews 2 says that God made the pioneer of our salvation perfect or complete through his suffering.

Hebrews 2 goes on to say, he shared in our humanity.

He was made fully human in every way.

And Hebrews 4 says that we have a high priest who can empathize with our weaknesses, for he was tempted just like us.

Not only did God not send some help, he brought the help.

The other thing that jumped out at me is that God does not hesitate, not for a half a second, to invite his favorites to a similar life.

God doesn't, he doesn't apologize, he doesn't make excuses, he doesn't try to soft, you know, sugarcoat it.

He invites his most precious favorite people.

And I gotta think he was sort of partial to Mary and Joseph, don't you?

I mean, come on.

I know he loves everybody, but it's his mom and his dad, at least the dad that raised him.

He had to be partial to him, he had to really like them.

He invited them without a second hesitation to participate in the darkness, in the sorrow, the confusion, the doubt, the fear, the death of their dreams.

He invited them to participate.

And guys, good news or bad news, I'm not sure you can like it or not, he invites me and you, because we're his favorites too.

He's especially fond of everybody in this room.

And he invites us to participate in a similar life of pain, loss, and difficulty.

Yes, Jesus has created a life, a calling of immeasurable worth and immeasurable impact.

But that worth and that impact comes at a cost.

And it's not just a cost to Jesus, it's a cost to those that embrace his life.

That's why Jesus says in John chapter 12, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it'll remain alone.

John 12 · chapter mention

But if it dies, oh, if it dies, it'll produce an abundant harvest.

That's not just talking about Jesus.

That's talking about those that will embrace his life.

Die! Die to your dreams, die to your reputation, die to your wealth, die to your health, die to everything that you have been told is of value.

Die to it.

And if you do, and to the degree you do, oh, what a harvest.

I personally guarantee, I put my name on the line.

Yahweh, oh, what a harvest will be created for all that are willing to die.

Jesus said in Luke 9, if you would come after me, deny yourself, and take up your cross and follow me.

John 15, remember that a slave is not greater than his master, they will treat you just like they treated me.

The face that came to my mind all week long as I thought about that idea that God invites us to similar lives of pain and loss and sacrifice.

But with the promise that it'll be worth it.

I had the privilege of growing up around her daddy.

And I can't tell you how many times we'd be taking a walk or sitting in a duck blind or in a fishing boat or sitting at his house.

And he would say something to that effect.

He said it a hundred different ways.

But here was what he said.

Larry?

Or Laddie?

That's what he said.

Laddie?

Marriage is hard.

It's hard every day.

But I'm telling you this, it's worth it.

Jesus coming into the life of a person or into the home of a family doesn't make all the problems go away.

Ooh, it's all good now.

Woo! No.

Bills still aren't paid.

People still get sick.

Kids still rebel.

Mates disappoint and wound and hurt.

Christmas doesn't make that go away.

But and that's because Jesus invites us to participate in a life that's similar to his.

But he promises us that the glory that he ultimately experienced and was given is the same glory that he promises us.

That's why in Romans 3, Paul says, For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

But then Paul finishes that thought in Hebrews 2.

He says, You know why Jesus came?

You know why the Messiah came?

He came and lived and died and rose again to bring many sons and daughters to glory.

That you screwed it up.

You lost the glory.

I came to give you the glory back.

But in between, it's going to be hard sometimes.

Harder for some, harder, a longer period of hard for some.

But it'll be hard.

And that part of the Christmas story, it is important to remember.

As the presents and the songs and the decorations and the children and the food, that's wonderful, and I enjoy every second of it.

But we've got to keep both parts of the story in front of us.

Okay.

What are you thinking, bud?

I'm thinking that, you know, people don't like to suffer, and they don't, and so it's so easy to throw the creator under the bus.

Well, if this is the way it is, then I don't want any part of that happens all the time.

Um, but the the funny thing about that is that doesn't change anything.

Throwing God under the bus or rejecting or whatever, it doesn't change anything.

Um but to your point, and I think it's the poet, it's the a poet, and I think it's Robert Browning.

Um correct me if I'm wrong.

Okay, it will be correct.

Well, I'm actually looking at I'm actually looking at John.

Um he says, you know, a man's, I think this is about what this quote I'm I just remembered, I think is about faith.

Robert Browning says, a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?

And I think that when the angel said his name is Jesus, this little baby, Jehovah saves.

Yahweh saves.

Yahweh saves.

Um that's important to me.

That our reach and our yearning, which will always exceed our grace.

Grasp.

Exists.

But one day we will grasp it.

And one day it will be ours.

It'll be ours.

But it's going to be handed to us.

We don't have to claw and scrap and fight and to get it, it'll be handed to us.

As you were sharing that, the image just came to my mind.

I wonder how many days, those first few years of Jesus' life.

Mary and Joseph, maybe together or maybe apart, with tears streaming down their face.

Can you imagine what they were praying?

Can you imagine the prayers of that couple?

Don't you think they probably were praying?

God, where are you?

What's going on?

What is this?

How can this happen?

What does this mean?

How can this turn out well?

God, where are you?

And don't you know God was saying, He's right there.

He's right there.

Just look into his face.

You can't see it today.

But he is going to make everything good.

Just not on your time schedule.

And not the way you would have probably planned.

But it's going to be okay, and it's going to be okay through his life.

Thank you.

Lord help us.

Many, many people.

But his name is Jesus.

Yahweh saves.

He came to save his people from their sins.

And so while we're going to celebrate Christmas this year, we're also going to celebrate his death and his burial and his resurrection.

And so I invite you to come.

Let me see here.

Rodney and Becky, can y'all come up and help me?

Please.

There are wine and bread in the little covered things for those of you that would like that.

And then there's cups of real wine.

And here's bread if you would like to take real bread and bread and real wine.

We offer both.

And so just take a moment before you come up.

Maybe you're sitting there today and you, Larry, I'm sorry, but I can't help it.

My cup's so full.

I'm so happy.

I'm so joyful.

I'm so blessed.

Good.

I'm not asking anybody to feel guilty.

Oh my goodness, let's give thanks and rejoice in the goodness and the blessings of God.

But maybe you're sitting there going, my life isn't, that doesn't describe my life right now, and I don't understand why.

I don't offer any answers.

I do offer the life of the one who had a similar life and whose parents had a similar life.

And promises that he's with you, and promises that he will ultimately make everything good if you'll trust him and give him time.

So maybe you just need to stop for a second and think about that and talk to the Lord about that if you need to.

And uh when you're ready, you come and eat and drink and give thanks.