The Birth of Jesus

Matthew 1, 18 through 25.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

For he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

Behold, the virgins shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son, and he called his name Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

And Merry Christmas.

The address is right there, 4665 North North Raleigh Street.

We're meeting there at 4:30.

One of the exciting things about Tuesday's uh gathering is that that will be our third to last 430 service.

And then we'll be, yeah, that's right.

And then we'll be moving back to uh 9.30 a.m.

where we will begin meeting there altogether uh on January 12th.

Um so uh for these next uh two services, however, uh today and Tuesday, uh it's all about Christmas.

So uh with that in mind, would you uh pray with me and we'll get started?

Holy Father, uh the the Christmas season um is this wonderful marker where we get to uh just kind of remember together this incredible reality that you became one of us.

That way you could bring us to yourself.

Lord, in your majesty and in your glory uh and in your incredible care, would you let us remember that story anew?

And would you let it become one of the most foundational facts about us is that we worship a God who serves us, who came to rescue us.

And Lord, let that fill our hearts with uh just uh an incredible joy uh throughout this season.

Lord, I pray that we'd be marked by that.

Lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So the text that we're covering today is a very Christmas text.

This is uh the there are two Gospels that cover what we think of as the Christmas story, which is Jesus' birth narrative.

And so uh one of them is Luke, and the other one is Matthew.

And in Luke, we see the story primarily from Mary's perspective.

She uh kind of dominates that, the uh the Lucan narrative.

And in uh Matthew, we see just the opposite.

We see the story told really primarily from Joseph's perspective.

And so we kind of flip-flopped.

Last year we looked more at Mary.

This year we're gonna look more at Joseph's perspective here in Matthew.

And uh the section that we're looking at today, this can be considered kind of this is like the Jesus origin story.

This is uh where we where we see Jesus come onto the scene.

That's the Christmas story.

And origin stories we've become uh very familiar with uh because uh we only make superhero movies now.

We used to make all kinds of movies, and then 2010 hit, and then it was like, nope, we just make superhero movies now.

And so we've gotten a lot of origin stories, and origin stories all kind of have the same formula, and that's where you have to describe how it is that this person went from an ordinary person to the extraordinary person that we see them as the superhero.

And then what is it that in them becoming extraordinary gives them the license to save?

Somehow, in the way that they went from an ordinary person to an extraordinary person, it became justified that we could count on them to be a person who saves.

So there's something that makes that happen, be it a radioactive spider, be it a gamma radiation accident, and then you become Luferigno, or you're a billionaire, and uh well, actually, that one all you need is just to be a billionaire.

Um but something may take you from ordinary to extraordinary.

Now, the interesting thing about Jesus' origin story is that it's almost precisely the opposite of every other superhero origin story.

Because for all of the others, we have to describe how this ordinary person became something extraordinary and able to save.

But in Jesus' story, we see precisely the opposite.

And it's actually uh much more incredible, much stranger and much harder to wrap our minds around, which is how could the God of creation, how could the God of the universe, the one who in the beginning existed and then spoke all else into existence, how could the one who is eternal, the one eternal being, how could that God become ordinary?

How could that extraordinary God become a person?

It's precisely the opposite of all these other stories.

You know, when you consider that God is all powerful and all-knowing and almighty and eternal, then it it kind of it almost follows logically, like, oh, this is a God who creates things, and being the creator, he is outside of his creation.

We can kind of uh map our view of the world onto that.

It seems to make sense.

But when we consider that that God would become a creature like us, that he would have a heartbeat and and and a and a birth, a birth story.

You know, uh I I uh was uh in the in the room when when my son was born.

Birth is uh you know, i i it's it's uh it's just not the type of thing that you picture God going through.

And so this is Jesus' origin story.

How the extraordinary breaks into the ordinary.

So what we're going to see is uh just this pattern.

We're going to see the ordinary, which is really captured by Joseph, and in the type of person that he is and his expectations regarding Mary.

Then we're going to see the extraordinary that breaks into this ordinary moment, which uh, like Joseph is in the middle of a really difficult decision to make, and an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him what to do.

How good does that sound?

Sound I've wanted that so badly on so many occasions.

This is a time where Joseph gets it.

Um, and then we're going to see at how uh because the extraordinary became ordinary, why that gives Jesus uh uniquely among all other people the license to save.

Why is it that because of this origin story, Jesus is the one being in all of creation that we can look to and trust for our salvation?

So let's go ahead and get into it.

This is this is a fun story.

Uh so Matthew 1, 18 through 19, it says, Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way.

When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

And her husband, Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.

Okay, so that's where we are in the story.

But this is, as you notice, uh verse 18 and not Matthew 1-1.

Matthew verses 1-1 through 17 is just a lineage.

And it's just a mapping of the generations from Abraham up until Joseph.

And what Matthew is trying to show here is he's placing Jesus at the climax of redemptive history.

And he tells the story of redemptive history just by tracking the genealogy of the names.

And so what he does is he kind of provides us through this one lineage, the spine of the story of redemption, which is when uh man having fallen to sin is uh promised to be rescued by God.

And God doesn't make that promise through some skywriting.

Instead, God makes that promise to one person.

To one person.

God promises Abraham, and he says, Through your offspring, uh I'm going to bless the whole world.

And then as the story goes on, Abra it tracks the offspring of Abraham, and Abraham's offspring grows into a family, and the family becomes a tribe, and the tribe becomes a nation.

And then at this point, they are not even a collective nation.

They are a scattered race of people that are scattered and occupied by the Roman Empire.

And so Matthew places where Joseph is, right at the end of this long genealogy.

And by placing him there, he's saying that Joseph is a part, this very human, very ordinary part of this redemptive plan that God has been orchestrating through history ever since he made his first promise to Abraham.

So Matthew wants us to have that in our minds, to know where Joseph is in the story.

And where Joseph lands is that makes him uh one of the offspring of Abraham, and he's even more particularly one of the offspring of David.

And David also received a promise during his lifetime from God that his offspring uh would be a king whose reign never ended.

One of David's offspring would be a king whose reign never ended.

So we're a scattered people group at this point.

That kingdom is long gone.

And uh being an offspring of David, being one of the heirs of David, it doesn't really get you much these days in Bethlehem.

You know, it just won't get you that far.

I'm an offspring of David, that's great.

Congratulations.

I'm, you know, twice removed from three cousins away from Grover, Cleveland, or something.

It's like I don't care about that.

I don't know anything about Grover, Cleveland.

Um, that's a president's name, right?

Yeah, okay.

Whew.

Yeah.

Um so it it was kind it was kind of like that, where we'd all go, yeah, of course it's a president's name, and then we'd be like, yeah, that's a president's name, right?

And that's what it was like for David.

And so he's in this uh leading this very ordinary life.

He's a carpenter, he's just uh uh learned a trade.

And he's betrothed to Mary.

And uh Mary, uh, we don't know of her lineage, but also uh seems to be an ordinary person, the type of person that would marry a carpenter.

Now, betrothed uh is kind of like our engagement, uh, but uh much more high committal than that.

Um so notice that he's just betrothed, which means they're not living together yet.

They haven't had a marriage ceremony yet, they haven't consummated the relationship, and yet they're still referred to as husband and wife.

And in order to break off the betrothal, it would be as serious as getting a divorce.

So what happens is you're betrothed for about a year period, and then there's a ceremony, and you both uh leave your uh parents' households and you form a new household.

They haven't done that yet.

And so they're in this moment, and as it turns out, in this betrothal, uh uh he gets word that just shows you how how detached they likely were as they were leading their their lives.

It's not like don't picture like our dating relationships.

It's not like they're like hanging out grabbing a milkshake.

Uh they're they're they're leading pretty separate w lives, but he gets word that Mary is pregnant.

Now, in our text, it says she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

Now that part's for us, for the reader.

When Joseph isn't like, oh, she's pregnant, probably the Holy Spirit.

So he's uh uh so he's in this moment of this intense deliberation, and we get these two characteristics of Joseph, which is that he is a uh uh he's a just man, uh, which it likely means he's law-abiding.

You know, he is adhering to the law of Moses.

And so that's the thing on the one side.

And now the ways that divorce law would have worked back then, and this is this is not like Levitical times where uh an adulterer would have been stoned.

Uh this is uh this is moved past that into law that's recorded in Deuteronomy, where uh simply a divorce would be filed.

And the uh uh so that would have been an adherence with the law to divorce an adulterer.

But he's also uh he also really cares for Mary.

Those are kind of the two factors that we see.

Uh where he's a just man and he's unwilling to put her to shame.

So he's deliberating, and what's his solution?

I'll I'm going to divorce her, but I'll divorce her quietly.

You know, we don't need to make a whole thing of it, we don't need to ruin Mary's reputation.

Uh he wants to guard that and protect that.

So we can see that he's in this intense deliberation.

Well, what I want us to see mostly through this is that David uh sort of captures this ordinary expectation.

Did I say David?

I'm going with it.

David, and we're switching sermons.

Uh Joseph captures this uh this ex the this uh sort of experience of the ordinary, right?

Because uh he he sees what's going on with Mary, he it goes to a very reasonable conclusion, and then he tries to kind of move distance himself from this uh from this likely adultery on behalf of Mary.

And uh it's in this context that this extraordinary thing breaks in right into Joseph's life.

In Matthew 1, 20, it says, But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

So we picture, we see David, and as it says, just as he considered these things, but you can imagine how painful that process is.

I've talked to many of you of just like normal engagement or normal decisions to get invade engaged.

It's like that's a painful process.

And he's making a decision like that.

And as he considers these things, an angel of the Lord appears to him, and the angel says that thing that angels always say.

Don't fear.

Don't fear.

Look, Joseph, pump your brakes.

But uh the the way that the angel addresses Joseph is Joseph, and then what's the little tagline?

Son of David.

Son of David.

So just by the way that the angel refers to Joseph in the dream, he's pulling Joseph out of this ordinary, look, you're just a carpenter, cool lineage, but it doesn't really mean much for now.

It's not really getting you anywhere for now.

He's pulling him out of that ordinary place into this redemptive story that Joseph is a part of.

Into this uh this story that goes back, you know, generation after generation, all the way back to the patriarchs, back to Abraham, where God has guided this particular lineage for the salvation of his people.

Just by the very way that he refers to Joseph as the son of David, he's pulling him into that story.

So, in the context of that story, says, Don't fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

So there's this interesting dynamic that Joseph is placed into, in which he is both put in the position, encouraged by a messenger sent from God to marry Mary.

Sorry, that's the way it is.

It's gonna be complicated, to marry Mary.

And she and in doing so, he will be the father of whoever she gives birth to.

That's what he's committing to.

That you know, getting married through this betrothal period, while she while she's pregnant, when that child is born, Joseph will be that child's father.

When you trace that child's lineage, it will be, you know, just one step down from the very same lineage of Joseph.

And yet, he's also creating this distance from Joseph, where we know that Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus.

In this one way, Jesus is perfectly connected to the lineage that goes back through David and back through Abraham.

And because of the requirement of Joseph's obedience to marry Mary.

See, it's the obedience of Joseph that makes this connection between the lineage of redemption that's taking place, and at the very same time, what's being emphasized is the biological distance between Joseph and Jesus.

Both of those things are held together, and both are really important.

Because what's held together here with this virgin birth is a divine person that is connected to this human lineage.

This human lineage of salvation results in this divine person, Jesus Christ.

That's what the that's what the angel commanding Joseph to go through with the marriage means.

It means that those two things are able to come together.

Here's how the text continues, kind of in this vein, skipping over some, we'll come back to it.

It says in Matthew 1, 24 through 25, so when Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.

He took his wife, but knew her not until she had given birth to a son.

That's new in the biblical sense.

And he called his name Jesus.

So what's emphasized here, Joseph does marry Mary.

And he they do not know each other until Jesus is born.

Both of these factors are held together and are so important for us to grasp why it is that Jesus is the one that we can trust to save the human lineage and the divine person coming together as one.

You know, the virgin birth, I think it seems to me to be one of the first things to go on when you're kind of like walking that road away from Orthodox Christianity.

Um when I was uh a uh younger man, the uh uh this was like just getting ready for the sermon.

The uh the uh um so it like in high school I was obsessed with this writer named Rob Bell.

And uh come on.

And uh Rob Bell would would would write these books that were like uh very inquisitive, and uh we can talk about them later if you want to talk about them.

Um and w w later he would later, you know, uh John Piper would tweet farewell Rob Bell and it was over.

But the uh uh but one of the first things to go for him, for Rob Bell, was the virgin birth.

It was one of the first things that he would call into question in uh in all the way back in Velvet Elvis when things seemed fine.

And that was one of his first his first book.

And uh it seemed like, okay, the virgin birth, this is something that we can just kind of play with and not have any real repercussions for.

Because we we've got to be able to say, like, look, you don't have to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin to be saved, right?

I mean, why would we require such a strange belief?

What does that even have to do with anything?

I mean, it doesn't this look like just some other strange origin story from like a uh like a like a some other religion or some uh, I don't know, some some sort of strange mythology where it's you know they're born of a virgin.

Uh isn't this just Christianity grabbing on to some trait like that?

So it always seems to be the first thing to go.

And I think it typically leaves under these two banners.

The first banner is just simply biological, it's just like a sort of enlightenment type of criticism, which says, look, uh we know where babies come from.

And they're not born of virgins.

You'd have to know someone in the biblical sense in order to have a baby.

And the uh uh and so it under that line of thinking, uh, then we'd have to just get rid of all the other miracles, and we'd have to move back and just say, well, look, is this is is this incarnation more incredible than creation itself?

And if we're saying that God created everything, then is this incarnation, is that beyond the creator God who whose creation is his?

So we can see that the biological argument, it proves too much uh uh to to uh to sort of acquiesce to we don't need to believe in the virgin birth, um, is a way of uh you you have to throw the rest of it out once we've made that claim.

The second, uh, and I think this one is a bit more contemporary, and I just kind of think the stream that we're living in.

This is the one, for example, that I would hear in at CU, Boulder.

Um it's Boulder, so you know it's good.

And there's uh, and this is the patriarchal reading of uh the Mary story.

So uh preserving Mary's virginity uh is an another way of reinforcing this sort of male ownership over the female body.

And by reinforcing the sort of male ownership over the female body, that's why we would preserve something like a perpetual virginity of Mary, um, this unstained person who can be uh forever owned by the man in her purity and preserved there.

Um I see a lot of blank faces, and I'm wondering if I'm the only one that took these classes.

But the uh uh this sort of this sort of reading I think comes from a uh a false teaching, which is that Mary was a perpetual virgin.

Um that's not true.

Uh Mary and Joseph go on to have uh other sons, perhaps daughters, and um yeah, we can see in the uh this very verse it says, but he knew her not until she had given birth to a son, which implies a knowing of her.

So why is it that we're throwing away this virginity?

Why is it that that uh, or why is it so important, I guess, to phrase it another way, that the the virgin birth of Jesus has to be held.

Why is this not something that we can just play with without any repercussions?

Well, there are many reasons, and this is where the rest of the sermon is going, but the first is that this is at least about kingship.

This is about kingship, kingdoms.

This is about succession.

To quote Scar from the Lion King, we're talking, nobody knows this?

Kings and successions?

Even you can't be caught unawares.

So uh we're talking kings and successions, that's what this is about.

Which means that we've got to be able to trace the lineage of Jesus in order to say why he is the rightful king who can save.

And the lineage of Jesus is not a human lineage.

It is one thing to say that he is heir to the throne of David, it is another claim entirely to say that he is heir to the world.

If he is not conceived by the work of the Holy Spirit exclusively, then we cannot make this claim to the direct sonship, the direct deity of Jesus in relation to the Father.

And so when we're thinking just in terms of succession, just in terms of what is the claim that Jesus is king means, then we have to preserve the virgin birth.

Uh, do you remember at the end of the Odyssey when Odysseus gets back to Ithaca, and Ithaca, that's what it's like the effect, and he uh uh uh disguises himself as like a vagrant, and uh because Penelope, his wife, who's been waiting a long time uh since he first went to war in Troy, and it took the scenic route to get back.

And uh, when he gets back to his wife, he's disguised as his vagrant.

And Penelope is just constantly being courted by these suitors, constantly being courted by these other men who are trying to marry her in order to get the kingdom of Ithaca.

And so uh Odysseus and Penelope, they're both testing each other to try and figure out is this really Odysseus?

And uh Odysseus's question is, has Penelope really been faithful?

Now, why is that such an important question?

Because if Penelope hadn't been faithful, then there's another rightful heir to the throne of Ithaca that doesn't come through Odysseus.

So Penelope asks him, uh she actually asks one of their servants in front of him, um, can you go move my marital bed?

Can you move my bed?

And Odysseus starts to have this meltdown right in front of her, uh, of like, move the bed.

What are you talking about?

You're gonna move the bed?

You can't move the bed.

So the reason is because Odysseus knew that he hand-carved their marital bed into a living olive tree.

It's beautiful, it's very modern.

So if they were to move the bed, there's no way to move it without destroying it.

So, what do they both learn in that moment when she sees Odysseus freak out?

And when Odysseus realizes, oh, Penelope, that's so like her, she's just testing me to see if I freak out, to see if I know where the bed is and what the bed is, what's being demonstrated is nobody else knew where the bed was.

She's been faithful.

So, what does that mean?

The line has been preserved.

You know, we the stories like that are helpful for us because we don't relate to kings, we don't relate to successive generations and the preservation of a line in our society.

So consider, you know, this work of the bed and all the tricks and uh that they're playing on each other, and the work that's preserved in this story to maintain the hope of Ithaca in the lineage, you know, these stories that seem to last forever.

How much more important is it to prove the lineage of the Son of God?

How much more, how much more does it matter that Jesus was really born of a virgin for us to be able to say, this is the son of God.

If he is the son of God that comes through this human lineage, this is what it is that gives him the right to save us.

So let's look at that.

God's lineage, why is it so important for us?

It's so important because this is what gives Jesus the ability to save.

The angel, when he was talking to Joseph, he says these things.

This is this is the part we skipped over.

Matthew 1, 21 through 23.

It says, she the angel says, She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.

This is the quote from Isaiah 7.14.

It says, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

We're gonna zero in.

There are two names here.

The first name is what's commanded by the angel to Joseph to name Jesus, which is Jesus.

It says, You will name him Jesus for he will save his people from their sins.

Now, the name Jesus in Hebrew is the name Josiah, uh, which is uh just this, I don't really understand Hebrew, I'm working on it, which just jams together these uh basically Yahweh in the word for saves.

And so Yosiah is a way of saying Yahweh saves.

So in the very name of Jesus, what's being proclaimed is Yahweh saves, but then it's being stretched out even further here in Matthew, because the general expectation would have been, yeah, Yahweh saves his people.

That means from the oppressors from Rome.

But what Matthew says here is Yahweh saves his people from their sins.

So what does Jesus mean?

Why is Jesus called Jesus?

Because he'll save us from our sins.

And then Matthew says, this was said to fulfill what was written in Isaiah, which is that the virgin will give birth to a son.

And that son's name will be Emmanuel.

And in only a couple of places in Scripture do they write out the Hebrew and then give the translation.

Or do they write it out, I shouldn't say the Hebrew, I should say, in the original language that it would have been said in, and then give the translation into the Greek.

And Matthew does that here with the word Emmanuel.

He does it later when Jesus is on the cross, and he says, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He gives us that in the original language.

Emmanuel, which means God with us.

Here's the human predicament.

We are, uh it's not just that we sin.

We do.

But it's not just that.

We sin uh not as this addition to who we are, we sin as an outflowing of who we are.

We sin as an expression of our hearts.

It is not that our hearts are, our hearts are corrupted, but it but it's it's not that they're just surface corrupted, radically corrupted.

And so when we express who we are, it comes out as sin.

And that's true of all of us that fall in the lineage of Adam.

Every son or daughter of Adam and Eve is a sinner.

And yet for us to be saved, we need someone who can come in and who can be perfectly one of us, completely a human, one hundred percent a person, and be completely untainted by that sin, who inherits none of the radical sinfulness that we have.

And in the virgin birth of Jesus, we see those two things preserved.

We see that Jesus is born of a woman just like us, just like everyone in this room, I can tell just by looking at you.

And was the son of God.

God himself, incarnate in the flesh.

Nobody has seen the Father.

Jesus has made him known.

So why is it that we throw away the virgin birth?

I I have a thought.

I think we throw away the virgin birth because the virgin birth means we can't save ourselves.

You know, if sin is not just something I do, but it's something that's deeply in me, then I need a savior.

I need, I need somehow for God to become a human.

I need for somehow the creator of the universe to identify with sinful me and then come down and dwell where we live, and then to take the punishment for my sin in his physical body and unite me to him for his resurrection.

That's my hope, if sin is really in me.

My hope is I need a I need someone born of a virgin to get me out of this.

But if we get rid of the virgin birth, this is another way of saying, you know what Jesus was really?

Really, before all this legend, before all this mythology, Jesus was just a very good teacher.

Jesus was a very wise sage, and any of us, given enough time and the removal of enough constraints, any of us would be able to do that.

Jesus is really just a story of a great person to look up to and try and model our lives after.

That's why we get rid of the virgin birth.

You know, we get rid of the virgin birth all the time because we live our lives, even our Christian lives, without treating Jesus as the Savior.

You know what happens with churches that get rid of the virgin birth?

They replace Jesus with themselves.

And the story for the redemption of humanity is not that we point to our Lord and Savior Jesus, who accomplished it for us on our behalf, the one born of a virgin who rescues us.

Instead, the story for the redemption of humanity becomes oh enlightened us.

The people who get the world like we do.

And so the church slowly but surely replaces Jesus.

Instead of bearing witness to the one born of a virgin who offers us our salvation.

We can do this in all sorts of practical ways.

And it's whenever you start to consider yourself, whenever you start to think things like this, you know, uh Jesus sacrificed for people and they were saved.

So I'm the one who will sacrifice for people, and then I will save those who are around me.

Some of you just have that type of personality bent.

Uh and so it creates churches and people where you know what we do is a lot of anxious meddling.

I've done this in other people's relationships.

Where it's like, oh, I'm so invested in being the one who can bring the salvation here that I'm just putting myself places that it's wildly inappropriate to be.

That's because I've lost the virgin birth.

I'm not the one who saves.

I'm the one who needs to be saved.

You know who I can point to?

The real Savior, who is Jesus.

From the line of David.

He's born from this lineage just like us.

You know, the son of Joseph, just like we're the son of someone.

And then he's totally different.

The sin that we share, that we bring into all these things that we do, he brings none of it in.

A true savior.

A true savior.

So this Christmas season.

And you know, forever, you don't have to stop doing this.

But you it's so easy for us to turn Jesus into just an example rather than our savior.

And we start to be crushed by that, riddled with anxiety because of it.

Instead, I want you to look to Jesus.

Remember, you know what I needed?

I needed someone who was born of a virgin to save me.

You know, this then I will have it in myself to where because it, and here's what here's what happens.

This is what allows you to keep going.

Uh I uh I I read a psalm earlier this week, no, a couple weeks ago, Psalm 40.

And there was, I wasn't gonna share this, but here we go.

I've never regretted anything I've done spontaneously up here before.

Um and you know, I I've like quite frankly, I've been like, we're we're going, we're doing a lot here as a church.

This is our third to last time in the building.

Super excited, stoked.

And I'm also super stressed.

And what here's what here's what I do.

I get stressed, and then I think, you know what?

You know what this stress means?

Stress means I'm disqualified from this.

Because a real Christian, if I had real faith, you know, like a preacher should, then I wouldn't have this anxiety that that I'm feeling like paralyzed by.

This wouldn't be a part of my life.

Then I read Psalm 40.

Um, and in Psalm 40, it's David writing, um, Joseph's dad, and he is describing uh the situation that he's in, where God really rescues him.

And then he describes how he was feeling incredibly anxious, and he was feeling uh deeply depressed.

And uh in the midst of in the midst of this, he says, but Lord, I I haven't I haven't stopped proclaiming your goodness to the congregation.

And then it hit me.

You know what?

You can be a preacher and be depressed.

Because I'm not the savior.

Jesus is the savior.

So instead of what we normally do, which I think a lot of us do, which is like, oh, I'm feeling depressed now.

I've got to stop and sort myself out.

There, like, look, there's times for that.

There, there are, there are.

But what this allows us to do is it allows us to put our faith in something outside of ourselves.

See, we have to have the virgin birth.

Because it teaches us that we've got to look to Jesus for our rescue.

That has to be the foundation.

And when we look to Jesus, and when we're pointing to Jesus, then we never don't have a story to tell, have a story to tell.

We never don't have a mission to be on.

So what we need is a rescuer, one born of a virgin.

That's what we have in Jesus.

Um, everybody take out your Bibles?

This is spontaneous clothes, this is a spirit-led clothes.

Listen to this.

This is the last two verses of that Psalm 40.

It says, David says, As for me, I'm poor and needy.

But the Lord takes thought for me.

You are my help and my deliverer.

Do not delay, oh my God.

As for me, I'm poor and needy.

But the Lord takes thought for me.

The Lord's my help and my deliverer.

Christmas means that our help and our deliverer made haste to be here with us.

On Christmas, we remember we're the people who look to him.

To Jesus, our Savior.

That's the good news.

This is not some strategy, this is not some technique.

It's Jesus, the one born of a virgin who came to die for us, to pay for our sins, that way God might be with us.

Merry Christmas.

Let's pray, and then we'll take communion.

You came to be born just like us.

That way you could rescue sinners like us.

Lord, let our strength be in you, our Savior.

We'll never be put to shame for hoping in you.

Lord, this Christmas, let that good news, our hearts that just become fixed on you as our hope.

Let that motivate us and pull us forward.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.