Why would you say Christmas was important yourself?
If somebody asked you this morning, why is
Christmas important, how would you answer?
Now, obviously, we get a day off work,
and that's important, and you get presents, and
you have office parties, but most of us
realize that those are incidental byproducts of Christmas,
however important they may have become to us,
they're not really the important thing about Christmas.
And most of us know that, and we're
well trained and coached and brainwashed, and so
we would answer safely, ah, the important thing
about Christmas is, it's Christ mass, it's the
mass of Christ, it's the feast of Christ.
It's the time when we remember Jesus' birthday.
I think that's how we'd answer.
But do you see that to most people
on the earth, that's begging the question.
It's really begging the further question, well, what's
the big deal about Jesus' birthday?
Why is it so important?
That's what I just ask us to look
at together.
Why is Jesus' birthday important?
A good place to begin is the Nobel
Prizes.
You know, they're those financial rewards and international
recognitions that are given by Sweden to outstanding
human beings who make great contributions to human
knowledge.
And if you've been following the award of
the prizes this year at all, you'd probably
agree that this has been the year of
the origin of life prizes.
There's been tremendous emphasis on how life originated
in recent research, and that's been recognised by
the Nobel Committee this year.
Some prizes were given to two astronomers who
measured the energy that comes from outer space
and have been able by measuring that energy
virtually to prove that the universe did not
evolve gradually over billions and billions of years
from the collision of two atoms, but that
it has originated suddenly from a catastrophic release
of energy in something like a Big Bang.
And so a Nobel Prize was awarded to
them for that tremendous clarification about the theories
of the origin of the universe.
Three other prizes were given to men who
have identified enzymes that may be used to
program the genes that govern hereditary diseases and
hereditary traits and may therefore enable us to
know how we've become what we've become.
One interesting fact that you might have noticed
about leading scientists today is a new humility.
As they have pushed beyond the frontiers of
our present knowledge, they have begun to be
able to identify more precisely what they don't
know.
And they've been willing more and more to
humbly admit that there are things that they
can't know.
One science writer in the New York Times
about two weeks ago said, the Big Bang
theory argues for belief in creation of the
world in an instant rather than its evolution
over a long period of time.
But the problem is that if it all
started with an explosion, then we can no
longer find anything out about what exploded.
And so scientists are realizing that if we
posit a Big Bang theory, that's as far
as we can go.
We can never go behind the Big Bang,
because the Big Bang destroyed all that caused
it.
And so scientists are realizing we can go
up to there, but by our own definition
we can't go beyond it.
Because all that was there has exploded.
And we can't tell what was there before
the explosion.
And this same science writer, you know, put
it like this.
He said, we are now faced with the
ironic picture of scientists for years struggling to
reach the summit of the highest intellectual mountain
of the world.
At last they are able to pull themselves
over the top of the last peak.
And there in front of their very eyes
sit the theologians, who were there all the
time saying, in the beginning God created the
heaven and the earth.
It's interesting that that isn't, you know, some
pastor or some theologian trying to push his
own party line, but it's a science writer
saying that.
In other words, scientists are beginning to say,
could be, could be.
Now that's what Christmas is about.
It's about our knowledge of where we came
from and where we're going to.
See, after Adam and his successors refused the
communications that God had made to us about
his plan for mankind, thousands and thousands of
our forebearers have looked up into the sky
hour after hour.
And have wondered, is there somebody behind that
sky?
And many of them, you know, in primitive
times would look at the thunderclouds and say,
yes there is and he's angry, he's angry,
I can hear his voice and his anger.
And on another calm, sunny day they would
look up and see, look at the sky,
look at the cloudless sky and the blue
sky.
The Creator obviously is pleased with us today.
And they would look at the mountains and
think now, boy he must be a great
and a mighty person to put that mountain
there.
And others would look at themselves and their
own fingers and their own faces and they'd
say, well he must be something like us
if he was able to make people like
us.
But in spite of all that, loved ones,
there was constant vagueness and uncertainty.
Various people illustrated and organized those thoughts into
statements and beliefs.
And that was how the original nature religions
came about like Hinduism and Zoroastrianism.
And various other human beings among us wondered
how we should behave and we devised little
ethical systems and those became Buddhism and Confucianism.
Yet despite all these attempts at describing how
we came about and why we came about
and where we're going, there was always great
vagueness and uncertainty.
Men were just doing their best.
A shaft of sunlight, you know, came into
the picture during the 2000 years of the
revelations that the Jewish people received.
Because they seemed to receive revelations of a
Creator who had a consistent character that remained
the same year after year after year and
generation after generation.
Moreover, it seemed that their information about Him
came not just from men's opinions or men's
ideas or imaginations, but it seemed that the
information that they got came from events and
miracles that were written into their own history.
And indeed that we can see enshrined in
their own civil organization and their own religious
rituals today.
And yet even their revelation was able to
be manipulated by a man like Muhammad and
interpreted in his own way.
And that's always been the problem.
In our attempts to discover our own roots
and to find out why we were here
and who put us here and where we're
going, we've always had to come up against
this great problem.
We've had to sigh and say, Yeah, but
Muhammad, Buddha, these guys are just ordinary people
like us.
They're ordinary human beings.
They have no more access to the reality
behind the universe than we have.
So why should we believe that what they
say about our roots and about where we
came from is true?
Any truer than what we think ourselves?
That's what Christmas is about.
Christmas is our Creator coming to our earth
and saying, This is the way it is.
This is how it happened.
Because that's what Jesus is.
He's not just a prophet like Muhammad.
He's not just a philosopher like Confucius.
He's not just a religious leader like Buddha.
Jesus, when he was asked by the high
priest, at the very point of death and
under pain of death, Are you the son
of God?
said, I am.
And you'll see me at the end of
this world sitting at the right hand of
the Creator and having power to settle all
the whole universe.
That's what Christmas is, loved ones.
It's God himself coming to us and saying,
I can scatter all the mists of doubt
that you people have had over the years
about why you're here and what you're doing.
I'll tell you myself in my own words
through my son here.
And loved ones, there's no question.
When you look at Jesus, we've said it
often before, but you do see immediately that
he is just different from every other man
that ever lived.
He's absolutely unlike Muhammad and unlike Buddha and
many of the other religious leaders in that
his life was absolutely perfect and absolutely sinless.
He's unlike all the lunatics that have ever
claimed to be the son of God or
claimed to be uniquely related to God because
their lives are filled with imbalance and extremes.
His life is filled with balance.
In fact, we look at Jesus' life and
we regard it as one of the most
perfect integrated lives that was ever lived.
And he had the kind of power over
disease and over nature that we would expect
the son of the person who made the
nature and who made the bodies to have.
Of course, you know that what sets him
absolutely apart from every other so-called authority
about where we came from is the way
he himself came to earth and the way
he left it.
Mary and Joseph weren't married.
They weren't married.
That's what that verse means in Matthew.
They were betrothed, kind of engaged, you know.
So they never had intercourse.
But he was conceived in Mary's womb because
the Holy Spirit put the sperm created by
God into her womb and he was born
by that miracle.
You know, if you ever wonder anything worse
than that, all you have to look at
is history.
Is there any evidence of anything other than
that?
There isn't.
Not even among those greatest critics of Jesus
and of his followers.
And the incredible way that he left the
earth.
You remember, he explained to all his followers
that he was going to be executed but
that he would come back and he did
that.
He came back for more than a month
and confirmed that he had power over life
and over death so that he could destroy
either one when he chose.
That's what Christmas is about.
It's God coming into our world in a
body like ours, in his own Son, 1900
years ago and explaining to us personally, Look,
my Son made the world.
He made it.
It was all made by him.
There's nothing here that wasn't made by him.
And both of us made all of you
because we want you to live with us
in love forever.
And we want you to become like us
and enjoy the same joy that we two
have together.
And so Christmas has scattered all the vagueness
we have.
You know, if there's anybody here who wonders,
Oh, what is life about?
Or why am I here?
Or where are we going?
Or what am I supposed to do with
my life?
Look at Christmas.
Jesus has given us the authoritative explanation.
It's our own Creator coming to earth and
telling us.
That's the importance about Christmas, loved ones.
Every other religion has its prophet and its
outstanding preacher and its outstanding leaders, but this
Christianity is reality because it has at its
center the Son of our own Maker.
And that's why Christmas is important to us.
It's our own Maker coming here and explaining
it personally, face to face with us.
So really, it's God incarnate.
And incarnate means enfleshed.
God in a body like ours, explaining all
the mysteries to us.
And really, that's the key to everything.
That's the key to life.
It's the key to the meaning of everything.
If you can once get the Creator who
originated it all to stand in front of
you and explain it to you, that's the
answer.
You can have no greater answer than that.
And that's the only certainty that you can
finally have.
God incarnate.
We do not need to be the dupes
of people like Jim Jones.
You don't.
We don't, none of us.
If a Jim Jones was to stand here,
we do not need to be the dupes
of him.
We don't, however eloquent he may be.
We are not at his mercy.
Because ever since Jesus came, we have the
norm.
We have the standard.
We have the authority of revelation of what
our God is really like.
And we can compare everything that comes across
our path and claims to be explaining the
will of God to us, we can compare
it all with this Jesus.
And that's the beauty of God incarnate.
Really alive.
And you can look at Jesus and you
can see, does Jesus commit adultery?
Does Jesus stash money all around the world?
Does Jesus steal from people?
No, no.
So whenever any man comes who claims to
speak God's word to us, we can compare
him with this authoritative word that we have
received through a son.
And it's true too that every time you
come across a man or a woman that
speaks like Jesus or lives like Jesus, you
can be sure that again you're facing God
incarnate.
You're facing Jesus having been born in a
person's life and having developed and grown and
then burst forth as he did in Mary's
own body.
And every time you meet such a person,
you see God incarnate.
And that's what convinces you finally.
And that's what final personal certainty is, you
know.
It's an ordinary human life being filled with
God's Son.
That's what convinces people of truth.
God incarnate.
You can't argue with Christmas.
And you can't argue with Christmas when you
see it in a person's life.
So I'd ask you, are you a great
talker or are you a great liver?
Do you talk well or do you live
well?
Are you Christian or are you Christ-like?
Have you experienced what Mary experienced?
Loved ones, that's what China needs to see,
God incarnate.
But that's what your friends and my friends
need to see.
They've had it to hear with talk.
Talk is cheap.
Preaching is easy.
But living is the proof.
And I just ask you, has God become
incarnate in your life?
Because the world is dying for that kind
of certainty.
And do you know that God can become
incarnate in you?
Do you know that?
Do you know that when Jesus died, you
as you are now were destroyed and He
is able to renew you completely by coming
into your life this very day?
Do you know that?
In fact, do you know that God has
already put you into a son and you
actually have to reject Him to keep away
from becoming like Him?
Did you ever realize that?
I think a lot of you feel, oh,
being bad just comes naturally to me.
Actually it doesn't.
You have to actually reject just as you
keep the rain off with an umbrella and
keep the sun off with a sunshade.
You actually have to reject the life of
Jesus that is struggling to be born in
you.
And you know that.
There's a little thing inside you that says,
you should do this or you shouldn't do
that.
And you know that that thing keeps on
going even though you strangle it to death.
It's still there.
It's still a tiny little voice of conscience.
And actually, to avoid becoming God incarnate, you
have to deliberately reject the movement of Jesus'
life that you've already sensed at times inside
you.
And I would ask you, you know, why
not this Christmas begin to take steps to
let that Christ life, the life of Jesus'
Spirit inside you, have His own way in
your life?
Why not take a step towards that?
And I point out to you that it's
action finally that counts.
So you can go to work this coming
weekend.
You can shake your finger all you're worth
and say, oh, you shouldn't drink so much
at the office party.
Or you can say, oh, you shouldn't spend
all that money on Christmas presents.
Or you shouldn't be so happy.
Or you shouldn't buy a Christmas tree.
But finally, all that does is turn people
off reality and turn people off God.
What people desperately want to see is God
incarnate, Jesus alive in another person's life.
And the only way for that to happen
is for you to stop living and to
give the right to your life completely to
Jesus and let Him reproduce that miracle.
Now, have you ever thought there may be
about 1,300 or 1,400 of us
here and maybe another 100 upstairs?
Have you ever thought what it would be
like if there were 1,300 Jesuses in
this room?
Really.
That's what God intends.
That's what God intended when He made you.
Let us pray.
Dear Father, we would come to You even
though some of us are very uncertain about
the whole deal.
We would come to You and say that
we see many things in ourselves that are
not at all like You.
We see many things in ourselves that would
make heaven hell.
And Lord, we don't understand it all, but
we do believe that You have done something
in Jesus, in His death, that is able
to free us from these things.
So Lord, will You help us to believe
that we were crucified with Christ 1,900
years ago, that we were completely renewed in
a mighty cosmic miracle, and that it is
possible by simple faith to enter into the
reality of that this morning.
And Lord, we see plainly that talk is
cheap.
And it's not Jesus' words that convince us.
It's His life.
It's the things that happened in His life
that convince us that He's your Son.
And Lord, we realize that our friends and
our colleagues have the same right to be
able to see Jesus incarnate, God enfleshed, so
that they have the same opportunity to believe
You as we have.
Lord, we would give our lives to You
for this purpose, that You might be incarnate
again in each one of us, for the
sake of our friends and our colleagues at
work, and for the sake of those millions
that do not know You.
We give ourselves to You for this purpose,
in Jesus' name.
Amen.