Many people today, believe in God but don’t acknowledge Him as God. Many have a sense of God’s goodness, but they don’t live in that goodness and then they wonder why things life isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. When it comes to Jesus, all too many people – by how they live their lives, end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

It’s amazing here we are in another Christmas week with the whole year gone and we’re about to do that whole Christmas thing. A few years ago I was sharing a Christmas message in July with the church in Sydney. And we were singing some Christmas carols and we were having Christmas in July and after the service some people said to me, "You know, it felt really weird singing Christmas carols in the middle of the year."

It’s a bit funny isn’t it? We’re somehow conditioned to do the Christmas thing at Christmas time in December. In the same way that people who live in the Northern Hemisphere can’t conceive Australian’s like me having Christmas in the middle of summer. Sitting on a beach somewhere maybe eating prawns or having a BBQ while the snow coming down in the Northern Hemisphere.

Actually, it’s quite natural for us to have seasons and festivals. The whole festivals and traditions that surround the things that we do throughout the year, actually to turn out to be very, very important to society. Back in early civilisation sociologists tell us, that the whole issue of regular festivals created some stability, created a heartbeat and a cycle and a sense of celebration periodically which was quite important to the development of a society.

Well, what about Christmas? Let’s have a look at, just quickly, at the history of Christmas because it’s a strange history. The early church celebrated the death of Christ that’s Easter and the death of the martyrs of the church but not the birth of people and certainly not the birth of Jesus.

The first mention of a Christ’s mass on the Roman calendar was 336 AD. Almost well, three centuries after Christ was alive. And the reason that they had this thing called a Christ’s mass because there was a huge controversy raging in the church at the time over the nature of the person of Jesus. Was he truly God, that is God become man in the flesh or was he somehow a created being? And so the Christ’s mass was an argument against that heresy. It is was an urgency to proclaim the reality of the incarnation of God becoming man. And it spread right across the church by about the end of the fourth century.

So why did they pick December 25th? Was that Jesus’ birthday? Well, actually we don’t have any evidence to suggest that it was but there was ample evidence to suggest that it wasn’t because the story of Jesus birth says that there were shepherds out tending their flocks by night. Now of course December is the middle of winter and it would be very unlikely for the shepherds to have been out in the middle winter tending their flocks because generally in winter they bought the flocks into a central area within villages and they weren’t grazing out the pastures by night because it was just too cold. So the chances are that Jesus wasn’t born on 25th December.

Actually, the reason we have Christmas on 25th December is because it was a Roman winter solstice festival, a pagan festival. And Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire so they decided to transform this pagan festival which was about the sun, into a Christian festival about the Son.

So instead of suppressing this pagan festival what happened was it was transformed into a Christian festival. And there were many parallel European festivals in the middle of December. It was the end of the harvest season, people prepared special foods, they decorated their homes with greenery, there was gift giving. So by about the 1100’s this pagan festival and this social festival and the Christian thing converged and St Nicholas had become a symbol of gift-giving.

It wasn’t though until the Middle Ages that it was first called Christmas. And it’s popularity grew until the Reformation, until that time when Martin Luther stood up against some of the excesses that were happening in the Catholic church. And Christmas was then considered to be pagan. The non-religious elements were seen to be wrong so in the 1600’s Christmas was actually outlawed in both England and America.

It wasn’t until the 1800’s that two more customs become popular, the Christmas tree and the sending of Christmas cards and of course by the 1900’s commerce and retail had taken over and Christmas became quite commercialised. So this celebration that we hold as sacred is really a conglomeration of pagan and cultural festivals, historically reinterpreted. And the Christian dimension is only there to the extent that it was required to argue against a heresy in the early church.

Well, so what? I mean 2000 years on, ok we celebrate this thing and it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, primarily it’s about shopping it would seem. What does that whole incarnation thing mean to us today? Is it just a festival or does it have a meaning?

I suspect that in answering that question of what’s the relevance of the birth of Jesus today we have a problem or two. Let’s just think about it for a minute, here’s this baby and this baby Jesus was born in Bethlehem in a stable and laid in a manger. And the purpose ultimately of Jesus coming to the earth as a man was for Him to die on the cross, for Him to die and rise again so that our sins could be forgiven. That’s the theological answer.

But you know, Jesus actually spent 30 something years on this earth. He was a baby, he grew up, he became a man, he had a public ministry and then he went to the cross. I mean if the only reason for Jesus to come onto this earth was to die to pay for your sins and mine if that’s the only theological reason, why didn’t they just kill the baby? Why didn’t they just sacrifice the baby, why wasn’t that God’s plan? It certainly would have been more spectacular.

But no, no Jesus had a life. He grew up. We see a story about his birth, we see that circumcised when he was eight days old, we see him in the temple in Jerusalem when he was 12 years old. We know that he grew up as an apprentice carpenter working in Joseph’s carpenter shop and it wasn’t until he was in his early 30’s that he began his public ministry and then he had a three and half ministry before he was tried, crucified buried and rose again.

So there must be a little bit more to this whole thing of Jesus coming from God to be a man to live on this earth. John the apostle puts it this way:

The word became flesh. Jesus, God’s expression of his love became a human being.

That’s the one thing that Christians celebrate at Christmas time. The question is what does it mean? How does it impact? How is it relevant to you and to me?

To me, there are three key elements to this. I’d like to start, if you have a bible grab it, we’re going to have a look at Hebrews. That’s a book in the New Testament towards the end, Chapter 1:1-4. have a listen to what it says:

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets. But in these last days he’s spoken to us by His Son whom he appointed heir of all things through whom he also created the worlds. Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he made purification for his sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having becoming as much superior to angels as the name as he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

Isn’t it interesting? This book to the Hebrews to the Jews, it’s a letter about Jesus to the Jews begins by saying long, long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets. This is the old Eden language; it’s the Eden language of love. It’s the language where God when He created Adam and Eve walked with them in the garden in the cool of the night.

Adam and Eve spoke with God. God spoke with Adam and Eve. We were made to be in God’s presence. And then through Adam and Eve’s rebellion, through their decision to disobey God in just the one little thing that God said don’t do. Don’t eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of right and wrong. Humanity emigrated out of God’s presence. Adam and Even emigrated out of the garden of Eden into a tough, tough world. And whenever a language leaves it’s Motherland it becomes distorted.

It’s interesting I come from a German background and when I grew up as a child in our household I learned to speak German. But when I went back to Europe as a child, what I discovered is that the version of German that we spoke here was kind of a bastardised version. It was bits of English thrown in. The dialect was different.

When a language leaves the Motherland it becomes distorted. And when we as humanity left the place that we were all always intended to be, God’s presence, through our rebellion then that language of love became distorted. And the writer of Hebrews says here, that God spoke in many and various ways through the prophets and we see through the history of Israel right through the Old Testament that God sent prophet after prophet after prophet to tell, to tell the people what? To say God loves you. God wants you to come back to Him. You don’t have to have dishonesty, injustice in the land you don’t have to go and worship other idols you don’t and to go and do all these silly things that are going to hurt you. There’s a better way. Come back to God. Live in relationship with Him.

And prophet and prophet after prophet spoke light and the people chose darkness, spoke good and the people chose evil. Spoke sweetness and the people chose bitterness. And then we wonder why things are going badly. Then we wonder why we’re struggling we wonder why there are wars. We wonder why we are hurt.

The prophets came to God’s people Israel over centuries and God spoke through them but the people rejected the prophets and so what we now celebrate to be Christmas, God took a decisive step. God decided to speak in way that we couldn’t miss. God sent his Son, Jesus.

One of the three persons of the trinity the Godhead, one God, three person, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. What a mystery. And God chose to make one of those persons who had dwelled with Him and in Him as God for all eternity into a man.

As I said before John’s gospel begins by saying:

In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.

The word is Jesus and then The Word became flesh and lived amongst us. And we’ve seen this glory, the glory as of the Father’s only Son full of grace and truth. God wants to speak a language of love. The same language He spoke in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. The same language that He spoke through his prophets but was rejected by his people. And so He sent his Son. And here in the beginning in the book of Hebrews Chapter 1, verse 3:

That Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.

Now that word the exact imprint only appears once. It’s a Greek word, it only appears once in the New Testament and it literally means like you know how a coin is created, they have the blank coin and then they have a dye like a metal imprinter and they bang the dye into the coin and what comes out on the coin is the exact imprint from the dye. The picture, the words exactly the same and that’s what the writer of Hebrews is saying here, Jesus is exactly the same. He is the spirit of God imprinted in the flesh of a man.

Martin Luther spoke about God being deep graven in the flesh. Jesus is God’s spilling out the old Eden language of love from A to Z in words that you and I can understand. Why is that important as we look at Christmas, why is that important? Let’s look at three examples. Again if you have a bible flick back go to the gospel of Luke Chapter 18, verse 35. It’s about Jesus healing a blind beggar near Jericho:

As he approached a blind man was sitting by the road side begging. When he heard the crowd going by he’d ask what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.’ Then he shouted, ‘Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.’ Those who were in front sternly ordered the man to be quiet but he shouted even more loudly, ‘Son of David have mercy on me.’

Jesus stood still and ordered the man be brought to him. And when he came near he asked, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ And the man said, ‘Lord let me see.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Receive your sight because faith has saved you.’ And immediately the man regained his sight and followed Jesus and glorified God and all the people when they saw it, the praised God.

So when you and I look at that story, this nobody, this beggar, smelly, poor, blind beggar on the side of the road and here is Jesus he’s got crowds following him he’s like a rock star. He’s a celebrity because he’s doing amazing things. And somewhere in the midst of all that crowd, Jesus hears this blind beggar cry out and he stops. He stops the crowd and says to the crowd, "Bring me that blind beggar." And he heals the man. This nobody.

And when you and I look at that story about Jesus and all the other stories about Jesus, when we look at that we can say that’s what God is like. The exact image. Jesus is exactly like God. That tenderness for the nobodies, that tenderness for the least, that deep respect and love that Jesus has for those flotsam and jetsam people on the outside of society.

The reason that the incarnation, that theological term again, the reason that Christmas is so important is that it gives us God in the flesh. It gives us a God that we can understand. Jesus is God saying "I love you" in a language that we understand. And when we sometimes think of God being an old man with a big stick, you know all we have to do is look at Jesus and see the love that God has for us. Unless Jesus came, God as a man, we could never hear language we can really understand.

The second thing that Jesus becoming a man does for us is confers value on you and me. Flick back to the book of Hebrews Chapter 2, verses 10-11:

It what was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one brother. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

And look down at verse 14:

Since therefore the children share flesh and blood he himself likewise shared the same things.

And again verse 17:

Therefore he had to come like his brothers and sisters in every respect so that he might be merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God.

He came to be one of us. God is saying something to us.

Let me share a story with you. Back on 26th August 1910 a woman by the name of Agnes Bojaxhiu was born. Her family belonged to the Albanian community, her Father was a businessman, he owned a building company and he was connected to a food shop. He travelled a lot and was multi-lingual and very interested in politics.

Totally unexpectedly when Agnes was nine her Father died. It was 1919 and her mother had to raise the three children alone. To meet their needs she sewed wedding dresses, did embroidery and worked hard. In spite of all of this, she made time for the education of her children.

When Agnes grew up she moved to Calcutta. We know her by another name, Mother Teresa. This is what Mother Teresa wrote:

The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and picked up four people from the street. One of them was in the most terrible condition and I told the other sisters you look after the other three and I’ll take care of this one that looks worse. So I did for her all that my love could do. I put her in a bed and there was such a beautiful smile on her face, she took hold of my hand and said only one word ‘Thank you.’ And she died, and she died with a smile on her face.

Like that man that we picked up from the drain, half-eaten with worms and we bought him home. He said, ‘I lived like an animal on the street but I’m going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.’ And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die without blaming, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel, this is the greatness of the poor people.

And she went on to say it hurt Jesus to love us. It hurt him.

Imagine what Agnes Bojaxhiu gave up to be Mother Teresa. She went and became one of them. And she was with them as they died in their poverty. She confers such great value and dignity on those people by being there and being one of them. And it’s the same with God becoming man and coming here and being one of us and suffering. And knowing what it’s like to struggle going through everything you and I go through. He confers such enormous value on you and me. And He’s prepared to call us brothers and sisters even though He’s God.

So they’re the first two things that great language of love spoken in a way that we can understand. Secondly, becoming one of us conferring value on you and me and thirdly let me read you the last thing that I’d like to talk about the suffering, the incredible suffering of Jesus. Chapter 2, verse 10 of Hebrews:

It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through his sufferings.

Chapter 5, verse 8:

Although he was a son he learned obedience through what he suffered.

We sometimes think that the only suffering that Jesus did was on the cross but that first reading I gave you in Hebrews 2:10 talks about sufferings – plural. His life was hard. His ministry was hard. You see in Luke chapter 9 when he’s talking to his disciples he says, ‘You faithless and perverse generation how long must I be with you and bear with you?’

The people he dealt with in ministry they were hard. He was tired some days, he was rejected some days. He was misunderstood and he healed people and they persecuted him. He had to deal with tough and hard issues. He was accompanied by women in his ministry. Don’t you think that was difficult, as a man who never married? As a leader with no peer, he had no-one else to talk to on this earth. Only God his Father. Again and again and again we see that Jesus suffered. And look at what it says in Hebrews 4 beginning at verse 14. He says:

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession because we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Therefore is such an important word. Why should we approach the throne of grace with boldness? Because Jesus has been here. He’s been through it. He understands it. He’s experienced the pain. He knows what we are going through.

Christmas is an amazing time because we celebrate a God who doesn’t sit in the air-conditioned comfort of heaven. We celebrate a God who becomes man. To walk like us, to struggle like us, to be misunderstood like us, to pain feel pain like us, to feel pain like us to suffer like us and to die.

Why should we come to this throne of grace with boldness? Because He knows. ‘Come to me freely’ He says, ‘Express your pain, express your need because I understand.’ And why should we come there? So that we may receive mercy, something good that we don’t deserve. When we deserve a curse we can boldly go into the throne room of God and ask for blessing. Mercy is only mercy when it’s undeserved and grace to grace help when we really need it, when we really need it.

Sometimes we think of the throne room of God as this cold, hard place with all this black marble and this big throne and this big judge sitting on the throne and you get what you deserve. No, no. Jesus is that throne of grace running towards us. Jesus is God saying "I love you so much" in language that we can understand. Jesus is God saying "I value you so much". Jesus is God saying "I understand what you are going through".

It’s great for us to have a Christmas celebration; it’s wonderful but every day’s Christmas. Every day is the day when God loves us in Christ, every day is the day when God values us in Christ. Every day is the day that God wants to run towards us with his grace through his Son Jesus Christ. That’s Christmas. Let’s have Christmas every day.