I want to thank all of you who have gone out these last two weeks and shared with other people. Thank you to everyone who took the challenge of giving a stuffed animal away. Thank you to those who took the challenge of taking an angel tree child and adopting them. Through you I have seen and heard the work of God being carried out through his church. So I just want to say thank you.
In the past two weeks, we have talked about fond memories of Christmas, where I shared with you my memory of the sacrifice of my parents that is wrapped up in a stuffed animal. Then last week we have talked about our favorite movies. To which I shared with you one of mine which is the original “Miracle on 34th Street.” This week I want to ask you, what is your favorite Christmas song? For me, I haven’t decided on one yet. I love hearing Christmas carols, but which one is my favorite, I don’t know. Two modern Christmas songs that I like, are “Jospeh’s Lullaby,” and “Hope Was Born This Night.” But I can tell you this, out of all the Christmas songs that are out there, the one that pops into my head when I think of Christmas is, “Hark! The Herald Angel Sing.” Now recently, my wife has informed me that apparently “A Charlie Brown’s Christmas” and I have something in common in this song. See, the reason this song comes to my mind when I think about Christmas has nothing to do with the song and it’s message, but rather because of one single line in the song. It’s the line that says, “Hark! The Herald angel sing.” The reason why this stands out to me, is because growing up, I always thought the angel’s name was Hark, and his title was the herald angel. So Hark the heard angel sings. I always thought it was some angel named Hark that was singing the song. In my mind there was the angel Michael, Gabriel, and Hark. Which is a weird name in my thought process, but the Bible has several strange names, so who was I to judge.
I eventually learned, and to my amazement, hark wasn’t an angel’s name, but meant listen, and pay attention. Obviously I was not listening to what the song was telling me, because I didn’t even understand that hark wasn’t one of God’s angels.
Songs, like movies, can find a place in our hearts and minds, that bring about the memories of Christmas that have themselves a little room within our lives. And it’s that very room that we’re going to be talking about today. So if you have your Bibles we’re going to be dropping into the Gospel of Luke chapter 2, starting in verse 1.
Now if you’re lightning fast, you might see the heading in your Bible that reads something like this: “The Birth of Jesus.”
And you might be thinking to yourself, why are we talking about the birth of Jesus before Christmas Sunday? And the reason is simple, we’re following the Christmas story as it played out 2,000 years ago. We started with Mary two weeks ago. We talked about how God used an obscure virgin girl from a nowhere town to bring about his greatness. We took away from Mary, that God wants to use people that the world finds irrelevant, to make himself known. People like you and me. Then last week we talked about how God then called her husband Joseph to be the adopted father to God the Son. This led us into the understanding that God was calling Joseph into God’s adoptive work of bringing humanity into his family. And when we accept Jesus as our Savior, we too are adopted into God’s family, where we can experience him for eternity.
We have been calling what is happening within the Christmas story, a collision. Where heaven collides with earth. When God collided with humanity. Where God himself took on human flesh. And the next step in the Christmas story is this collision. We cannot simply jump ahead, because if we do that, we’ll miss the collision, and how it impacts what we will be talking about next week.
So here we are, talking about the birth of Jesus, one week before we’re supposed. But we’re exactly where we need to be. So let’s read Luke 2 starting in verse 1.
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
Short and to the point. There’s not much here. To break it down, we have a census being taken. Joseph takes a very pregnant Mary on a 100 mile, 8 to 10 day trip. When they get to Bethlehem they seek a place to stay, but all the homes unavailable. So they find shelter in a stable, and Mary gives birth. Quick side note. The man writing this is Luke, who is a doctor, and I love that the birthing of a child is glossed over. Luke writes, “the time for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.” I’ve never been through child brith myself, but I’m pretty sure it’s a little longer than that. Anyway, finally we get Jesus’ first night in this world being born in a stable and being laid in an animal feeding trough. Do you know what a stable is? It’s a place to distance yourself from the smelling, fly covered animals. It’s a place that you only go to when you have to. It’s not exactly the most sterile place for birthing a child. It’s a place that is out there, while the family is in here.
And that’s it. That’s the birth of Jesus. Simple. But why? Out of the four gospels of Jesus’ life, only one tells the story of Jesus’ birth, and in that one it’s only given 7 verses, with 134 words. Compare that to Jesus’ cousin John’s brith in the previous chapter of Luke. He gets 9 verses, and 180 words. Looks to me like Jesus, who the stories about is getting the short end of the stick.
So one of my favorite all-time movies is the 1989 Batman film by Tim Burton. The first one with Micheal Keaton as Batman. I know it’s not a Christmas movie, but just go with me. One of the reasons I love this movie is because of the introduction to Batman. It starts out with a family walking down an alley and being mugged by these two drug addicts. Then it cuts away to them going through their spoils up on a roof. While they’re up on the roof, one guy becomes really uncomfortable and starts to look around. He talks about how he’s heard stories of the bat dropping people off buildings. The other guy is very firm when he says, “There ain’t no bat.” That’s when it happens, out of nowhere there is Batman. They shoot him, he falls, but then he rises back up, kicking one guy through a wall, grabbing the other guy and hanging him off the side of the building. The guy, who didn’t even believe Batman exists, ask the question, “Who are you.” And that’s when we get the iconic line, “I’m Batman.”
Now that’s an entrance. But that’s not what we get here. Jesus, doesn’t get a Batman entrance. Instead, he gets this line, “She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”
That’s it. Kind of a let down if you think about it. Mary met an angel. Joseph had a dream about an angel. Jesus? Well, he gets a trough. A trough? Really? In the Gospel of John book, we’re told this about Jesus, “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it….14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
Have we grasped the enormity of this occasion yet? Here’s another way of looking at it, which you’v might have heard before. For Jesus to just be born in Bethlehem at the time he did, the odds would have been: 2.8 in 1 million. For Jesus to fulfill 8 prophecies of his birth, it would be one in one hundred quadrillion. In other words, this Jesus is no ordinary baby.
And all he gets as a first introduction is 7 verses with 134 words?
Why don’t we get a grander snapshot of his birth? Why does the hero of the story, get such a small first appearance?
To me, the reason boils down to this phrase, “because there was no guest room available for them.” The world didn’t make room for Jesus, and Luke wants us to understand that. In John’s Gospel he puts it this way, “11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
The collision of Christmas happened with what amounted to be a whisper in the grand scheme of things.
And to me, it’s a perfect entrance. To me it’s more like a black ops, undercover mission, than a grand party. Because that is exactly what God was doing, he was colliding with humanity, without humanity even knowing he was there.
The question becomes why? Why does God collide with us in this way? The answer is, because it’s unexpected. No one would assume the Creator of the world would arrive in such a lowly manner. No one would expect a King to lay down in a manger. No one would expect him to have no place to stay.
But his entrance goes further than to merely show God’s humility; Jesus’ entrance shows us our state of reality. This world has made no room for the King of kings. This world has no bed for him. This world does not seek to lift God up into the place that he deserves. So when Jesus entered this world, he entered right where the world wanted him to be, nowhere.
“there was no guest room available for them.”
For thousands of years, the Jewish people prepared for the King’s arrival. From the first prophecy in Genesis 3, to the final prophecies of Zechariah and Malachi, the Jewish people were preparing. But when it came time for Jesus to enter this world, there was no room for him.
The prophet Daniel, gave the time frame. The prophet Micah gave the town. The book of Numbers gave the celestial appearance that would proceed him. The prophet Isaiah gave the mother. The Psalmist talked of the gifts given to him. All these and more spoken hundreds of years before, were given to point to the Collision of God and humanity. Yet, “there was no guest room available for them.”
And Jesus speaks of this arrival in the book of Revelation, chapter 3. “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
Every Old Testament prophet who spoke of the coming Savior, was pointing to Jesus standing before the world knocking, saying these words, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
The collision of Christmas is Jesus calling out from a manger, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
And today, the ramification of the Collision that happened two thousand years ago is Jesus still calling out, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”
The angel asked Mary if she would receive Jesus, and she did. The angel asked Jospeh if he would receive Jesus, and he did. They asked others in Bethlehem if they would receive Jesus, but there was no room for them.
Today, Jesus is calling to us, will you receive me? This is what the Collision of Christmas is about: the reception or rejection of Jesus into our lives.
If you have already received Jesus into your life, my question to you is, are you making room for him? Is Jesus out in your stable? That place that has no connection to your life. That place that is on the fringe, where you keep him at a distance? Or is he inside, eating with you, conversing with you, changing your life?
If he is in your stable, but not in the home of your life, what is keeping him there?
If you have never received Jesus, today is the day. You might be thinking, I can’t receive him, I don’t have a place for him. My life is too messed up to let God in. To which I say, if God was willing to lay his head in a dirty animal’s food dish, he is willing to live in your messed up life. I know he does, because he did for me. And all it takes is a simple prayer that recognizes your need for him, and his collision with you.
As we come to a close, I want to tell you, usually as I prepare for Sunday’s messages, through my prayer time, and through the time it takes to be led by the Spirit, God usually brings me to an idea about what he wants us to be challenged with. This week it wasn’t so easy. How are we to be challenged to make room for Jesus in our lives? Is the question I have asked several times in the last few days.
And this is where I was led to: something very simple, if somewhat elementary. Take a piece of paper about six inches long and write, "Jesus is welcomed here." After you have done this simply tape it to your front door. Let it be known to the world that Jesus is welcomed in you house, even if he is not welcomed anywhere else.
Now may God who searches for those who would welcome you, be welcomed into your life. And through your welcoming, may others open their hearts to the knock at their door. Amen.
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