Keeping the Spirt of Christmas Alive- Through the Message
- Stephen Phelan
- Dec 27, 2009
- Series: Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive
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Keeping the Spirit of Christmas Alive—Through the Message
Dec. 27, 2009 Mid-City
Merry Christmas. I hope Friday was a magical day for you—it certainly was in our house. My hope is that the magic and the wonder of Christmas continues for you this morning and throughout next year. That is why we have been doing this series. The only way that will happen is if you know and live by faith in the the message of Christmas. You can’t keep the Spirit of Christmas alive if you don’t know what Christmas is about. So we’re going to think through the message of Christmas by looking at 2 central themes in the Christmas message: (1) God’s power, (2) God’s favor
(1) God’s Power
A virgin birth certainly reveals God’s power. You don’t see many of those, which is why you see Mary say what she did in v34, “How will this be since I am a virgin?” She essentially says, “Listen, Gabe, you been hangin’ with angels too long. I think you have forgotten how things work down here. Then look at Gabriel’s response in v35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”
Gabriel politely says, “No, Mary, I haven’t forgotten how things work. God is going to do this—and then v37, “nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is impossible with God.
It is interesting that he uses Elizabeth as evidence to prove to Mary that nothing is impossible with God. Elizabeth is her relative. Everyone in the family, including Mary, has suffered through her barrenness with her and has long since given up on her having children. And yet, now decades after the family has stopped praying for this, she is going to have a baby. This is like your 85 year old grandmother telling you that she is having a baby. What?
If you are going to follow Jesus, then here is one thing that you simply must remember and remind yourself of hourly—nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible with God. God tries to remind you of it on every page of the Bible. The Red Sea parting. Sampson pushing over buildings like they were Lincoln logs. Joshua and his men walking around the armed city of Jericho and winding some instruments and the walls come tumbling down. Daniel getting thrown to the lions and the lions cuddle up next to him like kitty cats. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible with God.
Now for those of you who are here that are skeptical about Christianity, let me stop a minute. See you could, if you tried to, give a rational explanation for each of the events I just mentioned. The Red Sea—maybe an incredibly strong wind blew the waters apart. Sampson—men are pulling planes with their teeth on TV and doing all sorts of human feats that seemed impossible—maybe this is one of this and he too should be in Guiness. Joshua and Jericho—there are lots of ways to explain this. Maybe the walls were structurally weak and walking around it caused the enemy to load up too many of their troops on the wall at one time and the walls couldn’t handle the weight. And Daniel—maybe they just fed the lions 40 pounds of steak and slipped some ancient tranquilizers in it.
My point is this—you can often give a natural explanation for God’s supernatural work. Your explanation may or may not be correct. But that doesn’t negate the reality of a supernatural God making impossible things possible, even if it is through natural, explainable means.
John Calvin put it this way. He says, “God lisps with us just as nurses speak to infants.” Have you ever heard anyone, be it a nurse, a mom, or dad, talk to a little infant—cuchy, cuchy, coo. Baby want bakke. That isn’t normal speak. We do this with animals too. I heard this hilarious thing on the radio one morning. I can’t remember what station it is but the DJ, I think it was Chris, calls this woman and tells her that he is her veterinarian. He gets tipped off that her dog Bubba is at the vet and so she believes it. And he says, “Now mam, Bubba won’t come out of his cage, so you’re going to have to talk real sweet to him to get him to come over to me. Can you do that for me on the phone?” And so on the radio here she goes, “Come mere Bubba. My little sweet thing.”
What is my point? You have is a more powerful and intellectually developed person trying to communicate to a little baby & a dog. God very often does the same thing—John Calvin calls this God lisping. He lisps to us by working supernaturally through natural means that we can explain and somewhat understand. That doesn’t make it any less supernatural.
One way that God lisps or works through ordinary means is that he works supernaturally through ordinary people like you and me. There is this remarkable passage in John 14 where Jesus promises to do his supernatural work through ordinary people like us. John 14:12ff,. Listen, “12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” Jesus had been performing miracles right and left and he then says, “Anyone who has faith in me is going to do even greater things because I am going to the Father. See He is saying that I am going to spread out my presence through what we call the Holy Spirit. And ordinary, average people like you and me are going to be apart of an extraordinary God working through us to accomplish his purposes.
I just saw a powerful example of an extraordinary God doing his work through ordinary, natural means to make the impossible possible. God called Justin and Melissa Phillips to adopt two children from Ethiopia. They aren’t here today, but they gave me permission to share a bit of their story. See one of the critical pieces to make this adoption possible was missing—they didn’t have the money. Now hear me say this—Justin and Melissa are two of the most capable and gifted people I know. Both of them could have made enough money to adopt 30 kids if they so chose to do so, but God has called them to City Heights and a part of that call has required financial sacrifice.
So one of our dear friends came up with the glorious idea to help them raise money that was a complete surprise to them. The idea was this--Take the money that you would normally spend on Christmas presents, and put that towards the adoption. So the present you would give to someone would be a real life that will be involved in our church and community for years to come. And so on Monday night a group of us barged into their home with a check for almost $4,000. And then, get this, the next morning, Justin and Melissa get a call from the adoption agency informing them that they have been chosen to adopt a beautiful 6 year old girl and a 4 month old boy. The Lord provided the money one night before they got the call. See nothing is impossible with God. Nothing. And, you see, God uses ordinary people like you and me to a seemingly impossible thing possible.
PICTURE OF SINTAYEHU & GELETA
Can you explain this away if you are skeptical? Yes. People wrote checks—that doesn’t seem so supernatural to me. Yes, but it all began with 2 ordinary people following the call of Jesus in City Heights. They rooted themselves in the community of Jesus. They took risks to follow him. He called them to adopt, and He made the seemingly impossible possible by providing financially. And I could give you story after story after story of ways that God has worked in the world, some through seemingly explainable ways like this and others through unexplainable ways like virgin births and resurrections. You must decide—is it really all chance that these things or happening, or maybe the Bible is right. Maybe there is a God who makes the impossible possible—if you want to keep the Spirit of Christmas alive in your hearts, then this is step 1—faith that God makes the impossible possible and beginning to experience this wonder this year.
(2) God’s Favor
If you want to understand the message of Christmas and keep it alive past Dec. 25th , not only do you need to unders God’s power, but also God’s favor. Look at v28. The first thing the angel says to Mary is, “Greetings, you who are highly favored!” Why does God favor Mary? Do you think it is because Mary is somehow more pious than all the other women in Israel? I think this is the reason most people assume God chose Mary to be the mother of Christ. They think that Mary essentially earned the right to become the mother of God because she was the most spiritual or pious virgin in all of Israel. Wrong.
The word for "favored" here is used one other time in the New Testament (in Eph. 1:6) where it means the free bestowal of grace. So the first thing Gabriel says is this, “Mary, God is about to give you a gift, that you don’t deserve and haven’t earned. There are plenty of other eligible virgins, but God has chosen to give you a free gift..”
The message of Christmas—of this favor that comes as a free gift—hits Mary and she sings with joy a little later in Lk. 1. See when this message of God’s favor hits you, it changes you. Mary is favored and her heart explodes. The favor of God hit me this week in 2 ways. The first was at 3 AM Monday night. Our kids for some reason can’t seem to master sleeping through the night. Most parents figure this out by the time their child is 6 weeks old—not the Phelans, we’re a little slow. I was talking to Pat Burger about this and he said they are a little slow as well. He was joking and said that he has redefined what an all-nighter is. In college that was staying up studying all night—now with kids, it is actually sleeping all night without being awakened or just getting up and going to the bathroom (something that I guess I have to look forward to with increasing regularity). Ford and Milly have been coming in all week. And Ford came in at 3 AM Monday with this question. Dead serious. “Dad, will you scratch my back?” Now if anyone else in the world woke me up at 3 AM to scratch their back, I would think they were weird. What?
But when my son did this I didn’t think my son was weird. See my son and daughter have special favor with mom and dad. They didn’t earn that favor—it was a free-gift that came with being our kids. As I was walking back to my bed thinking about how much I love that little critter the favor of God hit me. I laughed and thought, “Father, I have 3 AM wake-up access to you==the God of the universe. And God’s favor astounded me--Anytime, anyplace, with anything, no matter how trivial I am welcome. You won’t think I am weird or out of line for coming. I am highly favored based on nothing I did—a free gift of grace that comes courtesy of this little baby.
But the favor of God also hit me through a story I saw about a boy named Jake. Jake was battling eye cancer and his wish was to see a USC game before he lost his eye. Let’s watch the story: (47-4: 32).
Jake knows he has Pete Caroll’s favor. He did nothing to earn Pete Carroll’s favor—he got sick. And His sickness created a soft-spot in Pete Carroll’s heart for Jake. Ironically, we’re all in the same position as Jake. We’re sick, and our disease is much worse than cancer—it is called sin.
But the message of Christmas is that God has a soft-spot in his heart for sick people. See the God of the Bible favors people who know they are sick—not good people. He isn’t into quibbling over our stats—he knows our moral statistics, and Based on our stats, we deserve God’s punishment, not his favor. But then Christmas happened. God sent His son to be born in a manger came to deal with the curse—far as the curse is found.
This baby himself wasn’t sick with sin like us because he wasn’t just a man—he was born of a virgin. He was God’s son. Perfect in every way. Obedient, without blemish. The only healthy one of the whole lot of humanity. And the favor of Lord rested upon. Until one Friday, on the cross, the favor of God ran out when the healthy one became sick with our sin. The favored one became the cursed one. But on Sunday, God’s favor returned, and Jesus Christ was resurrected. This is why we sing joy to the world—because the resurrected King Jesus can now make his favor and blessing known far as the curse is found.
See if you receive him this morning by faith, you’ll be like Jake. Jake is favored by Coach Carroll and the USC Trojans and that has changed him. When you trust Jesus, you become highly favored not by a football coach, but by the God of the universe. If the favor of a football coach can change Jake, how much more can the favor of the God of the universe change you. It is what you’re heart is longing for. And it only comes by faith in a little baby.
