Father, thank you that we can meet.
Viruses come and go.
Worry and anxiety comes and goes.
Being popular or unpopular,
fitting in with the culture or not,
all of these things come and go.
And we give you thanks and praise that this morning
we can gather together to be in your presence,
to hear your word, to receive grace from you.
And we ask, Lord, that you help us to be in your presence,
to be open and receptive to your grace
that you desire to give us this morning,
and help us to respond in a way which is worthy,
that is good for us and worthy of you.
And we ask this in the precious name of Jesus,
your Son and our Savior. Amen.
Please be seated.
Do we have both mics on, or is it just my hearing or something?
Everything's fine? Okay, it's just my hearing.
You guys watching it online,
you always get this little bit of extra commentary from me.
So I don't have my hearing aid in either,
so that might be part of it.
So one of the things which,
I don't know if I'm very different than other people,
I seem to be different than a lot of people in my family,
and that is that I have very few memories of my childhood.
In fact, I don't know if I have any memories,
other than maybe one, of before I was six.
And even, I think, you know, the couple of years after that,
it's hard for me to have really that many specific memories of them.
And I know, at least in the case of my family,
that I seem to be an outlier.
A lot of, you know, my wife and my kids
have a lot more memories of their childhood.
So what I can say, you know, spoiler alert,
if you're watching this or something like that,
I don't know when I stop believing in Santa,
like I probably did.
But I have no memory of believing in Santa,
and I have no memory of stopping believing in Santa.
But then again, that's not surprising,
since I have no memories of my childhood,
or my early childhood.
So it doesn't surprise me,
that it shouldn't surprise me
that I don't have memories of it.
The point of this is that
the Santa story is actually better
if it's not true.
Like, it's a better story
if you know that it's not true.
Like, if you think about it for a second,
if Santa's story is true,
it would be a bit creepy.
Like, he knows if you're being naughty and nice.
Like, really?
He's looking at you all the time?
Like, that's a bit creepy.
I mean, we'd actually call that stalking,
and there's laws against it in Canada.
And the second thing about it,
if you think about it is,
and maybe I'm the only one,
but I've never got a gift from Santa.
I mean, it would actually be sort of interesting
if one day they discovered that Santa's true,
the whole Santa story is correct,
and what's actually happened
is that all of North America and Europe are naughty,
and that's why we haven't gotten any gifts.
And that would actually make us all pretty mad
to discover that we're so bad in Santa's eyes
that we haven't gotten any gifts.
So the Santa story is actually better if it's not true,
and it's, you know, a fine enough story.
The thing is, though, that for real Christians,
the Christmas story has to be true.
You know, I think for a lot of my secular friends,
I mean, they'd almost think,
I mean, they'd know that, obviously,
Jesus probably really lived,
but they'd probably not make much of a distinction
between the Jesus birth story
and the Santa story and the other types of things.
They're all just sort of close to each other,
but most of them would acknowledge
that Jesus probably really lived in history,
just like the Buddha really lived in history.
But they don't, it doesn't really,
well, for my secular friends,
if you happen to be watching,
for Christians, it's absolutely essential
that the Christians,
that the birth story of Jesus is true.
And so we're going to look at it,
and we're going to look a little bit
about why it is that we would be so odd
to think that it matters, that it's true.
Today we're looking at the,
in fact, actually what we're doing is
because Daniel Avitan and his church plant
is his first time preaching through Christmas,
I decided we would use
the three classic Christmas texts
for this Sunday, Christmas Eve,
and Christmas morning.
So Matthew 1, Luke 2, and John 1.
And so today we're looking at Matthew 1.
And if you turn to your Bible,
that would be a great help as we look at it.
But I have to warn you
that we're going to not begin where I read the text.
We're going to begin with the really boring bit
that goes before it,
which is the genealogy.
So we're going to start at Matthew 1, verse 1.
I was thinking about that this week,
that the way the Bible is usually used in Hollywood,
you actually hear it a lot.
It depends, I guess, on the type of movie you watch.
But you often hear them say,
it's going to be biblical.
And that means the slaughter and explosions
are going to be massive.
It's going to be biblical.
But probably there'd be another word.
If you said it's going to be biblical,
it would also mean boring.
It's going to be very boring.
It's going to be biblical.
Because that's how a lot of Christians
and non-Christians view bits of the Bible,
especially ones like this.
And here's how it goes.
But it's actually really significant.
Look at how it begins.
Matthew 1, verse 1.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ,
the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Abraham was the father of Isaac,
and Isaac the father of Jacob,
and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.
And we'll just pause there for a second.
Now, here's the thing.
This story doesn't begin with once upon a time.
It doesn't begin with any of the type of language
of mythology or metaphor or symbolism.
It begins with a genealogy.
It begins as if we're going to be talking about
real people who really lived.
And I've just paused there,
but when we go through it in a bit,
we're going to see that they mention in it
like people who,
it doesn't matter if you're an atheist
or the world's biggest skeptic,
there's no denying that some of the people
who are mentioned in this genealogy
are clear historical people
of whom there is archaeological evidence
of their existence
and their existence having been reported
in other types of cultures.
So the thing is,
in fact, if you could put up the first point,
the first point is that Jesus is really real and true.
And he's really human.
He really did live.
And the whole,
the beginning of the rest of the story,
even if it's going to talk about
these remarkable miracles,
it's going to be talking about
his claims to being God.
It's going to talk about
the things he did to offend people
and all of this.
But it begins by Matthew saying
in as concrete and specific a way as possible,
Jesus really existed.
Like, it's true that he existed.
These things actually happened.
Now, you might disagree with him.
You might think they're lying.
But you have to understand
that's at least the claim.
And the claim that they happened
is also going to be connected in a moment
to the significance of the events,
not just the fact that they happened.
And so that's, you know,
that's how it begins right off the bat.
But then it takes
this really weird turn in verse 3.
Actually, we'll just read verse 3
and then I'll tell you
what the big weird turn is.
And Judah, the father of Perez,
and Zerah by Tamar,
and Perez, the father of Hezron,
and Hezron, the father of Ram.
Now, just pause here.
And I don't know if we're going to read
all of the verses in the genealogy,
but we're going to read most of them.
Now, this is a very, very weird turn
that's just been taken here.
And most of us,
and I'm just like you, by the way,
when I come to genealogies in the Bible,
I don't read them minutely.
I sort of let my eyes pass over them
and then at some point in time
I realize I've actually sort of finished
reading the whole genealogy
and not much stuck.
So in the ancient world,
and still in lots of parts of the world today,
genealogies are, in a sense,
almost like a CV.
It's trying to communicate to you
why this individual is important,
why they're significant,
why they're a person of substance.
And for lots of our,
our culture has different ways to present this.
For instance, quite a few years ago now,
I was in a place that I had
a regular coffee shop at.
There was a, the owner was Muslim,
really, really fine guy.
We had lots of good talks,
but his father-in-law,
who also worked in the restaurant,
would never look at me.
He'd see me there with the Bible.
He would never talk to me,
never smile to me.
If I tried to talk to him at all,
he would ignore me.
And then I'd heard a talk,
and I discovered that from that part of the world
where the man was,
because I knew the part of the world he was from,
that sons were a marker of significance
and substance.
And so I started to pray about this,
and about a week or two after I was praying about it,
the owner was there,
and his father-in-law was right behind him.
And the owner said,
you have lots of kids, don't you?
And the father-in-law looked,
and I said, yeah, I have five sons.
And the man looked at me.
He looked at me for the first time.
And from that time on,
he talked to me.
In his culture,
I was a man of substance,
of significance.
Didn't matter if I was rich or poor,
I had five sons.
And so in the ancient world,
often genealogies are helping to communicate to people,
your significance and your specialness.
But here's what's,
there's several things about this,
which should just happen,
which is really,
really,
really weird,
and very,
very revolutionary,
and starts to set the stage that this story,
historical,
true,
real story of Jesus,
is going to be radically different than people would expect.
First of all,
it mentions a woman,
which isn't unusual in our culture,
but in the ancient world,
you wouldn't have them mentioned.
But here's the other thing which is significant about it,
and you have to know what the relationship of Judah and Tamar is.
Now,
in the world at that time,
I know this sounds really weird to us,
but we can't be ethnocentric.
We can't see the world just through our eyes.
We have to understand that cultures are different.
In the ancient world,
the land was very significant,
and passing on the land,
and your name was very significant.
So there was a law that,
like,
you know,
in my case,
because I have a sister and a brother,
if I had died,
I married Louise,
and if I died before Louise and I were able to have a child,
then it would be my brother Stephen's obligation to sleep with Louise
so she could have a child that would carry on my line.
It wouldn't carry on his line,
it would carry on my line.
And so that was the law at that particular time of Judah.
And what happened is Judah's son,
he had three sons.
The first son is given in marriage to Tamar,
but the son dies before Tamar is able to have a child.
So Judah follows the law and the custom of the day
and gives his second son,
but the second son dies before a baby is able to be produced.
So now Judah is getting very superstitious,
and he worries that if he gives his last son,
to this woman to produce the heir,
that that son will die.
But the son's young,
so he puts off the woman.
But he does more than that if you read the story.
I guess nowadays we call it,
he ghosts her.
Is that the right word?
He ghosts her.
And not only does he ghost her,
he doesn't even provide for her.
She has to go way off.
He doesn't provide for her.
He forgets about her.
He just hopes she goes away,
maybe dies of some virus or something like that.
But the woman keeps track,
and she sees that the son is now old enough to get married,
but Judah's not doing anything about it.
So Tamar hears through the grapevine
that Judah's going to be in the area for some events.
So she dresses like a prostitute,
and she goes to where the prostitutes hang out,
and Judah's not a good guy.
Judah feels like having sex with a prostitute.
So he goes to where the prostitutes hang out,
and he picks up Tamar,
and he sleeps with her.
That's called incest.
And he produces Perez and Zerah, twins.
So, okay.
Like, you know, sometimes,
like my kids all know,
because, you know,
I have an older kid and younger kid.
My kids now know,
don't go to dad for advice about CVs,
because dad hasn't had to write a CV.
Like, I mean, the wheel had just been invented,
and back when I last had to do something,
so I don't know how to get it.
But I think I know enough about,
you don't put that type of stuff in your CV to impress.
Like, you leave that stuff out.
Like, you put the heroes,
the successful people,
you do all of that,
but you leave this out.
His lineage goes back to
a guy who goes to prostitutes,
has incest,
and that's part of Jesus' lineage.
Like, for devout Jewish people
who would have read that
in the days when Matthew first wrote this,
they would have gone,
like, hmm.
You didn't have to put that in.
You know?
But this isn't just like
a little bit of an accident,
as if, you know,
it's just like for one of us,
you know, we're doing our emails,
and we're doing our emails,
and then you press send,
and then afterwards you're going,
oops, I shouldn't have,
well, sure,
I forgot to edit that out.
No, no, no.
You see that it's not a bug,
it's a feature
of the genealogy.
Because look what continues happening
in verse 4.
And Ram, the father of Amminadab,
and Amminadab, the father of Nishan,
and Nishan, the father of Salmon,
and Sammon, the father of Boaz,
by Rahab,
and Boaz, the father of Obed,
by Ruth,
and Obed, the father of Jesse,
and now just stop there for a second,
Rahab.
Now, why is that sort of all of a sudden?
First of all, it's another woman.
So obviously,
it's not just that he forgot
to do the editing
when he pressed send,
but it's also very interesting
for another reason.
You see, who's Rahab?
Well, Rahab was a prostitute.
Now, she also ends up
being the hero of the faith,
but she's a prostitute.
And in a culture
which is concerned
with having, in a sense,
the biological line being pure,
and by the way,
as soon as I say that,
most, I don't know who,
I don't care who'd be watching this,
most Canadians would say,
like, that's a creepy idea.
But you know one of the reasons
why you think it's a creepy idea
of pure lineage?
It's because it's a Christian reason.
Like, even if you don't remember
that it ultimately comes
from Christianity,
that's actually where it comes from.
It comes from
the gospel and Christianity
that we start to challenge
this whole idea of racial purity.
It's like, in fact,
you see, when,
I just watch a really, really,
really, really good movie.
I don't, you know,
a lot of times I watch movies
I'm not necessarily recommending
you watch it,
but I'm watching a really,
really good movie,
just watch a good movie
on Netflix called
Just Mercy.
True story.
And if you watch that movie,
one of the things
that's just so offensive
is that it doesn't say
that all of the white people
in Alabama are Christians,
but you know they probably are.
And their racial concerns
is so abhorrent to the Bible.
It is so deeply abhorrent
to the Bible.
And if nothing else,
they just know to have it
look at right here
that Jesus' lineage
includes a pagan
who was a prostitute.
And that's part of his lineage.
Now, Ruth is also a pagan,
but is a heroine,
so to speak,
within the story.
But then notice this,
and then I'm going to do
two more in this lineage,
and then we'll move on.
But you're getting the idea.
Look at verse 6.
And Jesse,
the father of David the king,
and David was the father of Solomon
by the wife of Uriah.
Now, that's a better-known story.
But what is that story about?
Well, David's up one day,
and he sees Bathsheba,
and he thinks she's really sexy-looking.
So he wines and dines her
and sleeps with her.
And he makes her pregnant.
And this is a big scandal.
So he wants to cover it up.
So he brings Bathsheba's wife,
Bathsheba's husband Uriah,
back from battle
in the hope that Uriah
will sleep with his wife
and then mistakenly
get the dates all mixed up
and think that he's
the father of the child.
But if you read the story,
the first night Uriah
doesn't do it
because he's,
dang, he's so honorable.
How can I go to see my wife
when the king's army
is out there sleeping in tents
without those creature comforts?
And David's probably saying,
dang, I have to have a moral man
when I've done something deeply immoral.
And so the next night,
David gets Uriah drunk.
And even when Uriah's drunk,
he's still an honorable,
courageous, upstanding guy.
And so David does, of course,
the next best thing,
which he has Uriah murdered.
And Matthew puts this in here
when he's doing his lineage.
The child of that,
of the adultery, dies.
And the next child that's born
is Solomon,
who ends up becoming the king.
If you just skip down a little bit
to verse 10,
we'll just give you one more thing
about this whole lineage.
Look at verse 10.
And Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh,
and Manasseh, the father of Amos,
and Amos, the father of Joseph.
Well, Josiah.
Well, first of all,
you could go through this whole thing
and if you looked up
the different biblical references to them,
you'd be a bit shocked.
I mean, they're not all
just really terrible people.
But Amos was such a bad king
that the officials killed him.
But Manasseh,
Manasseh brought fertility religions back in.
And now what is fertility religions?
Well, fertility religions mean
if let's say the Morides
or some other family
or the Sinclairs,
I was really happy.
You know, we were really,
money was really tight
for decades with us.
So one way out of it
is I could have sold
some of my daughters
to the temple
and got money.
And if I sold my daughters
to the temple for money,
I'd get money,
I'd be helped,
I'd have two less mouths.
Let's say I sold two of my daughters.
I'd have two less mouths to feed
and I'd have a good chunk of money
and my daughter
would become a prostitute
for the temple
because there's a,
Manasseh brought back
into Israel this idea
that a guy could go
into a temple
and have sex with a woman
as an act of worship.
Like this is horrific
and that's what Manasseh brought back
and he even brought back
in another practice
that if I wasn't having
enough favor from God,
well, I have five sons,
I can kill one of the sons
because I believe
that there's this,
like, how do you want to get
the most powerful God
is going to ask you
to do the most horrific things.
Like that's how
the ancient mind thinks.
The most powerful God
asks you to do
the most horrific things.
And so what could be
more horrific
than going and having
my own son murdered
so that I could earn favor
with God
and be prosperous.
And that's what Manasseh
did himself.
He not only introduced it,
that's what he did.
And he's in the lineage.
Sorry, I just love this.
You know, they talk about
the Christian radio,
they want to say the word
Christian for the Christian
radio station
so they call it family
and it's family friendly.
This isn't family friendly.
Like, they wouldn't be able
to tell the story
on a family friendly
radio station.
Like, this isn't what
you're expecting.
And I can just imagine
my non-Christian friends
saying, whoa,
I didn't realize
there's a lot more drama
in the Bible
than I thought there was
in this boring thing.
But here's the thing.
Here's the thing.
If you could put up the point.
Jesus' lineage
is a train wreck.
Jesus' lineage
is a train wreck.
That's the point.
And there's a whole lot
of other things
you could talk about
just with this one,
you know, boring linea.
You know, boring
if you just started reading it
like I am.
But if you think about it,
there's something that
Matthew does
which is so cool
is he begins
with this train wreck
where, you know,
he has a prostitute,
there's incest,
there's terrible kings,
there's murdering
of your kids,
like there's selling
of your daughters
into prostitution,
like it begins
with all of this
and partly what it's doing
that, Tim Keller
has this wonderful line.
You know how on,
it used to be,
I don't know if they do it anymore,
it used to be that
on the day after Christmas
like there'd be certain stores,
big box stores
where they're gonna have
such special deals
that people would get there
like at two o'clock
in the morning
and camp out
because they wanted
to get in
the second they could.
Tim Keller
has this wonderful line,
even if you're camping
out at the gate of hell,
you are not so bad
that Jesus didn't die
to save you.
Isn't that a great line?
Even if you're camping
out at the gate of hell,
you're not too bad.
You can look at it
in this lineage
and the thing
that Matthew does
which is so cool
is he begins with this
and how does the book,
how does Matthew end?
It ends,
go to all the people groups
and make disciples
and you can see
that in a sense
the people groups
and the bad people
are all included
in Jesus' lineage
and because you see
Jesus' lineage
is a train wreck,
you know that only God
has to do something.
This isn't natural.
It isn't as if
the lineage is,
whoa, Abraham
is really great
and then the next guy
is like really even better
and then the next guy
and boy,
by the time you get to Jesus
it's like,
I don't know,
it's like,
you know,
40 generations
of superheroes
marrying superheroes
and they're like
the super,
super,
like they're just,
you can't have enough
supers before them,
they can do everything.
No.
God has to do something
in the person of Jesus
because his lineage
is a train wreck
and given that he comes
to be the savior
when it says in a moment
that Jesus is Emmanuel,
God with us
which means that he comes
to live amongst our mess,
Matthew is communicating
this is real,
look at his genealogy,
it's a mess
and that's Jesus.
Now,
verse 17,
if you just want to
flip through it,
it's just a little,
tiny little thing here,
so all the generations
from Abraham to David
were 14
and from David
to the deportation
to Babylon,
14
and from the deportation
to Babylon
to the Christ,
14 generations.
Just a simple little,
it's a little number thing
there for people
who are motivated
by numbers
is that
if you go through
the entire Tanakh,
the Torah,
the Old Testament,
you'll see that the number
seven is very special,
world is created
in six days,
seventh day at rest,
two sevens,
Jesus,
the seventh seven.
That's why it's the 14,
14,
14.
It's,
this is something,
a new series of generations
are going to come from this,
the perfect one,
the rest of God,
which the writer of Hebrews
takes up.
Now verse 18,
now the birth of Jesus Christ
took place in this way
and sort of
before we go any further,
we can also already see
that part of the misconception
about the Bible
and about Christianity,
you know,
that it's,
you know,
all white
or it's,
you know,
like all of that type of thing,
you see that,
yeah,
there's been lots of Christians
who live in complete
and utter defiance
of the Bible,
complete and utter defiance
of the Bible,
but the Bible
is actually remarkable
and you can see how
that time and time
and time again,
whether it's Wilberforce
with slavery,
you know,
wherever it is,
is that when Christians
actually,
it isn't that we need
to hear post-modern theorists
or theory
to try to wake us up,
we just have to all of a sudden
be woken up by the Bible
and we realize that racism
is wrong
or this is wrong
or some other great,
or slavery is wrong,
it just is all of a sudden
the Bible wakes us up
and we go,
oh my,
hey,
I have to change my life,
but the problem we have
with the rest of the story,
even though we say,
well,
okay,
there's more to that story
than I thought,
it still has a problem
of a weird miracle
and there's still
this offensive little thing,
you know,
one of the big problems
that I think most Canadians
have and Canadian Christians
have is at the heart
of hearts,
what is it that our culture
teaches us time
and time
and time again?
you've got to be the hero
of your own story,
you've got to be the hero
of your own story,
weaklings,
I mean,
that's the whole problem
with all those movies
made before recent days
where the woman
is rescued by the man,
no,
we have to understand,
women have to learn
that they have to be
the hero of their own story
and men have to be
the hero of their own story
and that's so deeply
ingrained within us
that when we come
to a story
of the birth of a hero,
we go,
yeah,
let's look,
verse 18,
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,
just in those days,
the way it worked
is in a sense
when you were engaged,
you could use the title
husband and wife,
even though,
by our way of using words,
it's not the way it works,
but in those days
that's how it would work,
you,
Joseph in a sense
could be called
the husband of Mary
as soon as he was engaged,
so they're engaged still,
the biblical pattern then
was that you would have
sexual knowing
after you,
after you were married,
became husband and wife,
so they're engaged,
but they can use this language,
she's pregnant
and it says
from the Holy Spirit,
which is going to be
explained in a moment,
verse 19 again,
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,
and just sort of pause,
one of the things
I do with coffee people
or people in Loblaws
or something
who are serving me
after I've been there
a couple of times
and they obviously come
from another part of the world,
I'll often ask them
what their name means,
like my name means,
my name technically
means farmer,
but my parents
didn't name me
because it meant farmer,
but often if you come
from many parts of the world,
your name has a significance
in your original language
and culture,
so I'll just ask them,
what does your name mean,
and they'll tell me usually,
they might say sometimes
it's hard to translate
or get into English
or whatever,
but they'll tell me
roughly what it means,
so it was the same
by the way then
at the time
that the Bible was written,
so there's actually
a bit of a pun here,
she will bear a son
and you shall name,
call his name God saves,
because that's what
Jesus means,
so I'll read it again
verse 21,
she will bear a son
and you shall call
his name God saves,
for he will save
his people from their sins,
and this took place,
verse 22,
all this took place
to fulfill what the Lord
has spoken by the prophet,
behold the virgin
shall conceive
and bear a son
and they shall call
his name Emmanuel,
and then Matthew
tells us what it means,
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,
God saves.
Now,
here's the thing
to understand,
if you could put up
the first thing here
is that Jesus' birth
began with a profound miracle,
Jesus' birth
began with a profound miracle,
what the Bible text
is saying is this,
if in a sense
if you could go back
in time
with all of the modern
scientific equipment,
even more advanced
than what we have
right now,
one moment,
Mary just had
a normal womb
and she wasn't pregnant,
and if you go back
and look at Luke
where there's the conversation
about the angel
asking Mary
whether she was willing
to take this big risk
and bear the cost
and the price
of being the one
by which God
would enter into the world
to save human beings,
and she says she is,
then one moment,
it's just a normal womb,
no pregnancy,
the next moment,
there's a zygote
attached to the uterus,
that's what happens,
now,
here's,
it's very interesting,
like many modern people
believe the myth
that Christianity
is opposed to science
or undermines science,
I'm trying to work up
a bit of the courage
to write a blog
about the fact
that actually
in our culture
it's only Christianity
which is preserving science
increasingly,
which is under attack
by irrationalism,
like most woke
progressive politics
are inherently irrational
and undermining science,
but you see,
just imagine for a moment,
here's how miracles work,
you see,
miracles actually only work
if there's regular order
of cause and effect
in scientific laws,
otherwise miracles
actually don't work,
and that's why
in a sense
science emerged
out of the Christian
Jewish worldview
as people,
it dawned on people
that the Bible,
that God has a mind,
that he's a creator,
that he's a law giver,
that they can go and look
and see how he's
ordered creation
and it's all because
there's ordered creation
that there can be
something like a miracle
and the miracles
don't involve
suspending the laws
of science
very rarely
or doing anything like that,
it's an insertion
into cause-effect,
cause-effect,
and it would be
a little bit as if,
you know,
I don't know,
Louise and I,
I'm walking out
and a lottery ticket
flutters down
and I pick it up
and a couple of days later
I've won 40 million dollars,
that's the only way
I'll ever win
with a lottery ticket,
God will have to have it
flutter into my hands
or I'll find it on the ditch
or something like that
and I win all the money,
and so we want to bless
our kids when they go
into university
and we just say,
you know,
how about,
you know,
Bria,
are you willing to have us
sort of have entry
into your bank account
and she says yes
because,
you know,
I love you Nana
and Papa
and I trust you
and you know,
we see the,
you know,
student loan money
going in
and this going in
and that going out
and she gets a part-time job
and this is going in
and out
and in and out
and it's all
the law of mathematics,
it's all the law
of mathematics,
it's never wrong,
just the law of mathematics
but one day
we just decided
to plunk in $500
to her account.
Now,
we haven't done anything
against the laws
of mathematics,
the law of mathematics
just keep on going
but all of a sudden,
one second after we've
plunked in $500,
her bank balance
is $500 more
but then what happens?
All the other normal laws,
it just,
it,
the mirror,
in a sense,
the miracle,
just,
the flow just continues.
Mary's able to have babies
like she is.
She's old enough,
she's healthy enough,
there's this miracle
of the zygote
all,
one moment
in the twinkling of an eye
there's a zygote
attached to the womb of Mary
and then all of the normal
biological and scientific processes
which were never suspended
continue to happen
and eventually she has a baby
and that's at the very heart
of the Christian story
and it also helps us
to understand
how miracles work
and why it actually,
it's only if there's
the laws of science
that miracles can be happening
if there is a God
as described in the Bible.
But why does any of this matter?
If you could put up
the final point
that would be very helpful.
Emmanuel,
God with us,
Jesus,
the transcendent
became human
to really deliver you
from your transcendent
offense
or offenses
would probably be
a better way to put it.
there's lots of good advice
by people out there.
We have Daniel Gilman
visiting us
and I don't know
with his Ravi Zacharias training,
I don't know
what they used to tell him
about the word sin
but there's lots of people
out there
who advise Christians
not to use the word sin.
I mention this
because if you look here,
look back up at,
where is it here?
Verse 21,
she will bear a son
and you shall call his name Jesus
for he will save his people
from their sins.
And so there's lots of people
who advise us
not to use the word sin
and there's some reason for that.
There's some like,
it's because partially
the word sin
is often for non-Christians
that they think
it just means sex,
like being naughty
about sexual things.
But the big thing is
is it's easily mocked.
Like,
if I got a comedy
Netflix special,
I could just come
walking out to the stage
and say,
I see a lot of sinners
out here
and everybody would laugh
because it's a ridiculous idea.
Have you been sinning?
I just have to say that.
People will laugh.
It's a ridiculous idea.
It's mocked in our culture.
And so people will
tell us to get rid of it.
But here's the thing
and I might,
I don't think I'll lose
anybody in this room.
I might lose some of you
online by saying this
but just give me some grace.
Jordan Peterson
has some very wise advice
about things.
He's reacting to
forced use of pronouns
and other types of things
and he says basically this
which is just completely true.
It's just reasonable.
We think with words.
There's no thinking
without the use of words.
And if you have
controlled speech
and certain words
aren't allowed
then you have
controlled thought.
But controlled thought
is an oxymoron.
If your thought's controlled
it's not thought.
You're not thinking.
And so if you control
the language
you control
how people think.
It's an Orwellian
1984 world.
Welcome to Canada
in 2021.
And that's part of the reason
why we have to
find ways to resist it
and to not allow
our words to be controlled.
And so here's the importance
of the word sin.
Why we need to keep it.
Even if
it might be that
I'm talking to people
I might not use it
but I have to keep the word
and not be ashamed
or embarrassed at the word.
And here's the reason
the word is so important.
The word sin
actually is helpful
to Canadians
that just don't realize it
and it's very helpful
to Christians
because it maintains
the idea
of transcendence.
You see
our culture
does have the idea
that some things
well you know
if
if I
if
Louise slapped me
that would just be wrong.
Okay?
If I discovered
that one of you
had ripped off
an insurance company
for a hundred thousand dollars
well that would be wrong.
And there's a lot of things
most things
that are just sort of wrong.
But our culture
still has this idea
that there's some things
that are wrong
that touch on the transcendent.
Like when we say
that somebody is guilty
of a crime against humanity
that's what we're trying
to get at.
That a crime against humanity
is not just ripping off
an insurance company.
It's not just robbing a bank.
It's not just
you know
two drunk guys
fighting over a girl
and punching one another.
And that's all bad.
It's all bad.
But there's certain types
of things that we want to try.
Our culture doesn't have
the language of transcendence
but even though
we don't have the language
of transcendence
we still have the sense
that there's something transcendent.
And some things
aren't just wrong
they're wrong in a way
and we start reaching
it's a crime against humanity.
To find out about somebody
doing ethnic cleansing
that's a crime against humanity.
Part of the reason
our culture is so concerned
about hate speech
is it's saying
that it's not just
that I call
you know
somebody in the congregation
a not
some type of thing.
But if there's a sense
that it's motivated
by a hatred
and a prejudice
of a whole race
or a whole class
of people
that are culturally
you know
important right now
that in some ways
that's not just me
not being right
with my language.
When you call it
a hate crime
we're trying to say
it's touching
on something
transcendent
that we violated.
And if you know
anything about our culture
there's no remedy
against something
which is transcendent
which has been violated.
we will all say
if I kill somebody
and there's a sense
that I didn't just kill them
but that it's a hate crime
or it's a crime
against humanity
people would be saying
that 20 years in jail
isn't enough.
You should be in jail
for the rest of your life
and not only that
that on social media
and other types of things
my sin and my guilt
has to be brought to me
day and day
and day and day again.
I have to be crushed
belittled with
and made
if I don't feel shame
everybody else
should feel ashamed of me.
Because there's some things
that people do
which isn't just wrong
it is wrong
against the transcendent.
And our culture has that
even if we can't articulate it
very clearly.
And you see
this is what is so important
with the word sin.
is that what the Christian story
is saying is this
Emmanuel
God with us
Jesus
God saves
that the transcendent
became human
to really deliver
you and me
from your transcendent offenses.
Because you see
if we start
you know there's no way
if you've cleansed
an ethnic group
how can that whole group
like
we have this sense
of the transcendent
but it's transcendent
and the transcendent
is connected to justice
but we just
it
there's no
way to connect it
to satisfy it
and if
there was anything
it would have to be
as if
all of that ethnic group
were every gay
who's ever lived
or every person
who's African American
or African
who's ever lived
could somehow
as one
speak into it
and deal with it.
And Christians believe
that
every human being
is made in the image
of God
and the image
itself
comes amongst
his image bearers
the transcendent
himself
becomes human
to deal with that
that only the transcendent
can deal with
in a way that is
both fully just
and fully merciful
where you have the sense
that justice
has been done
with no violation
at all
not covered up
not ignored
not forgotten
completely revealed
and the transcendent
has both revealed
that transcendent
offense
and dealt
with it
in a just way
but in a way
which is also
merciful
and gives you
hope
even if you're
camping at the gate
of hell.
And that's what
the Christmas story
is.
The transcendent
becomes human
to deal with that
which only the transcendent
can deal with
for us human beings
who violate
a moral order
and moral things
which are transcendent.
There's hope.
It's the birth of hope.
Please stand.
Thank you.
Let's bow our heads
in prayer.
And by the way
just before I pray
if you're watching
this online
either today
or later on
and if you have
never given your life
to Jesus
there's no time
better than just now
saying Jesus
I've been camping
at the gates of hell
and I didn't realize
that there was a way
that all those things
in my past
in my present
that I've dealt with
can be dealt with
by you
in a way that is just
but is also full of
grace and mercy
that you can give me
new life in you
that you are Emmanuel
that you are with me
in my mess
and in the midst
of my mess
you saved me
and redeemed me.
There's no time
better now
than say Jesus
be my Emmanuel
be my Jesus
be my Christ
be my Savior
and never let me go.
Let's pray.
Father thank you so much
that Jesus
is God with us
that he is your
great provision
for our great need
that he is
justice
transcendent
and real
justice
real at the level
of history
transcendent
as well
that he is
mercy
that he is love
that he is grace
and that by his
life and death
and resurrection
those things
which keep
human beings
like us
far from you
have all been
dealt with
and bridged
in his life
and death
and resurrection
and so Father
we give you
thanks for this
we ask that you
help us
Father
to treasure
these truths
and to be like
Mary
and to ponder
them
to live out
of the pondering
upon these
great treasures
of the truth
of the Christmas
story
Father
help that
to be more
and more
what describes
our lives
and we ask this
in the name
of Jesus
your son
and our savior
amen
you