Good evening, everyone. It's great to be in church with you tonight. If I've never met
you before, my name is Stephen, senior pastor here at St. Paul's. And it is always great
to be at church with you, but particularly on, I think, Christmas time. I just love Christmas
time. I've got three young girls at home right now. They've gone to bed. Hopefully they're
asleep. And just excited. The reindeer food's been put out, attracting the possums and everything
else. But they'll think it's the reindeers in the morning. Just an exciting time of year.
And with three young girls, I noticed the youngest is seven at the moment. But when they're sort
of around four or five, the height of ambition for them at this time of year, because they're
girls and because they're too old to play Jesus in the nativity, the best thing is to be merry.
They all kind of line up. They want to be merry. If they're going to have any sort of nativity
play, every five-year-old girl wants to play merry. And each year, unfortunately, only one
girl is ever picked. As it turns out, mine never been picked. I don't know how that worked
out with the senior pastor thing. Because we don't play favourites around here. Each year,
only one girl is ever picked. And they've reached the theatrical dizzying heights of being merry.
And from these two central roles, if you're not Jesus, you're not merry in the nativity
play. It's descending order of importance from that moment on. There's the Magi, which is
fantastic. There's always a bunch of angels. They don't have to say too much. There's the
shepherds. There's the King Herod. He's the boo-his guy. There's the sheep, the donkeys.
Ironically, there was actually no donkeys actually in Bethlehem at the time. But for some reason,
we've always got donkeys in the nativity scene. There's cows. And somewhere, there's some poor
lad who gets the gig of Joseph. Doesn't say anything. Like most husbands at the birthday,
their children. Just there. Because we're meant to be. And so some poor lad's got Joseph,
and he really doesn't want to really say anything at all. And the scripts often forget that in actual
fact, as we've just read, an angel also came to Joseph. He has a fairly key role in this whole
nativity scene. In fact, there's at least one thing that the angel said to Joseph that he didn't
tell anyone else. He didn't tell Mary, didn't tell the shepherds, said it just to Joseph. Angel
tells Joseph in a dream that the baby that is to be born to his fiancee, Mary, is a fulfillment of a
prophecy from hundreds of years earlier. And it's a prophecy that God would come and dwell amongst
his people. And so in this interaction between Joseph and the angel, we have a very, very invaluable
treasure. And so tonight, I just want to look at that passage from Matthew 1 really quick.
Three main things to learn from the name Emmanuel. Only Joseph was told Emmanuel is his name.
Three main things. Number one, Jesus is God. Number two, that he is human. And three, that he is with us.
So I know it's a bit after 11, but three simple things to remember. Number one, Jesus is God.
There are several ways that Matthew drives home the core Christmas message that Jesus is not simply
a great religious leader. He's not just simply a great teacher or even some angelic being, but in fact,
the divine God himself. In verse 20 of what Nick just read out to us, the angel tells Joseph that the human
life that is growing inside Mary has come not from any human being, but from his heavenly father,
from God himself. And so Jesus, if you like, has two fathers and Joseph will be Jesus' father only in a
secondary sense. Mary is told in the text, is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. God is the real father.
However, the most direct statement of Jesus' identity comes in verse 23. Matthew quotes from Isaiah chapter 7,
several hundred years before, and he says,
the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.
Now, for centuries, Jewish religious leaders and scholars had known about that prophecy,
but they had not thought that it should be taken quite literally. Matthew is saying that this promise
is greater than even all the scholars imagined. Jesus Christ is God with us because the human
life growing in the womb of Mary was a miracle performed by God himself. This child, as we have just sung,
is literally God. Now, Matthew was a Jew, which makes this statement really startling for him.
You see, the Jewish had a distinctive view of God, which made them, the people on earth,
at that time, least open to the idea that a human being could be God. At that time,
Eastern religions believed God was an impersonal force permeating all things. And so it wasn't unusual
for them to say that some human beings were, if you like, particularly great manifestations of the
divine. Western religions at the time believed that gods would disguise themselves as human beings for their own purposes.
So you see this in Greek and Roman mythology and in their concept of deity.
Jews, however, believed in a God who was both personal and infinite.
God was not a being within the universe, but was instead the ground of its existence and infinitely
transcendent above the universe. So everything in a Jewish worldview was against the idea that a human
being could be God. Jews would not even pronounce the name of their God, Yahweh.
They wouldn't even spell it.
And yet Jesus Christ,
a Jew,
by his life, by his claims and by his resurrection,
convinced his closest Jewish followers
that he was not just a prophet telling them how to find God,
but that he was God himself
coming to humanity.
Now, Matthew is not the only biblical author to teach this.
John,
the apostle,
Paul,
another Jew,
a Pharisee,
the apostle Peter,
another Jewish man,
they all declared it.
Now, of course,
the opinions of these authors would not mean much if Jesus himself hadn't clearly declared his divine identity.
All through the Gospels,
every book,
history book about Jesus,
you see Jesus constantly forgiving sin,
which only God can do.
He also claims,
I'm going to come back and I'm going to judge all of humanity across every culture and generation
and only God can do that.
And at many times,
in many ways,
Jesus Christ,
a Jewish man says,
I am God.
And thousands and thousands of people came to believe him and worship him.
It's a claim that we've just sung.
Many in this world know the claim
and give it lip service at Christmas
without thinking about the implications of that claim
and what we have just sung.
If Jesus really is God,
what does it mean for us practically?
Well, firstly,
it's a intellectual watershed.
It's a turning point for us.
Some have argued that the supreme miracle of Christianity
is not the resurrection of Christ from the dead,
but the coming of God into the world as a human being.
Of all the things that Christianity proclaims,
this one is the most staggering.
A Canadian theologian, James Packer,
puts it bluntly.
He says,
God became man.
The divine son became a Jew.
The almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby,
unable to do more than lie,
stare,
wriggle,
make noises,
needing to be fed and changed
and talked to
like any other child.
The more you think about it,
the more staggering it gets.
Nothing in fiction is as fantastic as this.
The claim that Jesus is God
is an intellectual turning point,
but it also causes a personal crisis.
A crisis is a fork in the road.
And the assertion that Jesus Christ is God
is exactly that.
Whenever you see Jesus acting in the Gospels,
you see him putting people in motion
wherever he goes.
He's like this giant bowling ball.
Wherever he goes,
he breaks up old patterns
and he sends people off into different directions.
Jesus evokes extreme reactions from everyone.
Some are so furious with him
that they try to run him off a cliff and kill him.
Others are so terrified by him
that they say,
just depart from me, Jesus.
Get away from me.
And others fall down before him
and worship him.
Why the extreme reactions?
It's because of who he claims to be.
If he is who he is,
who he says he is,
then you have no alternative
but to center your life around him
as we have just sung.
He claims to be the God
who created all things,
the source of all life,
the one who defines all reality.
And so if he is not who he says he is,
then he is someone to hate,
he is someone to run away from
because he would have to be
the greatest fraud in history.
No other response makes sense.
Either he is God or he isn't
and so he's absolutely mad
or he's infinitely wonderful.
He's one or the other.
He's not just someone in the middle
that you can just admire.
So thirdly, the claim that Jesus is God
also gives us the greatest possible hope.
You see, the one who defines all things,
creates all things,
determines, defines all reality,
says that our world is not all that there is
and there is life
and there is love after death
and that evil and suffering will one day end.
But this is not just hope for the world
despite all its unending problems,
but hope for you and me
despite all of our unending failings.
A God who was only holy
would never have come down to us in Jesus Christ.
He would have simply just said,
you lot, pull yourselves together.
Pull your socks up.
Live a little bit more morally.
Make yourself holy enough
to merit a relationship with me.
A deity, on the other hand,
that was an all-accepting God of love
would never have needed to come to earth either.
This God of the modern imagination
would have just overlooked sin and evil
and just embraced us all
like a big jelly baby.
And neither of these gods
would have bothered with Christmas.
The biblical God, however,
is infinitely holy.
So our sin cannot just be
shrugged off and ignored.
It has to be dealt with.
But he is also infinitely loving.
And he knows that we could never,
ever climb up to him.
And so he had to come to us.
God had to come himself
and do what we could not do.
Christmas means then
that there is all the hope in this world,
in him.
That's the first thing.
Jesus is God.
Secondly, Jesus is human.
This interaction between Joseph and the angel
reveals that he's God,
but also that he's human,
that he is God with us.
Christmas tells us that Jesus was truly
and fully God
and truly and fully human.
But what,
I mean, who gives a rip?
What difference does that make?
That he is actually God
who's become fully human.
It means a life
of sacrificial service,
as Jake just read out to us
from Philippians chapter 2.
That passage teaches us
that when the Son of God became human,
he did not lay aside his deity.
He was still God,
but he emptied himself of his glory.
It's said there that it was something
that he did not grasp,
something he did not use
for his own purposes,
his own gain.
He laid aside his divine rights.
He became vulnerable and ordinary
in order to save us.
I'll quote Packer again.
He puts it like this,
for the Son of God
to empty himself
and become poor
meant a laying aside of glory,
a voluntary restraint of power,
an acceptance of hardship,
of isolation,
of ill treatment,
of malice and misunderstanding,
and finally a death
that involved such agony,
spiritual even more than physical,
that his mind nearly broke
under the prospect of it.
It meant love to the utmost
for unloving humanity.
And I love how Packer,
what he does with that
and what it means for us practically.
He says,
the Christmas spirit
does not shine out
in the Christian snob.
For the Christmas spirit
is the spirit of those
who, like their master,
live their whole lives
on the principle
of making themselves poor,
spending and being spent
to enrich their fellow humanity,
giving time,
trouble, care and concern,
to do good to others
and not just their own friends
in whatever way
there seems need.
It's a life of service.
The fact that God became human
and entered himself
of his glory
means that you should not want
to hang out with the people
just with power and glitz
who are well networked
who can open doors for you.
You need to be willing
to go to the people
without power,
without beauty,
without the money.
That is the Christmas spirit.
It is so ironic
that we spend billions on it
at Christmas time
and more often than not,
not for the needy
and for the poor.
God becoming one of us
also means infinite comfort
for the suffering.
A little bit later
in the New Testament
in Hebrews 2, verse 17.
It says that Jesus
was made just like us,
fully human in every way.
And the very next verse
tells us what this means
for us practically.
It says,
because he himself suffered
when he was tried and tested,
he is able to help those
who are being tried and tested.
You see,
when something bad happens to us
and real suffering comes to us,
the overwhelming feeling
we have is loneliness.
People around us,
they express sympathy,
but, you know,
you know,
in the midst of them
expressing their sympathy,
you know,
there's something about it
that doesn't help.
Then you meet someone
who knows,
who's been through
exactly what you've been through,
or virtually exactly
what you've been through.
They know what it's like.
And you pour your heart
out to that person.
They've got empathy for you.
You listen to them
and their opinions
because they've been through
the same thing.
And when they comfort you,
you feel comforted by them.
The coming of God
into this world
on the first Christmas
ultimately means
that God suffered
and that Jesus triumphed
through suffering.
And Jesus now
has infinite power
to comfort.
Christmas shows you
a God
unlike the God
of any other faith.
Have you been betrayed?
Have you been lonely?
Have you been destitute?
Have you had relationships fracture?
Have you felt abandoned?
Have you faced death?
So has he.
And he's triumphed through it.
Christianity says
God has been all the places
that you have been
and are potentially in right now.
He has been in the darkness
that you are in now
and even more.
You can trust him.
You can rely on him.
He knows suffering.
He has the power
to comfort,
strengthen
and bring you through it
because point number three,
Jesus is with us.
You see,
it would have been
astonishing enough
if the Son of God
had become human
and simply lived
temporarily amongst us
and left us
some really good teaching stuff
to follow.
Do this
and life will go well
for you.
His plans
were just so
infinitely greater
than that.
His plan
was always
to be with us.
He,
one of the first things
he did
when he went public
with his ministries,
chose 12 dudes
and,
to follow him
and appointed them
as his early apostles.
And he says,
I want,
you're going to be
with me.
What does it mean
that they are
with him?
It means being
in his presence,
conversing with him,
learning from him,
having his comfort
moment by moment
in their day-by-day life.
You see,
the purpose of God
coming into this world
is that we would
actually have
a relationship
with him,
that we not just
know information
about him
but have a relationship
with him.
In Jesus,
the unapproachable God
becomes a human being
who can be known
and loved.
And through faith,
we can know
this love.
And frankly,
it doesn't stun us
as much as it should.
See,
in the Old Testament,
anytime anyone
drew near to God,
it was terrifying.
Totally terrifying.
God appears to Abraham
as a smoking furnace,
to Israel
as a pillar of fire,
to Job
as a hurricane
and a tornado.
When Moses
asked to see God
face to face,
he was told,
yeah,
but it'll kill you.
So great
and so high
and so unapproachable
is this God.
And the message
of Christmas
means that through Jesus,
you can meet this God
and he won't kill you.
You can know
the unapproachable
personally
and without terror.
And when God
showed up in Jesus,
he was not a pillar
of fire,
he was not a tornado,
he was a baby.
Why would God
come to,
this time,
why would he come
as a baby
rather than a firestorm
or a whirlwind?
Because this time
he came not to bring judgment
but to bear it.
to pay the penalty
for our sin,
to take away
the barrier
that existed,
the wall of hostility
between humanity
and God
so that we can
be together.
Jesus is God
with us.
Every Christmas,
tonight,
millions of people
around this world
will join with us
and sing
Jesus,
our Emmanuel.
But are you
really with him?
Do you know him
or do you
just know about him?
Jesus literally
moved heaven and earth
to get near us.
What should we
be doing now
to truly be with him?
Well,
there's one
crucial trait,
one crucial step
that's necessary
for having
a personal relationship
with Jesus
and it's one
that Christians,
especially in
Western society,
we often
overlook it.
An intimate
relationship
with Jesus
always requires
courage.
I mean,
it's often
overlooked
Joseph
in this whole
story,
how much courage
he must have had
to wake up
from a dream
with an angel
and in his
society
to be
shamed,
to be,
for his
fiancee
to be pregnant
was an act
of shame
for him
or for her
or for both
of them
and then to go
home and tell
his mates,
well,
actually,
I'm not the
father,
God is.
That's plausible.
It required
an immense
amount of
courage
for him
to take
Mary
and for him
to adopt
Jesus
and it
requires
courage
of us.
We cannot
know Jesus
personally
unless we
have the
courage
to admit
that we
are sinners.
Jesus'
entire
mission
is summed
up in
verse 21
of the
text that
was read
out to us
from Matthew
chapter 1.
He will
save
his people
from their
sins.
First
and foremost,
Jesus came
to forgive
us.
Every other
blessing that
we have,
the comfort,
the hope,
every other
blessing flows
from that.
Are you
willing to
say,
I'm a moral
failure?
I don't love
God with all
of my heart,
my soul,
my strength,
and my mind.
I don't love
my neighbour
as myself.
And therefore,
I am guilty
and I need
forgiveness
and pardon
before I need
anything else.
That takes
enormous courage
to admit
because it
means that
you throw
your old
self-image
that you've
spent your
lifetime
building
out,
you throw
it out
and you get
a new one
through Jesus.
And yet,
this is the
foundation
of every
other
blessing
that Jesus
wants to
bring into
your life.
All the
comfort,
all the
hope,
all the
joyful
humility
and everything
else.
So how
do we
get the
strength
to be
courageous
like that,
to admit
that we
are moral
failures
and we
need him?
By
looking at
him.
That's
how we
do it.
Because if
you think
it takes
courage to
be with
him,
consider
that it
took
infinitely
more
courage
for
him
to
be
with
us.
Only
Christianity
of every
world religion
and
philosophies,
only Christianity
says that
one of the
attributes of
the divine
God is
courage.
No other
religion has
a God who
needed courage.
God is
to
God is
to
save us
only by
facing an
agonizing
death that
had him
wrestling in
sweat
in a
garden
just before
he was
arrested.
He became
mortal and
vulnerable so
that he could
suffer and be
betrayed and
killed.
He faced
all these
things
for you
and for
me and
he thought
it was
worth it.
Look at
him.
Face
the
darkness
for you.
Look at
him doing
that and
that will
enable you
to face
any darkness
yourself.
You've
heard the
phrase,
hark the
herald angels
sing,
mild he
lays his
glory by.
What does
it mean
mild he
lays his
glory by?
He did
it voluntarily,
he did
it willingly
and he
did it
lovingly.
No one
forced him,
it wasn't
his duty,
he faced
unimaginable
pain and
death out
of love
for you.
Why did
Jesus have
the courage
to do
what he
did for
us?
Love.
No other
explanation
for it.
And how
do we get
the courage
to admit
that we're
sinners and
need his
forgiveness
and a
relationship
with him
exact same
way?
See him
doing all
that he
did for
us.
That will
draw out
of us
love for
him.
And then
we will
have the
courage to
put him
where he
belongs as
the God
of the
universe
in the
center of
our lives.
And then
he will be
with us
and you'll
be with
him.
Emmanuel.
Jesus
is God.
Jesus is
human.
And Jesus
is with
us.
Merry
Christmas.