God Coming to You
The heart of Christmas lies not in our search for God, but in God’s initiative to seek us. Through the Incarnation, God demonstrates His desire to reach humanity by sending His Son in human form. While religious observance and family traditions have their place, Christmas fundamentally represents God’s personal approach to each individual, inviting them into a relationship through Christ. The Gospel narrative, particularly through the four evangelists, reveals this divine pursuit from different angles – showing Jesus as both Messiah and Emmanuel, God with us.
Automatically Generated Transcript
[00:00:00] We’re here tonight as a part of what happens everywhere around the world, not always in every place, but there are people who are celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. We don’t know exactly that it was on the 25th of December, which is our Christmas day, that he was born. We know roughly when he might have been born, but the time was set to be the time of celebration of the Christmas story, and that’s what Christmas is. But yet I find that a lot of people don’t really know what Christmas is all about. Certainly in our culture, Christmas is about celebration, it’s about holidays, it’s very much often about family. And so all across Australia there are families who are seeking to be together a lot more
[00:00:52] than what they might have previously been. And because we are such a big nation with lots of places, there are many families who have to travel. Unfortunately the airline people see that as opportunity because the prices of the fares go up, and if at the last moment about now you have to travel interstate you’ll find the cost of the airfare was really high, and that’s unfortunate. People making money out of the fact that we want to get together at Christmas time. But nonetheless, what is Christmas about? That’s what I want to answer this evening. The meaning of Christmas.
[00:01:30] The meaning of Christmas, of course, is something which we get from the gospels, and the gospel story we know is very much linked to the meaning of Christmas, and we have four gospels- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Yet the Christmas story… I think it’s hinted at in all of them, but the details of Mary and Elizabeth, her relative, and the Wiseman etc. are only really in two. What is the Gospel if two of the Gospels don’t have all those details? Is there perhaps not as much meaning in Christmas as just a celebration? I think you can see by as what is included in the four Gospels a bit of a differentiation, but you do notice that they are all about Jesus. They are all about Him and who He is and what He does, and His coming to Earth, and what it was that He achieved when He died
[00:02:29] on the cross and rose again. That death and resurrection of Christ is something very much common in all of the Gospels. But as you look at them, you do see these differences.You why it is that there should be those differences. Matthew’s Gospel, and in the morning services we were looking at the beginning of the book of Matthew, where it traces the genealogy going back from Joseph, the legal father of Jesus when he was born. It traces his history legally to be from Abraham and from David. Abraham was the progenitor of the Israeli race so he was to be a Jew. David was a king, a king the pattern of which God’s prophets said they would never cease. And though Solomon, the next one, his son, did build the temple yet Solomon died, there was a promise given to David’s line that it would last forever. And indeed to have a Gospel like Matthew start by tracing Jesus’ legal origins to be from
[00:03:38] David is to shine the light on the fact that he came to be a king. Now the people who understand about the background of the Jewish religion know that they came into the history of their understanding that God was going to provide someone who would be their Messiah. I was going to ask you to put your hands up if you knew what the word Messiah meant, but I won’t see anything if you do put your hands up because of those lights. But put your hand up anyway for the exercise. Who knows what the word Messiah means? You don’t have to shout it out but just let me see how many. I saw one boy who’s been well taught, no, and a few other people. But the word Messiah comes from just a different language background but it’s the same as the word Christ because Messiah is the one who’s promised to come and rule. The Messiah is going to be the leader of the kingdom. And as I was saying before
[00:04:40] the Gospels all have different things that they emphasise but Matthew’s Gospel very much emphasises that the kingdom of God is something that’s going to happen because of the arrival of a Messiah. And this Messiah would lead. Now this is going to be that he will lead the kingdom of God on Earth. And you may wonder how a human person who’s come down through a royal line could indeed lead the Kingdom of God on Earth. The answer is that he’s going to be someone who will be led from heaven by the Holy Spirit being on him, and the leadership that he brings will institute a kingdom that God is behind but it’s led by the Messiah, sometimes it’s called the kingdom of heaven not because it’s about you going to heaven when you die that happens to be a true fact, if you’re a Christian, when you pass away you go to be with God in heaven. But the name kingdom of heaven is because it’s sourced
[00:05:40] from heaven. And the way it’s sourced from heaven but it is still on earth is because the Holy Spirit comes on the Messiah and His leadership makes it the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. A lot of people can argue this and in theological circles I have been in debates where people make a differentiation between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. I don’t think you need to do that, because they are really the same thing. Why they are the same thing is although the Old Testament folk often considered this expectation of a coming Messiah to introduce a time when God would ranks God would rule, they looked at it as very much because the person born was going to be the Messiah and it’s a human person. But it’s going to be a rulership, not a rulership that is like a Republican but one that is like a monarchy, where there’s a king and
[00:06:36] what the king says goes. But the king they expected would be someone humanly born. That’s the reason why Jewish fathers who had a new child will walk out into the streets after the birth of the child or in their excitement, they’d cry out down the road and they’d cry out and say a word that really meant Messiah. They’d say sometimes the word that meant that he’s going to be the Jewish king. They’d just call out that maybe this little child, because he’s in the line of the royal descent, that he might be the very Messiah. they never knew, but they understood basically in the Old Testament that this kingdom of God was going to be a particular type of rule of God through a human leader. And indeed the Gospels tell us that Jesus is that one. But that’s not the full story because there’s other Gospels and we’ve got four of them as I said before, Matthew, Mark, Luke and
[00:07:34] John and they all have differing emphases to add to the full picture. Mark is very much a shorter written one who gets to the point and this is a story about the deeds and the teachings of Jesus and especially his miracles. You can go to Luke and Luke is very big on the teaching side as well and he’s very big on the fact of Mary and what her genealogy background may be. And so these genealogies help us locate that the expectation of the person who’s going to come and cause our Christmas is to be a human person. Now we’re glad that we have four Gospels because the fourth of the Gospel, John, has got a different emphasis again. It’s far more spiritual and rather than emphasising only the things that Jesus does, it emphasises mostly who he is. And the beginning of John’s Gospel says in the beginning was the Word and it calls this Jesus one who came, the Word. Their
[00:08:35] word, Word, means more than a text, more than just one part of a sentence. Their word, Word really meant story, really meant the idea of expression, sometimes a message, the word, logos is the word in Greek and so that word that was there in the beginning is an expression of the fact that there’s something about God where he has an expression piece, in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, John chapter 1 says and the Word was was God, and that three definitions that he was in the beginning with God, that he was in the beginning with God, and that he was God expresses this personage who eventually came to earth, and in his come to earth he was the one who became the Messiah, and he came to bring God to us. He’s the expression, the out-speaking of who God is that we could see him more clearly, that we could come to know him more accurately because God had expressed
[00:09:46] himself. A later book in the New Testament, which is the book of Hebrews, talks about the fact that through many different prophets God has spoken in the olden days. But now in this Christian time, or now in this last time in these last days, he has spoken through his son. And the emphasis of John’s Gospel is not just that he’s the out-speaking of the Godhead, but he’s actually the son of God, and it is Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, who is the One who is to come to earth, and a part of what he’s going to do is to take on humanity, so that he will be the God-man. And Christmas is the beginning of the story of the Gospel, of the God-man who comes from heaven. One of the reasons, one of the explanations the Gospel uses to explain why he’s given this explanation is given this explanation that he is God with us, and there’s a word that they
[00:10:42] used to mean, Emmanuel is the word we sang about it, that God is with us by his coming. And the purpose of Christmas was in God’s mind that he would come down to earth and show himself to us. I love that Hebrews verse that says in these last previous times God has spoken to us through many ways through the prophets, but now in these last days he has spoken through his son. He’s spoken in the sense that the son came and we had a Christmas happening whereby we can look at him, where we can see who he is, we can see him grow for the story of his growth to become a man. And in who he is there’s something about Jesus as the God-man that brings God to be with us and he experiences all the things that humans experience. He has had difficult times in his family as a
[00:11:33] little infant. He is a someone who has problems with his brothers who don’t understand him. He’s someone who is persecuted later on in life by the leaders who were jealous of his powers. Jesus experienced what it was to be human. It was God coming down from heaven and he’s coming down to be us, to show us who he is and he’s not just saying to us have you got to come and chase me. He’s showing that he’s chasing you. Christmas is about God coming to you. That’s actually the title of my address tonight that I felt led to. That Christmas is about God coming to you. And in the arrival of the baby Jesus that is God who’s presenting himself in a far more visible and understandable way. The one who walked around amongst us that we should see what God is like. We should
[00:12:29] listen to his teaching and know what God wanted, that we would see him do a mission that God had designed in order to allow us for God to come to us. God wants to come to you. The heart of what it is to get into the Christian fold is to receive Jesus, to receive him into your experience, into your life, to know what it is, to know him personally. Do you know the Lord Jesus? Has there been a successful visit of Jesus to you, to show himself to you, and when you and Jesus become an item, when you become someone that he has come to know and you’ve received him he comes and does the initiative and you need to respond to it and this is what Christmas is about God having taken the initiative I love the way the different gospels that do talk about Christmas emphasise various things
[00:13:25] but not only was He coming to individuals but when Jesus was born He was coming to us as the human race He was presenting himself that we might take him on board and that’s why it’s so good that we have a Christmas culture that recognises that something very important has happened at the original Christmastime. Christmas is about God coming to you. Now John’s Gospel, which is, as I was saying, the various Gospels have different emphases and whereas the other Gospels have the teaching of Jesus and the parables, it’s very important. John’s Gospel is more about the person of Jesus and who he is and how he is the Son of God and how he’s come to have a task to bring us back to God. Whereas in the book of Hebrews it talks about us seeking after God, there’s a verse that says, if any person will come to God, he must first believe that he is and that he’s a
[00:14:27] rewarder of those who diligently seek him. You could pick up from Hebrews, it’s not a Gospel per se but it has a lot of Gospel information that the Gospel is about us searching for God, and if you really want to find him and you search of all your heart and you believe he exists, then God will reveal himself to you. But the Gospel as we read it in John’s Gospel isn’t so much about us searching after God, it’s the fact that God is searching for us and he’s looking for us and what Christmas is about the facts that God is searching out people is Jesus coming into the world to search out for us as a race and it’s about Jesus by his Spirit coming to us individually that we might know that God wants us. And it is an experience of people that makes them become Christians, not that every person becoming a Christian has exactly the same set of things that happen, but it’s something that does occur where people who are just
[00:15:26] getting along in their lives, some of them are many church people who think that they’re worshipping God and doing everything that they can to be religious, suddenly have something happen when they understand that God is trying to speak to them. When they understand that something is occurring they’ve realized that there’s some spiritual happening going on. We call it an awakening in the human person. We call it a moment of possible conversion and many a person will give their story as to how they considered they were a Christian. I’m one like this. I grew up in a family taught to believe the Bible and go to Sunday school and my dad and mum were involved in Christian work and I always took myself to be a Christian. But at a set of meetings my dad was involved in arranging. God spoke to me and when he spoke to me I realised he was speaking about the person of Jesus. Not just the fact that God
[00:16:22] is God in heaven but the fact that Jesus is his son and Jesus came into the world to search out people and to find them. The Lord himself gave parables. Interestingly written in Luke there’s that parable of the woman that lost a coin and the point of the storyline is that she sweeps the house. It’s quite typical of homesteaders or home runners but when they lose something precious they do a big search. And she swept the whole place down. She had a lost coin and she went and searched until she found it. And then there’s another story about a lost sheep. This is Luke. And Luke’s gospel has a lost sheep and the shepherd goes out he’s got 99 sheep that he keeps in the fold but he leaves them. Well maybe they’re not in the fold. They’re out on the hilltops but he leaves the 99 that are safely together. And he goes and searches for the one lost until he finds it and brings it back with
[00:17:24] joy. And the third story Jesus told and this is in Luke I think it’s chapter 11 is it where he’s talking about the lost things and the final story is about the lost son who runs away from home and has gotten out of touch with the values of his home and he’s wasted his inheritance. But the father waits for him until at last the boy comes home and the father sees him in a distance and leaves his rocking chair I imagine. He’s sitting on the veranda perhaps. And he sees the son coming and he gets up and runs. Very seldom does the Bible describe a man that’s running. This man runs and throws his arms around the boy and takes him to be his son again. Because the whole storyline is God is in the business of searching out people who are lost. And the reason why Jesus comes into the world in the first place at Christmas is because he’s coming to find you and to find me. To
[00:18:31] find us as people who will start a relationship with him and take him on board as their saviour and their Lord. Christmas is God coming to you. Now there is a verse in the scriptures different Christian interpreters have varied ideas as to how to interpret it. It is addressed to the church at Laodicea in the book of Revelation the first couple of chapters. But this book says in Revelation 3.20 about Jesus picturing himself as outside his church. It’s rather interesting you’d think that he’d be quite at home in the church already but this particular moment he pictures himself as outside the church and he stands at the door and he knocks and he says listen if any individual can hear my voice and will open the door. I mean he had to open the door of the church I guess he means. I will come on in and on up to that one and fellowship with him and he with me. For I want to tell you that Christmas is about Jesus searching for people.
[00:19:38] Christmas is about how Jesus came to us as a race, a human race. It’s about Jesus coming into history, in a moment in history that he’d be able to do what was necessary to save us by his death on the cross. Christmas is about Jesus beginning the story of the gospel, the gospel which is about Jesus coming for you. Behold, I stand at the door and knock, if any person hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into that one, and fellowship with them and they with me. There’s many a Christian who’s realised that they have been a religious person, Christian-wise, that they’ve been someone who’s worshipped God, but has never understood that Christmas is about Jesus coming for them. And though it’s true, if any person would come to God,
[00:20:33] you’re searching for God, you’ve got to believe that he is and he rewards those who diligently seek him. So it’s also true that God doesn’t just rest on you searching for God. God comes and uses initiative to get to you, and that’s actually what Christmas is about. The beginning of that process, where the divine Son takes on humanity, becomes human in the Godly line that would make him the Messiah of the Jews. Eventually he’s the person who not only is the Messiah, the one who’s to be king, but also he lives a sinless life according to the law. The Bible says he was born under the law, so he kept the law and he became qualified by his sinlessness to be a sacrifice that would finish up all the sacrifices that were going on in the temple. No more needing of that picture to be made by the death of little lambs and birds and whatever, for Jesus came to be the sacrifice.
[00:21:41] He came to do what was necessary to find you and to find me. Christmas is about Jesus coming to us, giving the call for us to respond and to take him as our personal Lord and Savior. I love the Gospel of John and his emphasis. It’s very much an emphasis on people personally. You know, when Jesus was dying, he understands the human heart and he understands the different situations people get in, because while he was dying on the cross, in his suffering, he looked down at the people standing there, there were disciples of his, there were the women who loved to help him, but he also saw his mother and seeing his mother standing next to John. This is one reason why John’s Gospel is so different at such a personal Gospel. He saw his mother next to his son to John and he said to her, woman, behold, your son’, meaning him, such that what she was doing was watching him in his suffering.
[00:22:48] he is recognising she was beholding him suffering, then his words had another meaning because the next thing he said was to John and he said to him, Behold your mother. Now John was not the son of Mary but it was Jesus seeing the suffering of his mother and seeing the fact that she would be in very much need of help after he’s finished dying and taken down from the cross. And he’s giving her into the care of John. Because Christmas is about a person, Jesus, who cares for every one of us as individuals. And he knows the things that we’re going through. He knows the various aspects of our heart and he sees them. He’s very good at seeing these people have. And Jesus saw his mother as she sorrowed watching her son die, that’s him. And he gave her into the hands of John. And this Jesus is the one who at Christmas time comes to you. And whatever be your story and to
[00:24:02] be where you’re at, if you have never actually linked up with Jesus, if you’ve never recognized him to be your Saviour and your Lord, then this Christmas, won’t you accept him as that? It’s not just about you searching for him. It’s not just about you understanding all the theology. The biggest thing that Christmas is about is you understand that he’s come for you. Christmas is about Jesus coming into the world, coming into the nation Israel, coming into history, coming to the event of the cross and rising again, all those things. But most of all it’s about Christmas coming personally for you. Will you answer that call of Jesus, that he’s come for you this Christmas? Will you be a person who lets him successfully get through to you? Don’t lean on all the good things you may know about your religious background. Don’t trust in the fact that you may have a better track record than other people,
[00:25:14] we’re all sinners. And you need to be prepared to come to this Jesus who’s arrived for you and acknowledge why he’s here and that he wants you to make it come to him as Saviour and Lord. I’ve been devising across the years, but I’ve been writing it out again, a prayer that I think is good for people to pray when they realize what Christmas is about. It’s about Jesus coming for us. And the response that we could verbalize, you don’t have to have the words exactly right or the way that I’d say it. But a good example is a prayer that I like to lead people to Christ in. It is a prayer, I get them to bow their heads and pray I have to help them mostly with the words. But it goes, oh God in heaven, because God himself is still in heaven, but he sent his son to chase you down. Oh God in heaven, I know that I have sinned. Please forgive me for all of my sin. Please make me clean in the deepest part of me. Thank you, Jesus, that you have come for me. Thank you
[00:26:30] for Christmas, that you came for the world. Thank you that you came to pay for our sin and die on across in our place. Right now I want you Jesus to be my King, to be the Messiah of my life, to be my Saviour and my Lord. Right now I’m asking you to become into my life and fulfil what Christmas is for by bringing me to know you as my Lord and Saviour. I pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen. I’m wanting to pray that prayer with someone here tonight. It’d be possible that you recognise that Christmas is about Jesus coming for you and you’re wanting to welcome him as your personal Lord and Saviour and be sure that it’s something that you’ve expressed to him. And so after this service I’ll be hanging around, you can come and talk to me. I usually go into that room over there in the corner and sometimes people wander in and say, Jim, I want to pray a prayer to come to Jesus. Will you do that? I want just
[00:27:46] to finish with the fact that there is a song about Christmas and it’s from the perspective of Mary. And if ever you doubted that Jesus is a person who understands individuals, who gets the feelings that we have and the relationships we’re in, just read up about Jesus. Just read up about Jesus and Mary and Mary his mother, this one who was watching him and he said, Behold your son, behold your mother. And Mary in the song about Mary, it goes like this, Mary, did you know? We’ll get them to play something like this or play one of these after I finish talking here in a minute. But in this particular song, Mary asks, or the person of the song asks Mary about, did she understand, when did it dawn on her of who Jesus was? Mary, did you know that your baby boy one day will be our savior? I can’t see what I’m reading here. Mary, did you know that your baby boy one day walked on water and it goes through a number of things
[00:29:15] and it finishes up, did you know that the little baby that you kiss is the great I am, the eternal God for Jesus came to Mary and what an experience it must have been for her to realize we don’t even know to what depth she understood about who Jesus actually was. But Jesus came to her and she was willing to let him, it was her way of receiving him by letting the Holy Spirit overshadow her so that the eternal son of God came to her womb and was born as her baby. And in some way you’ll never be asked of God to do that, he doesn’t need to do that again through a human person. He has come to the earth and he’s become the God-man. He was God all the time and now not only the son of God, he’s also a human person, he’s the God-man. And he’s that forever. That just shows you how Jesus at Christmas comes to people and he wants to come to somebody here tonight. I don’t know your circumstances, but if you’re a person that you could be very religious, I was in a family,
[00:30:37] I thought I was a Christian, but at a set of meetings it dawned on me that I had never received him as my Lord and my Saviour, and I did that day. Will you come to Christ today? Because that’s what Christmas is all about, is about Jesus coming to you. I’ll have a prayer, and then I’ll be finished, and what I’ve asked them to do is to put up a representation of that song Mary, Did You Know?, and then I’m going to go and get away from the crowd. I’m going to go through that door over there, and just hover around in there. And if you want to pray that prayer, come and see me. You can go the long way around if you want to be a bit less obvious. Or you can walk straight over there and walk through the door, but it’s that room and come and I’ll lead you in a prayer to come to Jesus, because Christmas is about Jesus coming to you. First the prayer, Heavenly Father I thank
[00:31:40] you for our Christmas carols and I thank you for the joy that there is joy to the world. Boy that sure is true but Lord the reason is we’re so joyful is because you came to the world, a world of sinners, a world needing salvation. You came to a world that they might know you and we thank you for how you sent Him Father and we pray that there will be people this evening who’ll come to know Christ tonight. We ask it in the Savior’s name. Amen.