Today we begin this year’s Christmas series called ‘Because God Came Near’ and over the next few weeks we will be looking at why the coming of Jesus was so important… in other words, we will be talking about the ‘true meaning of Christmas’… the ‘true meaning of Christmas.’ Now, there is a phrase for you. And there are plenty of opinions out there as to what the true meaning of Christmas actually is… I can think of three opinions that come to mind right off the bat… First, there is the ‘The true meaning of Christmas’ is ‘it is better to give than to receive.’ There is truth to the idea that it is better to give than to receive, but, this is also the notion that drives all of the Christmas-related commercialism that so tires us. I doubt that anyone would openly say that the best way to experience the true meaning of Christmas is to buy lots of things for other people but this is the underlying message behind every Christmas-related sales pitch. What all of these Christmas commercials imply is that you will experience joy, you will feel fulfilled and life will have great meaning when you give gifts to others… and the gifts of the Wise men to the baby Jesus are seen as symbolic of what Christmas is all about. The meaning of Christmas can be best realized when you generously give to others. That’s one meaning of Christmas out there. Then there are those who disagree completely with material giving having anything to do with the true meaning of Christmas. This group holds that the true meaning of the season is found in the warmth we can all find in the time we spend with family and friends. This message is rooted in something that most people know is true… things will never truly satisfy but time with people we love... now that satisfies! THAT is the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas is about having time together, time when we set aside the hustle and bustle of our busy lives and seek the peace and tranquility that comes from simply being with one another. People that feel that this is the true meaning of Christmas often point to the angels call for peace among men and the kindness of a Bethlehem innkeeper who made it possible for Jesus’ family to be together in safety and warmth on the night of Jesus’ birth. And I am certain that you would find many who believe that the real meaning of Christmas is found in simply being with others. Then there is a third group, a group that gets inspiration from Charles Dicken’s ‘A Christmas Carol.’ Dickens went to great lengths in his classic story to tell us that Christmas is really about the power of the human spirit to change our own lives for the good… that we can become generous, kind people simply through the strength of our own will. And that if we have an eternal destiny, it is determined by how we choose to live in this life. And this notion is very much alive and well today… The real meaning of Christmas has nothing to do with the story that we find in the Bible about the birth of Jesus. Christmas is an opportunity to commit to actively becoming a better person.
Of course, I know that you all know that we don’t believe that any of these ‘Meanings of Christmas’ give us the true reason ‘God came near.’ Yes, it is true that it is better to give than to receive and yes, having time with those we love is good for the soul, but none of this gets to the heart, the essential reason and meaning for the coming of God in the form of a baby. What we hope to do over the next few weeks leading up to our Christmas Eve services is make clear why God came near... make clear the real meaning of Christmas. That is what this series is all about. And we find one of the essential meanings of Christmas right at the beginning of the New Testament, in the very first chapter of the very first book of the New Testament, the Book of Matthew… Turn with me to Matthew 1:18-23. You can find that on page ___ in our house Bible. And for the last time those of you at our Fishers Campus if you need a Bible raise your hand and someone will bring it to you. Let’s look at how Matthew, a man who was one of Jesus’ original 12 disciples, begins his description of the birth of Jesus. This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a good man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel,which means ‘God is with us.’”
Now, there is a lot we could talk about in this passage, but I want to focus on the last thing that the angel said to Joseph. The angel said, ‘You are to call his name Jesus.’ In Hebrew this name would have been pronounced Yeshua, which means ‘God saves.’ And the reason Joseph was to call him by a name that means ‘God Saves’ was because Jesus would save his people… but he wouldn’t save them from just anything… he would save them from their sins. That statement, is often overlooked or at least downplayed when we talk about the Christmas story. But I believe it is the most important part of the angel’s message. In fact, I don’t think it is possible to overstate the importance of the angel telling Joseph that the baby Mary was carrying was coming into the world with a very specific purpose: to save his people from their sins! Now, I know that it isn’t fashionable to talk about ‘sin’ or the need to be saved from the consequences of sin when we talk about the Christmas story. People like the baby in a manger on a quiet night; they like shepherds in a field listening to singing angels; they like wise men with valuable gifts. People want the story to reflect what is best in the world. Yet, the truth is that the manger, the shepherds and the wise men are simply details in the story of the initial arrival of God himself, to save us from the consequences of what is the very worst thing in the world: our sin. I have no idea whether Joseph fully understood what this message from the angel actually meant… this ‘saving his people from their sins’ business. But one thing we can be sure of is that Joseph knew what sin was. Sin, for a Jewish man living at the beginning of the 1st Century, was breaking one of the many laws of God… a list of rules and regulations that was so long and complex that it was virtually impossible not to sin in some manner all of the time. Joseph would also have known that the only way to be forgiven for not keeping all of those rules was through following the complicated Jewish system of animal sacrifice. We don’t have time to talk about the ins-and-outs of Jewish law and the sacrificial system today, but take my word for it, it dominated Jewish life generally and it surely dominated Joseph’s life specifically. I’m confident that Joseph would have been glad to hear, even if he didn’t fully understand it, that the baby in Mary’s womb, the baby he was going to call Jesus, was going to somehow change things so that people could once and for all be ‘saved from their sins.’ In fact, I’m sure that he’d often longed for some way to be saved from worrying about rules and regulations and sin and sacrifice. Truth is though that the Bible stories that tell us about the birth of Jesus don’t tell us much about Joseph. But there are some things that we can be fairly confident about. We can be fairly confident that Joseph would also have known about sin and how it first entered the world. He’d have known about Adam and Eve, how the devil deceived them and how that deception led them into sin. He would have known what happened to the world as sin and death began to wreak havoc everywhere. He would have known that sin separated mankind from God… and that sin separated people from each other… and that because of sin the world had become a very broken place. I am also very confident that Joseph not only knew these things but that he’d personally felt the pain of the world’s brokenness in his own heart and soul. The reason I believe that Joseph had felt the pain of the brokenness of the world is because Matthew tells us Joseph was a ‘good man?’ The word that is translated ‘good’ here is a word that could also be translated as ‘righteous’ or ‘just.’ He was more than simply a good guy… he was a man who was righteous enough, a just man whose character was godly enough to be given the task of raising God’s son. Matthew even tells us that one sign of Joseph’s goodness was that he wanted to shield Mary from all of the ugliness he knew was going to come her way once it was known she was unmarried and pregnant. Matthew’s literal Greek says, ‘he didn’t want her to be lifted up as an example of a sinner.’ Joseph knew how mean and cruel people could be and his first thought once he found out that Mary was pregnant was finding a way to save her from the public humiliation that her ‘sin’ was sure to bring. I don’t think it is a coincidence that just as Joseph was trying to find some way to save Mary from the shame of what everyone would have called ‘her sin’ the angel came to Joseph and told him that the baby Mary was carrying would someday save everyone from the shame of their sin. As I said, we are given very little information about Joseph, but what little we have tells us that he was the right kind of man to raise Jesus in a way that would prepare him to do all that he would have to do ‘To save his people from their sins.’
And boy, do some the other writers of some of the books of the Bible see this announcement by the angel as important. John, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples and Jesus’ best friend said this when he was writing about why Jesus had come as a baby. Everyone who sins is breaking God’s law, for all sin is contrary to the law of God. And you know that Jesus came to take away our sins…Dear children, don’t let anyone deceive you about this: When people do what is right, it shows that they are righteous, even as Christ is righteous.But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God (Jesus) came to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:4-5; 7-8) I don’t think it’s coincidence that John, someone who had spent more time with Jesus than anyone, who’d seen all of his miracles and heard all of his sermons, when he wrote out why Jesus came on that first Christmas morning, he wrote, ‘He came to take away our sins and destroy the sinful work of the devil.’ There is also an interesting passage in the book of Hebrews, which is a letter that was written to some of the early Jewish followers of Jesus… a letter that goes way out of its way to explain what was important about the coming of Jesus… and in that letter we read this: Because God’s children are human beings—made of flesh and blood—the Son (Jesus) also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the devil, who had the power of death. Only in this way could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. (Hebrews 2:14-15) I don’t think it is a coincidence at all that Matthew, John and writer of the book of Hebrews all agree that one of the real meanings of Christmas is this: Jesus’ birth as a baby in Bethlehem was the beginning step in God’s final plan for once and forever removing and repairing the damage that sin brought into the world… whether that sin comes from bad decisions by people or through the deceptions of the devil… Jesus came to save his people, you and me from our sin. God came near… Jesus came as a baby to begin the process of undoing the effect of sin. This is a true meaning of Christmas. And it is a very personal message. Christmas tells you and me that God isn’t done with us and not only is he not done with us but he was willing to do whatever it took to save us and bring healing into our broken world.
If you have spent any time here at Grace you know that we have our own way of talking about the brokenness of the world… our own way of describing the damage sin has done to God’s world. I’m sure you have heard us talk about the 6 broken places. You most likely have also heard us say that the separation that sin created between God and mankind is the central broken place. It’s this separation that has led to all of the pain, hatred, isolation, decay and injustice that we find rampant in the world. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem it was God’s opening step in bringing healing to this central broken place… saving us from our sin and making a relationship with God possible. The true meaning of Christmas is that Jesus, by coming as a human baby, living a life that was completely pleasing to God, dying on a cross and then rising again into new life has defeated the results of sin. Jesus’ willingness to be the baby in a manger meant the end of fear, death and the power of the schemes of the devil. His willingness to become the baby in a manger also means that there is hope… hope that hatred can be overcome, injustice can be defeated, pain of all sorts can be healed, isolation can be ended and decay can be halted.
Yes, it is true that Christmas celebrates the story of the beginning of Jesus’ new life as one of us, but it’s purpose is much greater than simply celebrating the unusual birth of a baby… the point of Christmas is to point us to the end of the story of Jesus’ life… its purpose is to let us know that when we surrender to Jesus we are the ones who receive new life… a new life free from the fear of death, a new life empowered by the one who defeated death, a new life saved from our sins.