A Breathtaking Plan // Old Story, New Twist, Part 2

Christianityworks Official Podcast

I don't know if you’ve ever thought of this, but on the surface of things, Christmas is a crazy idea! I mean, what exactly was God thinking by sending His Son to become a man – and to be born in some drafty, smelly shed out the back of Bethlehem?

CHRISTMAS IS A CRAZY IDEA

On the surface of things, Christmas is a crazy idea. I mean stand back and think about it … God's God, He created the whole universe. Okay, He's Father and Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one, something that's not that easy to wrap your mind around. But let's just leave that to one side for the moment.

God is God. God creates everything. We read about it in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis. It's pretty straightforward description of what He did and it was amazing. And the crowning glory of all His creation is humanity – you and me, male and female. And the very last thing that He does before He rests to enjoy His handiwork of creation is that He hands the whole thing over to us. God said:

Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind, cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind and it was so and God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, everything that creeps along the ground of every kind and God saw that it was good."

Then God said, 'Let us make humanity in our image according to our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over the cattle, over all the wild animals of the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’

So God created humanity in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue the earth and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves on the earth.’

God said, 'See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to every thing that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life I have given every green plant for food' and so it was.

God saw everything that He'd made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning of the sixth day. (Genesis 1: 26-31)

So far, so good. Adam and Eve go and enjoy all of this amazing creation but God does one thing, just one thing that is so crazy, inexplicable.

The Lord commanded the man, 'you may freely eat of every tree of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16)

Well, you know the rest. They couldn't help themselves, Adam and Eve, they just had to try to be like God. They ate from that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the rest as they say is history.

Sin entered the world, sickness entered the world and just as God had promised them death entered the world. Life became hard. That's something you and I can attest to – life is hard and all because God had to forbid them that one tree and they just had to try it anyway. Could it be all of your misery and mine hangs on just that one crummy apple? For Pete's sake, that's nuts!

And then as humanity spirals ever downward, as we become ever more debauched and depraved, after that moment God mounts a rescue mission – He sends Jesus to save us. What's that about? Why didn't He just give them access to every last tree? Why did He have to hold that one tree back from them and why did they have to blow it for the rest of us and after all that, why did God mount that rescue mission and send Jesus?

It defies human logic until you realise that love and logic have nothing more in common than their first two letters. Love isn't logical. Have a listen to this:

But the free gift is not like the trespass for if the many died through one man's trespass, Adams, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift and the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of that one man's sin for the judgement following the one trespass brought condemnation but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification.

If because of the one man's sin death has exercised dominion through that one much more surely will those who receive the abundance of the grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man's trespasses lead to condemnation for all so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.

For just as by one man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. But the law came in with the result that the trespass multiplied but when sin increased grace abounded all the more. So just as sin exercised dominion in death so grace might also exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (Romans 5: 12 - 21)

There you have it. There you have the reason that God did what He did. If you love someone you give them free will, right? He gave Adam a free will by excluding that one tree and Adam chose against God and so sin, with all its consequences, entered the world for you and me.

Now, before you think to yourself, "I am going to punch Adam in the nose when I see him in heaven." Ask yourself, if nobody in all of history before you had sin and ultimately you were living in that garden, would you have resisted the temptation?

So sin entered the world through one man and forgiveness came though one man as well, Jesus. God sent Him into this world as that little babe we remember each year around this time so that we could be forgiven. And notice how that 'grace' word comes in. Forgiven by the free, unmerited favour of God so that we could know what? God’s love.

What greater expression of love is there than to forgive someone who doesn't deserve it? I guess only one, to do it and to take his or her punishment on their behalf, to give your life to suffer in order to purchase their forgiveness and their freedom. To step out of heaven into this hurly-burly of a sinful world and be punished even though you'd never done anything wrong.

And this is not as some Plan B because Plan A didn't work. This was always Gods Plan A. God always knew Adam would blow it. He always knew that you and I would blow it. None of that was ever a surprise to Him and yet out of His great love, He gave us a free will to accept or reject Him. And out of His great love, He came to purchase us back from death by offering up His Son as His sense of justice demanded – to take all the fall for you and for me, to pay the price, to die the death.

Now, I know you have a lot going on in these days leading up to Christmas – those last-minute presents to buy, the things to clear off your desk perhaps before you have a few days off, the turkey to buy, the decoration to get up, all that stuff.

Now I know that you may not have a lot of time to think about this Christmas stuff but at the heart of Christmas lies a Father's love. At the heart of Christmas – in the most unhygienic, feed trough called a manger, in that even more unhygienic stable filled with animals, right where that child was born and lay and cried and gurgled – is a love so sublime that there are not enough words to describe it. There are no words ever invented that can really explain a love so great.

So as you hurtle towards yet another chaotic Christmas, let me say to you quietly, kindly, gently, ‘Take a moment to wrap your heart around that love. Just let that love touch you deep inside and change you and change your life and change your world."

After all, what do you have to lose?

YOU WON'T DIE ALONE

I know, it’s kind of a weird perspective from which to come at the story of Christmas, but hopefully as we chat together, it will start to make sense.

Death … dying is pretty much the one taboo subject left in our society. We can talk about pretty much anything else but not dying. And the last thing that you and I really want to think about is dying. But humour me because I want you to put yourself on your deathbed. Hopefully, quite a few years away from now, and imagine how you'll feel. Would you be afraid of dying alone? I'm guessing you would particularly in a hospital room, sterile, white, disinfected, clinical, with tubes coming out of you, those squeaky sounds the nurses shoes make on the floor. The idea of being completely alone at the end is a terrible thought.

Now and then, you hear about an elderly person who died all alone in their home and their body wasn't discovered for seven or eight years. That's frightful. Imagine how the end must of come for them. Of course, you don't have to wait to die in order to be alone.

So many people are desperately alone, sometimes through circumstances but mostly as a result of their sin. That may sound a bit weird but sin – turning our backs on God and going our own way usher's in death very quickly. That's what God promised Adam and Eve would happen if they ate from that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that he forbade them to eat from.

The Lord commanded the man, 'you may eat freely of every tree in the garden but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat for in the day that you eat of it you shall die. (Genesis 2:16)

The result of that apparent minor transgression? Well, God said to them:

I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers, he will strike your head and you will strike his heel. To the woman he said, 'I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing, in pain shall you bring forth children yet your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.

And to the man he said, 'Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and you have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you 'you shall not eat of it' cursed is the ground because of you. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground for out of it you were taken, you are dust and to dust you shall return." (Genesis 3: 15-19)

The immediate result of that sin was broken relationships, a broken relationship between God and Adam and a broken relationship between Adam and Eve. And broken relationships mean loneliness and strife.

So … what was God's solution to that distance that we put between Him and us through our sin? How did He address that?

Well, it's simple really. It was a complete no brainer for Him. All He had to do was to follow the longing of His heart and we know what that is because He tells us what it is over and over again in the Old Testament. Let's have a look at just one example, Leviticus 26: 11-13, God said:

I will place my dwelling in your midst and I shall not abhor you and I will walk among you and I will be your God and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be slaves no more, I have broken the bars of your yoke and made you to walk upright.

The longing of God’s heart is to be close to His people. He's our Father, He loves us, of course, that's the longing of His heart. And yet, through the whole of the Old Testament we see how God's people struggle to honour Him. In fact, the name Israel literally means 'to struggle with God'.

They failed, all the time, over and over again. And over and over again, He forgave them. It was this constant merry-go-round and it wasn't working so here was His plan, a plan that, as I said yesterday, wasn't some fall back, it was always His Plan A. Are you ready for it? Here God's plan, John chapter 1:10-14. Speaking about Jesus, it says:

He was in the world and the world came into being through him yet the world didn't know him. He came to what was his own and his own people didn't accept him but to all who received him, who believed in his name he gave them power to become children of God who were born not out of blood or out of the will of the flesh or of the will of a man but of God and the word became flesh and lived amongst us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the Father's only Son, full of grace and of truth. (John 1:10-14)

The plan was for God to take a giant step towards us even though we'd drifted so far away from Him that we really didn't know Him anymore. This God who had an intimate personal relationship back then in the beginning with Adam and Eve, the Word (that's Jesus), the Word became flesh and lived amongst us. That's what we celebrate at Christmas

But can I give you the literal meaning of that verse because when you have that, it makes a lot more sense. It literally says that Jesus became flesh and tabernacled amongst us, set up His home amongst us, it's the language of the Exodus where God's presence travelled on the forty-year journey through the wilderness with His people in that tent, in that tabernacle.

Jesus coming to this planet is Jesus stepping out and coming close to you to travel on your journey with you on your exodus. That's what makes this Christmas thing so amazing – to set you free, to make sure that you are never alone. Not through the problems of this life, not through the fractured relationships and the enmity that exists in this world through our sin, not through that time where we come to the end of this life and not for the rest of eternity.

Christmas is Jesus coming close, Christmas is God following the desire of His heart to be close to you and me by sending His Son to be on our journey with us.

Are you getting this? Is this touching your heart as I tell you this age-old story with a new twist? That new twist is that Jesus came for you. Jesus came to be on your journey. Jesus came to bring you comfort to bind up your broken heart, to bring release from captivity of your sin, to be on this journey every step of the way. And what a terrible price He paid for that so that we could see His glory and know Him and experience a one on one intimacy with Him.

Now let me bring you back to your death-bed … what if, instead of being terribly alone on your deathbed you experience the very presence of Jesus right there with you on your journey with His love and His forgiveness and His grace and His peace and His mercy? What if instead of being terribly alone, you come to know as each second ticks by on that clock, you are drawing closer and closer to that time that you will see that Jesus face to face?

I don't care what bad things have happened to you in your life. I don't care how lost and alone you may feel. It doesn't matter because Jesus is in this place with you and He will never leave you and never forsake you because on that starry starry night in Bethlehem, He came for you.

He came to say, "I love you", He came to suffer and die for you. He came to rise again and give you a completely new life with your slate wiped clean. He came to set you free. He came to bring you peace. He came to be with you for every minute of every day for the rest of eternity.

That's Christmas. That's what God was doing by sending us His Son. That's what we're celebrating or at least, what we're pretending to celebrate over this coming week.

Do you get it? Jesus came for you and if you have nothing else to celebrate this Christmas then celebrate that. It's all you need to make your Christmas the best one ever.

And remember, I'm praying for you that this message, this incredibly Good News of Jesus, will light up your heart with a joy unspeakable.

A QUIET REFLECTION

I just want to pick up on something really insightful my pastor said last Sunday, about being with someone who is dying. He made the point that one of the most powerful things that we can do is simply to touch that person. Whether it’s holding their hand, or giving them a hug.

I remember when my dad was in intensive care just before he died, that’s exactly what the nurse told me to do. Why? Because that sort of intimacy brings a powerful comfort and reassurance to the person who is dying.

You know yourself, just knowing that someone is here, standing with you, caring for you when you’re going through a difficult time, is in and of itself truly powerful. It may not make the problem go away, but it brings a comfort that nothing else can bring.

And in many respects, that is what the physical Presence of Jesus, which began on this earth on that first Christmas, is all about. Of course, you and I can’t touch Him physically right now, but one of His great promises, just before He ascended into heaven was that He would pour out His Holy Spirit on every man, woman and child who believes in Him.

I just want you to quietly reflect on that powerful, powerful truth. Because according to Jesus, that’s even better than having Him around physically. Speaking about His departure and the Holy Spirit, He said this: John 16:7:

Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.

The Holy Spirit, better than Jesus, according to Jesus. More intimate than Jesus, because when the Holy Spirit fills us, He never leaves us. He is always there to empower, to comfort, to guide and to give us wisdom and power.

With Jesus, if the disciples were in another place, then He wasn’t there physically with them. But with the Holy Spirit there is no place that you or I can go to flee from His Presence. As the Psalmist writes:

Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness isn’t dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139:7-12)

What we tend to do is we chop God’s great story up into little bits. We separate the birth of Jesus from His death, from His resurrection, from His pouring out of the Holy Spirit, from the powerful things that were ushered in through the early church.

But you can’t do that. All of those things happened because Jesus stepped out of the Spiritual dimension into the physical dimension, onto this planet to be close to us.

That closeness, that intimacy, is like touching a dying person. You and I, until Jesus touches our lives, we are dying people. And then, He brings new life. And then He fills us with His Holy Spirit and then, you and I are never, ever, ever alone again for the rest of eternity.

That’s what Jesus’ coming has given you. That’s why Christmas is such an amazing time to remember this radical plan of God’s to show us His love by being close to us, by touching us, even though we were dying in our sin until He came.

My prayer for you … is that as you drink in this wondrous message of Christmas. As you reflect on it in your heart, the Holy Spirit will do an amazing work of joy in you, to cause your spirit to soar into heavenly places – and receive this amazing Christmas present that we call Jesus.