Scripture Philippians
2:5-11
Children all over the world
believe in Santa Clause. A fat guy, hundreds of years old who lives at the
North Pole with Elves who make toys all year long. Then on one night a year he
delivers personally selected toys to people all over the earth being
transported by a group of flying reindeer. He shimmy’s down dirty chimney’s,
has milk and cookies and is off to the next house. The idea of a Santa Clause
is hard to believe – but still – people believe. The real Christmas story – the
one about Jesus, is actually even harder to believe.
God is somewhere distant –
heaven – he decides to leave there and come here and become a man. The he
serves man and dies for man, rises form the dead and goes back to heaven
promising to come back sometime and take us to live with him forever in
heaven. Let’s take a closer look at the
journey Jesus made.
NAZARETH VIDEO
(Mary and
Joseph went from Nazareth to Bethlehem (from lush wine country to grazing
hillsides for sheep) – Jesus went from HEAVEN to Nazareth to Judea to Nazareth
to Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth to Jerusalem to Calvary to Galilee then back
to Heaven. A much longer journey than Mary and Joseph. Mary and Joseph had
struggles on their journey from finding out about this pregnancy to leaving the
country and raising the son of God. – The struggle for Jesus – it wasn’t more
miles that caused him to have a much longer journey – it was where he was
leaving and what he was coming to: Heaven TO Earth!
Philippians 2:5-8 (NIV)
Christ Jesus: being
in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in
human likeness. And being found in
appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even
death on a cross!
Philippians 2:5-8 (THE
MESSAGE)
Christ Jesus had
equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling
to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time
came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave,
became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly
humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a
selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death — and the
worst kind of death at that: a crucifixion.
Imagine the distance Jesus had to travel. In real time and
real places. He left heaven 9 months before being born here and it would be
years before he was aware of who he was.
We think faith in Jesus is difficult – Imagine how hard it must have been
for Jesus to accept who he was. This was not a David Coresh mentally ill ego
trip – this was a human being named Jesus who had to accept he was God in human
flesh and that he would have to sacrifice his life for everyone around him and
all who would come after.
When he saw sin he must have felt the pain of death. When
he saw those who believed it must have strengthened him to accomplish the
purpose for which he made this longest most unique journey the world would ever
know.
ILLUSTRATION OF INCARNAITON: “If only I were a goose”
There was once a
man who didn't believe in God, and he didn't hesitate to let others know how he
felt about religion and religious holidays. His wife, however, did believe, and
she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his
disparaging comments.
One snowy night, his wife was taking their children to a
service in the farm community in which they lived. They were to talk about
Jesus' birth. She asked him to come, but he refused. "That story is nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man?
That is ridiculous!"
So she and the children left, and he stayed home. A while
later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man
looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to
relax before the fire for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump. Something
had hit the window. He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet.
When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what
could have been beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a
flock of wild geese. Apparently they had been flying south for the winter when
they got caught in the snowstorm and couldn't go on. They were lost and
stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings
and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. Obviously, a
couple of them had flown into his window.
The man felt
sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. The barn would be a great place
for them to stay, he thought. It's warm and safe; surely they could spend the
night and wait out the storm.
So he walked over to the barn and opened the doors wide,
then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside.
But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly and didn't seem to notice the
barn or realize what it could mean for them. The man tried to get their
attention, but that just seemed to scare them, and they moved further away. He
went into the house and came with some bread, broke it up, and made a bread
crumb trail leading to the barn. They still didn't catch on.
Now he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried
to shoo them toward the barn, but they only got more scared and scattered in
every direction except toward the barn. Nothing he did could get them to go
into the barn where they would be warm and safe. "Why
don't they follow me?!" he exclaimed. "Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the
storm?"
He thought for a moment and realized that they just wouldn't
follow a human. "If only I were a goose,
then I could save them," he said out loud. Then he had an idea.
He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and carried it in his arms as he
circled around behind the flock of wild geese. He then released it. His goose
flew through the flock and straight into the barn--and one-by-one, the other
geese followed it to safety.
He stood
silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes earlier replayed
in his mind: "If only I were a goose, then
I could save them!" Then he thought about what he had said to
his wife earlier. "Why would God want to be
like us? That is ridiculous!" Suddenly it all made sense. That is
what God had done. We were like the geese--blind, lost, perishing. God had His
Son become like us so He could show us the way and save us.
As the winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became
quiet and pondered this wonderful thought. Suddenly he understood why Christ
had come. Years of doubt and disbelief vanished with the passing storm. He fell
to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer: "Thank You, God, for coming in human form to get me out of
the storm.”
Another place in scripture we
clearly see this Unique Journey of Jesus coming from Heaven to Bethlehem.
VIDEO: The true miracle of Christmas (Word became flesh)
You would think that seeing the real physical - born of a
virgin - Messiah would cause people to believe – but it isn’t believing in a
man (like every religion in the world) it is believing that God became man and
gave His life for us.
John 1:10-13
The
Word/Jesus was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the
world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did
not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his
name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural
descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.
Speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus tells us how we can now make
our most Unique Journey from earth to heaven: John 3:3 Jesus declared, I tell you the truth, no one
can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. John 3:5-6
No one
can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh
gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. John 3:13-17
No one
has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven — the Son
of Man. Just as Moses lifted up the
snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so
loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him
shall not perish but have eternal life.
Saint Nicholas and he was
born to a wealthy, elderly couple in what is now Turkey in the 3rd century
AD. When his parents died, he was left with a large inheritance and gained
a reputation for generously giving to the poor. He entered a monastery and
eventually was ordained Bishop of the coastal city of Myra. Nicholas was
known for miraculous answers to prayer, confronting pagan “Diana” worship
and being cruelly imprisoned during Roman Emperor Diocletian’s persecution
of Christians. When Constantine ended the persecution, Nicholas attended
the Council of Nicaea and helped write the Nicene Creed. Saint Nicholas
died on December 6, 343AD. Early American writer Washington Irving,
creator of Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, was
instrumental in transforming Saint Nicholas into jolly ol’ St. Nick!
As hard as it was for him,
Nicodemus believed that God had become man and his name is Jesus. St. Nicolas
inherited great wealth and used that wealth in the name of the one in whom he
put his belief – his name is Jesus. It’s fun to believe in Santa clause – It’s
hard to believe in Jesus. When someone puts their belief in Jesus, that is the
true miracle of Christmas.
