From Fear to Glory: Embracing the Christmas Message

Wonderful to be with your church family. Hey, before we begin the talk, would you mind just grabbing this sheet of paper and explain quickly what this is? Turn to the page that starts with our week one. If you're new, if you've joined our church since February of last year, one thing you need to know is that for the first 21 days of the year, we get very intentional about praying and many of us fast as well. And we just wanted to give you something so that you could plan it, plan it out a little bit because we start on January 1 and we got that online service just beforehand. This is our real last chance as a family to chat about it. So it's going to be time of prayer. We've got details on the back for that. But most of us, this is what I'm going to be doing. The first week, it'll be liquids only. Second week, I'm going to add in a meal. And week three, we'll be eating two meals. It's actually pretty easy after the first two weeks. [00:39:25] (47 seconds)


So that's what a lot of us are doing. I just want to say, obviously, in our city, there's a lot of issues with body issues and eating disorders. And I just want you to take note of this last line underneath that. It says, a helpful and beneficial fast will be to abstain from anything you tend to depend on. For comfort or coping with difficult emotions. So I just want to say, if you have disordered eating, obviously, don't jump in on the fast. Talked about that in a sermon that we preached on November 12. You can see that on YouTube. It's called Fasting Can Be Feasting. But I want you to consider, as to set time aside every day to pray, put an alarm on your phone and be diligent in your prayer. [00:40:12] (44 seconds)


And just make a plan for that here. So week one, I'm writing liquids, pray at lunchtime. I'm going to pray at lunchtime. For that whole three weeks. But for you, maybe the thing that helps you cope with sad emotions is coffee. And the idea would be that you would write, no coffee and pray when I'm coffee angry, which will be most of the day, at least for a little while. That's the point. If you're giving up food, that would be the time that you pray. So I want you to just, we've got this here for you to just plan it out. Put this on your fridge. And then there's a couple of things, a couple of spaces here for the things that you'll be praying for. And what we do this week, we're going to do a month is we pray through some kind of rhythm together. This year, we're using the pray acronym. So we'll start with a time of praise, repentance, asking for those things that we need and yielding. So that's this. If you just want to spend some time praying about how you'll be interacting in our 21 days of prayer and fasting. And if you've got any more questions, most of them will be answered via the link on that QR code. So looking forward to that powerful, powerful way that we start our year. Okay. Could you please stand for the reading of God's word? [00:41:02] (66 seconds)


And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. So the shepherds were among the first to hear the news of baby Jesus, which when you dig into the cultural context, it's unexpected but an absolute stroke of genius. Shepherds in first century Palestine were poor. Rabbinic traditions labelled them as unclean. They were lowly, undereducated folks and most people wouldn't, they didn't want them touching their baby. I bet the shepherds were thinking, if this child truly is the Messiah, the angel has this 100 % wrong. Because the angel, it's a beautiful thought that you have, but you don't know, you don't understand how the world works here. [00:48:31] (41 seconds)


Perhaps the angels anticipated this anxiety and told the shepherds, and that's why they told the shepherds that they'll find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, which was how the peasant class, to which the shepherds belong, kept their newborn babies warm. Further, they were told that he's lying in a manger. Jesus was in a space that they could occupy without upsetting uppity religious people. But more than that, I bet that the shepherds showing up to Mary and Joseph in the manger with this great news that the angels had just told them that this baby would be, quote, a savior, which is Christ the Lord, would have been a great comfort to Joseph and Mary, because they were just such an unexpected source of joy. I bet that these unusual messengers would have given them extra confirmation about what had been, up until this point, their own secret. Verse 9 says this, And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, the glory of the Lord shone about them, and they were sore afraid. [00:49:56] (58 seconds)


So the angels were sore afraid when the glory of the Lord came upon them. They feared with great fear. And I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but it struck me this week that the shepherds were doing fine, when they were in the dark, but as soon as the light shone on them, that's when the fear began. And here I think we see a profound analysis of the human condition, hiding in plain view on the Christmas story, namely that humans are quite comfortable in darkness, underwhelmed but comfortable, while the light of God can be troubling. [00:50:14] (31 seconds)


The angel says, I know you're afraid, but you don't have to be afraid if you behold what I'm about to tell you. It's pure joy. It's pure joy. Essentially, the angel is saying to the shepherds that they do not have to be afraid if they can grasp the message of Christmas. [00:51:38] (19 seconds)


Now, this angelic incident with the shepherds being afraid when interacting with the divine, is actually an echo of an ancient biblical story. A story that I would argue is deeply embedded to this day in every human heart. You can read about it in the very first pages of your Bible. It's the story of the first humans, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And initially, we read that humans walked closely with God, intimate, in the coolness of the evening, with no fear. Humans were comfortable in the presence of God. But in Genesis 3 .10, the word afraid appears for the first time. In all of Scripture, God is walking around the garden and they hide and God asks them why and Adam answers. [00:52:47] (41 seconds)


The backstory here is that Adam and Eve had just made a massive mistake. They ate the fruit from the one tree that God had forbidden, a fruit that the tempter argued would help them become like God themselves. So they ate the fruit and now armed with the power of knowing the difference between good and evil, they suddenly realized that they were naked and they hid from God. They felt afraid in his presence. Now, their mistake at its core was that they wanted to be their own rulers. They wanted to call their own shots and on that day, everything changed. And so they hid from God because they felt suddenly vulnerable in the presence of God. They were sore afraid. [00:53:35] (40 seconds)


People have been hiding from God ever since, living with the nagging fear that God is unsafe. Now, I've heard super Christians argue that they don't fear God because he is good. I think that C .S. Lewis for the win, when he noted this, what do people mean when they say I'm not afraid of God because I know he is good? Have they never ever been to a dentist? Amen. [00:54:26] (26 seconds)


And in the eastern part of his empire, people actually started worshipping Caesar Augustus as god. Meanwhile, far away on the same eastern frontier, a poor peasant boy was born who would within a generation be hailed as the son of God. The baby's followers would speak of him as lord and saviour and they believed in their core that he would bring true justice and peace to the world. The birth of this little boy in a manger is the beginning of a confrontation between the kingdom of God in all of its apparent insignificance and vulnerabilities and the powerful political kingdoms of the world. Now, Augustus had never heard of Jesus of Nazareth, but within a century or so, his successors in Rome had not only heard of him, they're taking steps to wipe his followers off the face of the earth. Three centuries later, the emperor himself became a Christian. Now, all that to say, the great news of the Christmas story is that a saviour has been born, a humble saviour who would bring peace and justice to the world and usher in an entirely different kind of kingdom. And the shepherd's minds must have been spinning at the thought that the saviour is now here, the angel continued. [01:00:02] (79 seconds)


So here we see that the central to engaging with Christmas is the practice of giving glory to God. And this is a challenge because if you're anything like me, you'd rather, you'd much rather take all of the glory upon yourself. When instructing Christians how to live, the apostle Paul once noted, let nothing be done through strife or vain glory. Now, vain glory is a word we never use, though it is a word that can explain the dysfunction of our city more clearly than any psychologist. It's two words. It's a compound word where kinos means vain or empty and doxa means glory. And together, it means empty glory. [01:01:36] (41 seconds)


The only way to satisfy a glory deficit is by resting in the knowledge that regardless of what you achieve in life, you are deeply loved, a deeply wanted child of God. And I think that the story of Christmas ultimately teaches us that when we understand that, our hearts will be filled with joy and peace. Verse 15, when the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about. So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they'd heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. [01:06:45] (60 seconds)


Practically, to glorify God means to simply look Jesus in the face and admit that his goals for my life are immeasurably weightier than my own goals. That's giving God the glory. That God's desires count more than my desires. That his weightiness, his glory is beyond my own. [01:07:52] (23 seconds)