Christmas: The Gift That Says You Are Not Alone

Transcription

1 Transcript Aaron Brockett Matthew 1:18-23 Alright, how can you not be in a good mood after that a little groove going on? Hey, I want to welcome you guys and I hope you are doing well. It s good to see you. I want to welcome you if this is your first time to be here and anyone tuning in online. We ve got a lot of Facebook Live people and we re so glad to have you. We also want to say hello to our North campus. So from Northwest to you, can we give them some love? We love you guys so much. We appreciate you. It s hard to believe it s the Christmas season. I want to remind you of our Christmas services coming up in a few weeks. We have nine of them. On Friday, the 23 rd at Northwest we have a 5:00 and a 7:00 and then on December 24 th we have services at 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, and 7:00. At the North campus services are at 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00 on the 24 th. What I love about this is when you invite a friend or a family member to come to a Christmas service and they say, Well, I m busy that day, we have eight others. You can kind of twist their arm into coming. I m really looking forward to this. These are some of my favorite services during the year and I hope to see you there. I want to share just a few pictures with you. Almost a year ago, our North campus got started in January. They are setting up and tearing down at Creekside Middle School. We sent about 350 people from this campus to North and they are running around 800 to 850 people right now, which is amazing in their first year. I m so excited for them. We have a permanent facility that s almost finished for North. This is actually the baptistery for the North campus. It s going to be in the lobby. I was out there Friday walking through and taking some pictures. This is the front of it and they re kind of spackling and doing some painting right now. This facility should be ready by the end of January, hopefully mid-january, and then North will have a permanent home. And then our Downtown campus I ve got a few pictures of that. This is actually the auditorium. The seats are out of it right now. This is actually the stage, and then I think we have another picture of the kid s space downstairs. It s just an amazing facility. That should be ready by the end of February and then Downtown will have their launch in their permanent facility. Today we have a really exciting announcement. We ve been teasing this out over the last few weeks. Before I tell you what that is, I want to remind you why we go multisite why we are one church in multiple locations especially for those of you who

2 are brand new here. We just believe discipleship works better when you can worship closer to where you live meaning within a 20 minute drive or so. If you ve driving more than 20 minutes that s fine, but it s just going to be more of a challenge to get to meet some people, and to serve, and to get involved and to invite friends and family. About a year ago we jumped out on this journey to try to launch multiple locations so that way we could help people grow in their walk with Jesus better. So we launched North and we are launching Downtown. In the fall of 2017 we re going to launch campus number four. Are you ready for this? Do we have a drum roll? I like that. On the west side, give it up for the west side. For those of you who are directionally challenged, it s that way. So that s kind of like the north side of Plainfield, Avon, and the south side of Brownsburg. I want to just come right out of the gate with this. I ve got pastor friends on the west side. We called them up and talked to them. Everybody we ve talked to is like, Come on. We want to welcome you here. We re not interested in taking people from other churches. We want to go and help people invite their friends to a closer location. We ve got roughly 2,000 people who live more than 20 minutes away who live on the west side. So we have a campus pastor already lined up. I m excited to announce who that is. His name is David Cupp and this is his wife Terri and their three kids. Give them a hand. Noah, Mariah, and Aaron are their kid s names. This is such a great, great family. David is such a go-getter. He is not on staff yet and he s gotten more done in the last month than I think I ve gotten done in the whole year. And it s just amazing how excited he is. If you know David and Terry, be praying for them. Reach out and encourage them. If you are interested in being part of the West campus, be looking for announcements as they get that core group together. We re just excited. We are in week number two of the series called The Gift That Says, because whether you realize it or not or whether you like it or not, the gifts we give and receive say something. They communicate a message. Even if it s as simple as, I ve been thinking about you, so here s a gift, or I care about you, or I love you, or This is how I see our relationship. This can be an intimidating time of the year for some of us, especially if you re not really good at gift giving. I m just curious to see how many of you have started Christmas shopping already? A number of you. How many of you have not started at all? You re like, Maybe on Christmas Eve I ll get to that. How many of you are totally fine with regifting? Any of you good with that? You ve got a closet full of those. There you go. I m totally fine with recycling. It s recycling. How many of you are good with just giving gift cards? You re like, Get what you want. 2

3 Well, all of us kind of have our different positions on how we give gifts and stuff. I was reading this article online earlier this week. This was the title of it: What Your Gift-Giving Habits Say About You. I was like, No, I don t think I want to read this. I don t want to feel convicted. But I started to read it. They consulted a professor from England and, get this. She specializes in the psychology of gift-giving. I didn t even know there was such a thing. So she s going through this. She s going through all these questions. Some of the questions were like: What does it say about your relationship when you don t know what to give? And maybe you ve been in that position. Maybe you just started dating someone and are like, Is it too soon to get them jewelry? Should I just get them a blouse? Should I get them a gift card? What do I do? What does it mean when the person you give a gift to is disappointed? Isn t that the worst? You re like, You re going to love it. You re going to love it, and they open it up and it s like, Oh. And you know they are not that thrilled about it if they don t un-wrap it right away. Like they just un-wrap the top and set it to the side and say, Is the gift receipt in there anywhere? And you re like, I totally missed that one. And she says what it means about your personality if you re-gift. So I ll let you read it on your own. That way you re not mad at me. So anyway, she s just going through this and says, Here s what our gifts say about how we feel about these other people. Well, the Christmas story is more than a story. The Christmas story is a gift from God that actually communicates a message. Here s what I want you to see over the next few weeks together as we work through this. The Christmas story is not what happened, it s how it happened. What God is trying to say about you and to you and me is not just what happened, but how it happened. We can easily miss that at this particular time of the year. I don t know about you, but between Thanksgiving and Christmas life just seems to get more and more hectic and the calendar gets filled up. There re all these activities you need to get to. You ve got Christmas cards to fill out. You ve got your child s holiday music thing at school you ve got to get to, and you ve got the office Christmas party to go to. And not to mention there s always some sort of drama that comes out in culture this time of the year, usually involving the color of Starbuck s cups and whether or not we should do Elf on the Shelf and all that kind of stuff. It can get so loud this time of the year. What I want to do in our time together as we gather together every weekend throughout this month is to, hopefully, shut some of that stuff out even for a few moments and take another look at the gift of Christmas. Not just what happened but how it happened and why it happened and what God is trying to communicate to you 3

4 and me today. The message of Christmas really can change everything. If you know much about the Christmas story you re probably aware of the fact that it s sort of an unorthodox story. There re some unusual details surrounding the event. Because we are familiar with the Christmas story, those unusual details get lost on us or we take them for granted. But if you were making the Christmas story up, you d clean it up, most likely, just a little bit because it s kind of scandalous, it s a bit frightening, and it seems a little unstable the way that Jesus actually came into the world. You see, the Christmas story is that over 2,000 years ago a young, unmarried teenage girl (she was a teenager, by the way) named Mary gives birth to a baby in a barn on a road trip. There s just something really, highly unusual about all of that especially when the baby she gives birth to is the Son of God who has been sent on a rescue mission. You d just think the Son of God would be born under more stable circumstances and into a family that was maybe a little bit more put together. If you were making it up, it might sound something more like this. I took a stab at writing it out this last week. Once upon a time Mary and Joseph met as high school sweethearts while attending a private Christian school in the suburbs of Nazareth. They gave each other promise rings, and decided to kiss dating goodbye that s a Christian inside joke that only a few of you will get. And if you don t get it, that s fine. After Joseph finished Carpenter College, he asked for Mary s hand in marriage. They were engaged for two years as they saved up enough money, went through pre-marital counseling, and started volunteering as youth sponsors in the student ministry. Finally, they day arrived and they were married in a beautiful ceremony at First Christian Church of Nazareth and everybody from the genealogy we read about in Matthew 1 was there, including crazy Uncle Zachariah, John the Baptist s dad. They got on the donkey and rode off into the sunset. There was a sign on the side that said, Just married. After a couple of years of marital bliss and moving into their first fixer-upper, Mary gets pregnant. She researches on Pinterest the most creative ways she can tell Joseph that they re going to have a baby boy. She goes with the blue cupcakes slow down Pinterest. They go to the hospital, she gets an epidural, and Joseph brings the cigars. They are all excited. They bring Jesus home from the hospital. He was an amazing child. He had a real advantage, that kid, at water polo. Then He grows up and He saves the world. If you were just making it up, it would sound a little bit more like that. Here s what I would boil it down to. If you were making it up, you d clean it up because it s a messy story. You ve got Mary and Joseph, they re dating, they re engaged to be married but they re not married yet and she s pregnant. They were poor and they weren t ready to start a family yet. They re from the small town of Nazareth and right in 4

5 Mary s last month of being with child they ve got to go to Bethlehem to register for the census. It s just horrible timing. But all of those details are there for a specific reason, and there is a message behind all those unusual details. God is trying to communicate to you and to me. But it sounds, at least a first, a little far-fetched. Really? Did all that happen and why did it have to happen? Maybe some of you remember the television show Happy Days from the 1970s. We ve got a few Happy Days fans. If you re over 30, you d remember. There s this character by the name of the Fonz. The Fonz wore a leather jacket, and he had the killer hair, and all the girls loved him. There was a run in Happy Days where the show ratings were starting to wane. So the writers were pulling out all the stops to boost the ratings back up. They came up with a story line for a television show where the Fonz jumps over a shark, on water skis. This is actually a picture of it, if we could put it up here. Apparently it was a water-proof jacket. You can actually get on YouTube and watch this scene. I don t recommend you do. It will waste your day. It s ridiculous. He actually jumps over a real shark on water skis. And ever since that episode, the phrase jumping-the-shark has been used as an idiom for a moment when the writers of a story resort to gimmicks and unbelievable tactics to keep the attention of viewers. And, I don t know, maybe you read the Christmas story and say, Okay, Jesus was born to a virgin. She was unmarried. In a barn in Bethlehem is this where the gospel writers kind of jump-the-shark? Is it just this outrageous story to try to get our attention? And I would say, No, it s not there to get your attention. It s there to change your heart. God is actually saying, There are these details behind the unusual events in the very first Christmas story. It s where God is trying to flag your attention and say, Listen, I care about you. And Jesus would actually be born into the middle of a family who did not have it all together. I don t know about you, but my family doesn t have it all together. There are some messes there and there are some things where we don t necessarily feel we re fully read or fully equipped for God to use us, just like Mary and Joseph. God is communicating a message, not just in the why but in the how. Let me say it this way: We can know the story of Christmas but completely miss the message behind it. And part of the reason is familiarity. When you re a little kid it seems like Christmas couldn t get here soon enough. As you grow older, it just seems like every time we turn around it is Christmas again, it s Christmas again, it s Christmas again and the Christmas story can begin to sort of lose meaning in our lives. 5

6 I would actually take this one step further to say this: The way you see the Christmas story will influence the way you see God. The way you interpret it, the way you see it, the feeling you get when you hear the Christmas story, it will interpret the way you see God. Here s what I mean. I want to show you a picture of the nativity. It s an image that s pretty classic in our culture. We ve seen it a lot. What comes to mind when you see that? Does it excite you? Is it sort of a yawner? Is it sort of familiar? It s kind of unusual. I don t think I ve ever seen a cow so compliant nor that close to a newborn baby. I don t think I ve ever seen a woman give birth to a baby and look that happy. You just kind of look at it and you re like, It s nice. It s kind of like the nice sentimental side of Christmas. The production value is a little low. It s a little out of date, out of touch, but it s nice. And I would say that you see God the same way. If that s how you see the nativity, that s how you see God. Well, He s kind of serious, a little sentimental. He s a little outdated and the production value is a little low. He s a little out of touch with reality. What we want to do in the next few weeks as we look at the message behind the gift of Christmas is that we want to come to see that God is actually alive and relevant and tuned into your life. He has a plan for your life that s way, way better than anything you could actually do to prepare on your own. Just ask Mary and Joseph, because they were the first ones to hear about the Christmas story before it would ever happen. Some of you have heard that song Mary, Did You Know? Yes, she knew, because the angel came to tell her what was about to happen. Mary and Joseph heard the Christmas story before they experienced it. Here s what I m guessing. When they first heard the story, they felt all alone. They didn t even necessarily have each other. I d never really thought about it too much until the last couple of weeks as I ve been getting ready for this particular message series, but Mary and Joseph were actually told the Christmas story separately. That seems to be an unusual detail, but I think there is a message behind it. If I were God and sent Gabriel to go tell Mary and Joseph the Christmas story I d say, Make sure you get them together. Make sure you sit them down together on the couch, make sure they hear this at the same time. Let them ask their questions because their role in this is pretty important because they re actually going to raise the Son of God and I need Mary and Joseph to be on the same page. That s how I would have done it. But I m not God, thankfully. God sent Gabriel to tell Mary and Joseph by themselves which would have added to the feeling that they would have had that they were all alone. 6

7 I want to look at that first conversation. I want to start with Joseph in Matthew 1. So if you have a Bible go ahead and flip over to Matthew 1, it s the very first book of the New Testament. If you ve got a device, you can get there or if you don t it s on the screen as well. Here s what it says starting in Matthew 1:18. It says, This is how, and I really want to highlight that word how because it s not necessarily the what, but the how. The Bible doesn t want to just tell us what happened. It wants to tell us how it happened. This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, there s a reason, while she was still a virgin, there s a reason, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. God wants to emphasize that. Jesus was the Son of God. Mary and Joseph could have been married and they could have easily said, No, no, no, Joseph is the biological father. Jesus isn t the Son of God. So there s a reason behind that unusual detail. Verse 19, Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly. Joseph wasn t going to make a scene. Here s why this was important. Joseph hears the first part of the story, but he doesn t know fully what s going on here. All he knows is Mary is pregnant, and he knows he s not been with her, and he knows they are not married. So what does Joseph conclude? She is seeing someone else. I would imagine Joseph was hurt, he was heartbroken, and he was upset. They lived in a small town in Nazareth. If any of you have ever lived in a small town you know how gossip can just kind of get out there. And Joseph knows Mary s reputation is on the line. He doesn t want to get revenge and he doesn t want her to be hurt in any way. So he decides, I ll just bow out. I ll just kind of walk away quietly. I ll not make a scene. If somebody just bumps up to me on the dusty roads of Nazareth and asks me what happened I ll just say, It didn t work out. You ve got to admire that about this guy. Joseph is a man who is trying to do the right thing. And, as often is the case, when you try to do the right thing you feel alone. I don t know if any of you have ever been in a situation where you can t necessarily talk, you can t necessarily explain what exactly happened. You ve just got to keep it to yourself. In that moment when you try to do the right thing, you can feel all alone. You have nobody in the world to lean up against so you can get the feeling right there of the weight Joseph is carrying on his shoulders. That s why what it says next is so good. In verse 20 it says, 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, because he was, to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. In other words, There s nothing unethical or immoral happening here, Joseph. 7

8 Verse 21, And she will have a Son, and you are to name Him Jesus, and here it is, for He will save His people from their sins. So God is saying, There is a problem and there is a solution. The solution is my Son, Jesus. And Joseph, you and Mary are going to play a vital role in saving the 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, one of Jesus names, which means God is with us. Now that last part is an Old Testament prophecy from Isaiah saying, This has been prophesied long, long ago. You see, little do we often recognize that they had been waiting for a Messiah for over 400 years. It s called the Intertestamental period between the Old Testament and the New Testament. They d been waiting, and waiting, and waiting. For us Christmas comes every 12 months, but for them it hadn t come for over 400 years. They d been told about it. There will be a Messiah who will come and be born to a virgin. His name will be Emmanuel, which means God with Us. He is saying, Joseph, don t be afraid to take Mary as your wife. This seems out of control, but God is in control. He knows what He is doing. Joseph, you are not alone. In fact you are playing a vital role in the history of the world and God is with you, just as He desires to be with us. And he says, There is a Son who is going to be born to Mary, and He is going to save us from our sin. Here s the thing about sin. Sin separates and it isolates, and I would even go as far as to say it disintegrates our relationships. Sin perpetuates this feeling of being alone. Sin separates, isolates, and disintegrates our relationships. I realize the word sin has a little, or a whole lot, of baggage around it in our culture today. It s not a very popular word. But sin is just the equivalent of pride. Sin is pride. Even if you need to think about it that way, what sin is and why the Bible takes it so seriously, it s because it s a pride issue in all of our hearts. What sin is, it is the myriad of ways pride manifests itself in your life and in mine. So it s when I put my desires, my wants, and my needs over everyone else s, over your desires, your wants, and your needs. When that happens it blows our relationship apart. And it just perpetuates this feeling of being alone. The reason you and I will have these bouts of loneliness is this. It just pulls us apart. There s a reason why God told Mary and Joseph separately. There s a reason why the 8

9 events went down the way they did. It s because God is communicating a greater narrative here. This isn t just a Norman Rockwell kind of story that was told a long, long time ago that s the sentimental thing going on behind the scenes as we watch Buddy the Elf and Christmas Vacation. This is God actually communicating why we need a Savior. He is saying, The reason you feel alone is sin and pride, and it s pulling your relationships apart. We see it in Genesis 3. The very first things sin impacts are relationships. Adam and Eve, there s this wedge that s drawn between the two of them and then there is this wedge that is drawn between their relationships with God. This is why the Bible takes sin so seriously. Just for minute I want you to think about the relationships in your life. Think about all of them. Think about your spouse. Think about your boyfriend or girlfriend. Think about your friendships and people in your group, your co-workers, and your kids. Can you just feel something pulling you apart from them? Even if you ve got a pretty descent relationship, if you re not careful there can be a wedge that s drawn in between the two of you, whether it s hurt feelings, or misunderstandings, or miscommunications, or a betrayal of trust. You don t even have to do anything intentional to damage your relationships. Just don t do anything at all, just don t water the relationship, just don t be intentional about it and watch what will happen. It s the feeling of being alone, and God says, I ve sent a Savior because I realize you can t sort this out on your own, and I ve sent a Savior whose name is Emmanuel, meaning God with us, meaning God desires to restore the relationship between you and others and you and Him. And He says to Joseph, Joseph, listen, you are not alone. I know it feels that way, but you are not alone. Actually you re part of a greater narrative that is going to eliminate the loneliness of all mankind. I bet he didn t feel that in the moment. Little did he know Mary would have been going through the same thing. I want to jump over to the conversation she had in Luke 1, so just flip two books over. Luke 1 starting in verse 26 says, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you! Mary, I think was a bit of a skeptic because in verse 29 it says, Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. And if you didn t know anything about the story, if we didn t read on there and an angel just showed up and said to you, Greetings, favored woman, or Greetings, favored man, you would expect good news after that. Here s what the angel says in verse 30, Don t be afraid, Mary, the angel told her, for 9

10 you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a Son, and you will name Him Jesus. It s kind of like, Really? That s favor with God? I d hate to be on God s bad side. I m sure Mary is reeling at this moment. And in verse 32 it says, He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of His ancestor David. And He will reign over Israel forever; His Kingdom will never end! Mary asked the angel, But how can this happen? I am a virgin. And I m sure that Mary s mind was moving a million miles a minute and she was like, How in the world can this happen? What are my parents going to say? What are the people in Nazareth going to say? This is going to ruin my reputation. I m not sure I m ready to be a mom yet. I haven t read Babywise. I ve heard about it but I ve not gotten around to reading it. And I m sure she felt all alone. And maybe you ve been in a similar situation to this, or maybe you ve been in a situation where you ve gotten some news dropped on you like a bomb and you re like, I feel all alone. Who s a safe person I can share this with? Then you are beginning to understand a little of the weight Mary was carrying. And I love the angel s response. It s not like God just sent an and said, Deal with it. He sent them an angel to actually encourage them. The angel says in verse 35, The angel replied, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, will be with you, will be in you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Mary, you re not alone. You re going to be overshadowed by the very Spirit of God. So the baby to be born will be holy, and He will be called the Son of God. And the angel gives her this assurance where she s actually got an earthly relationship where she s not going to feel alone. What s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month. And that would be John the Baptist. Verse 37 says, For the word of God will never fail. In other words, Mary, this has been prophesied for over 400 years, God s got a plan, this is not by accident, and you re a part of it. And I love Mary s response in verse 38, Mary responded, and I don t know if I could do this. I don t know if I could say this. But Mary did. She said, I am the Lord s servant. May everything you have said about me come true. That s amazing. I think if I would have been in Mary s high-heeled sandals, I think I might have said, Is this fixed? Is this a done deal, God? Can we negotiate on this? Can we meet somewhere in the middle? Have You made up Your mind fully? But Mary doesn t do that. What s she putting on the line? She s putting her reputation 10

11 on the line. She s putting her health on the line. She s putting her financial stability on the line. She s putting her very life on the line. And she says, I m the Lord s servant. May everything you have said about me come true. I wish I had that kind of courage. I m just wondering if there s anybody listening to these words right now and you re not going through that situation, but you re going through a situation. And your mind is pretty consumed right now. And maybe the words overwhelmed, fearful, anxiety, worry, and alone deeply resonate with you because you re facing something right now in your marriage, with your kids, at work, with your health, with your life, or maybe even here at the church where you feel overwhelmed or you just feel alone. And you re wondering right now, How am I ever going to deal with this? What am I going to do? I just want you to hear this. I don t even know the specifics, but I want you to know you re not alone. The same God who communicates this very message to Mary and Joseph is the same God who cares for you. In fact, you re the reason this story even happened. God would actually send His Son to save us from our sin and pride, to save us from our relationships that are being pulled apart. And God would send His Son to be with us, and God is saying, I m with you right now. The beautiful thing about trusting your life to God is saying, God, I m just going to come to You and be empty-handed, and I can t make heads or tails of this right now. God, will You please come and be with me and guide me through? whatever it is right now you re going through that you feel alone in. I just want to give you four really quick takeaways from this passage. Takeaways are just the application. If you ve got a phone and just want to take a picture of the screen so you have it later, so you can write it down in your journal later, you re more than welcome to do that. I would encourage you to take these four things and think through them this week. As you walk out of here maybe you ll forget most everything I ve said, with the exception of the Fonz on water skis. But I want you to take the takeaways and I want you to circle back to them and talk about them in your groups or around the table. Here s the first one. I just want you to know this and somebody needs to hear this. Alone is a temporary feeling, rarely a fixed reality. It s a feeling, which means it s real, but it s not necessarily your reality because God sent His Son. And God actually says something dramatically different about this. Right now you re going through a season, and maybe it s a season that feels like an Indiana winter. You just wonder, When is it going to end? And when you re in that moment, it s easy to maybe want to tap out or give in. When you ve been waiting and waiting for Mr. Perfect or you ve been waiting for Mrs. 11

12 Wonderful and it doesn t ever seem like you move past a third date. Or you ve been waiting on that promotion at work and you feel like you re qualified for it, but you keep getting overlooked. Or if you ve been waiting for that health thing to get figured out, to get right, so you feel good again. It doesn t seem like it s ever happening. And you wonder when you ve walked into a room, and maybe it s even this one, and looked around and wondered if you belong here. You struggle to find a friendly face or someone you can identify with when everyone else s life looks like a fairytale but your life feels more like a chapter out of the twilight zone. When you feel too old, too young, too inexperienced, or too out of touch you can feel alone. Honestly everyone, at some point or another, feels alone. The reason is that we don t often recognize that its my sin and pride and your sin and pride that pulls us apart. And it causes us to say, I don t know if I can trust that other person, and it causes us to assume the worst in other people and to not give the benefit of the doubt. Through the story of the first Christmas God would say, This is a temporary feeling, but because of Jesus it is not a fixed reality. Here s the second thing: Alone shouldn t be seen as a condemnation but a confirmation. You see, Mary and Joseph could have easily heard the first Christmas story and been like (and I think I might have done this), God, what did I do wrong? How did I get on Your bad side? Why are You punishing me? But this was not condemnation. This was actually a confirmation where God was saying, Joseph, you re a righteous man. You re ready for this assignment. Mary, you are holy. Mary, you are ready for this assignment and I m actually entrusting an incredible amount of responsibility to you because I believe in you. I just want you to think about how mind-blowing of an experience it would have been to actually raise the Son of God. Those of you who are parents, you know how amazing it is to actually have kids. Just imagine if your kid was the Son of God. Imagine teaching the one who created your legs how to take His first steps. Imagine teaching the one who spoke the universe into existence to articulate His words. Can you imagine changing the diapers of the one who had come to wash away your sin? That s kind of mind-blowing. This was an incredible opportunity, an incredible blessing and responsibility that had been given to Mary and Joseph. Here s the third thing: Alone usually happens prior to a significant breakthrough. And so Mary and Joseph could have easily said to God, Listen, I m out and I don t know that I can handle this. I don t know that I m up for the challenge. But they stuck with it and I love Mary s words. She said, May it be just as You said. And I just wonder if there 12

13 is any sort of challenge in your life right now and you re ready to walk away from it. I would simply say this: Don t. Don t walk away from your marriage. Don t walk away from that relationship. Don t push back from the table. Recognize that right up to the point of a significant spiritual and emotional breakthrough you might feel alone. You see, a breakthrough is just around the corner. If you actually look at every person in the Bible who did something significant, just before they did that significant thing they felt all alone. Just look at Noah, look at Esther, look at David, look at Paul, and we could go on, and on, and on for days. Right before a big breakthrough they felt all alone. Here s the last thing: Alone is most often the place where God comes most near. God listens to the cries of the lonely and the brokenhearted. The Scriptures say, God will not break a bruised reed or snuff out a smoldering wick. Here s the only requirement for God to draw near. It s just humility because humility is the antidote to pride and sin. And God is listening, and God is available, and God is ready in the Spirit. The power of the Spirit is on tap and the thing that engages Him is when we throw up our hands and say, God, I need to lean into You. I m tired of trying to do this thing on my own. We want to do that now. That s why we do this thing called communion every week. That s why we have a quiet moment after the teaching before we do a song. This is our moment to actually say, You know God, I m struggling with this particular thing. And I feel alone right now. Or, Not everything Aaron said I can relate to but there is one thing I relate to and, God, it s me. And I want Your power, and I want to lean into You right now. So we want to do that together today. God, we just come to You right now. And all of us feel alone at some time or another, even when other people are around. We look back on that first Christmas and we see how Mary and Joseph received the news, we see how they heard the story that first Christmas. I m sure they were ashamed, fearful, and lonely, and yet they chose to trust You because You promised the power of Your Holy Spirit. And that same promise is still as relevant and still as ready for us today. We may not have much faith, but God what faith we can muster up we give to You. We may not have a whole lot of hope, but what hope we can grab hold of. We want to place it in You. Father, I pray Your Spirit would meet us in this place and You would provide comfort, guidance, and wisdom and You would shepherd the heart of some who may be hurting today and remind them that Christmas is the message that says they are not alone. We ask this right now in Jesus name. Amen. 13