Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Christmas! Part 1 (Sunday, December 12, 2010)

Christmas! Part 1 (Sky94 Service) [Listen Here]

This is the first sermon in a two part series on Christmas, though it's certainly not your traditional Christmas sermon. Jumping right in, Pastor Jason began with the Message translation of Matthew 2: 1-10, which says:
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem village, Judah territory— this was during Herod's kingship—a band of scholars arrived in Jerusalem from the East. They asked around, "Where can we find and pay homage to the newborn King of the Jews? We observed a star in the eastern sky that signaled his birth. We're on pilgrimage to worship him."
When word of their inquiry got to Herod, he was terrified—and not Herod alone, but most of Jerusalem as well. Herod lost no time. He gathered all the high priests and religion scholars in the city together and asked, "Where is the Messiah supposed to be born?"
They told him, "Bethlehem, Judah territory. The prophet Micah wrote it plainly:

   It's you, Bethlehem, in Judah's land,
      no longer bringing up the rear.
   From you will come the leader
      who will shepherd-rule my people, my Israel."
Herod then arranged a secret meeting with the scholars from the East. Pretending to be as devout as they were, he got them to tell him exactly when the birth-announcement star appeared. Then he told them the prophecy about Bethlehem, and said, "Go find this child. Leave no stone unturned. As soon as you find him, send word and I'll join you at once in your worship." Instructed by the king, they set off. Then the star appeared again, the same star they had seen in the eastern skies. It led them on until it hovered over the place of the child. They could hardly contain themselves: They were in the right place! They had arrived at the right time! (The Message)
The rest of this passage, from other translations, say that then the wise men - seeing Jesus in the arms of his mother, Mary - became overwhelmed and began to worship him. They presented him with gifts, and - having been told in a dream - left in a different direction. Some translations just say that they left "different." Pastor Jason recognizes that when the passage says this, it's speaking geographically - they literally went a different way home, so that they would avoid Herod. However, there is something to be said about coming to Jesus and leaving different, becoming a whole new person.

Christmas is notorious for sneaking up on people, even though it is on the same day every single year. It's not just Christmas, I think; just about every holiday seems to come out of nowhere, no matter how much warning we get. That's what happens when you don't live intentionally for something. After years and years of celebrating a holiday, it tends to lose it's meaning.

So, here comes Christmas again, are you going to leave different? Christmas is a celebration of the birth of Jesus, but right now how many of you spend less time with God this month than any other, because you're trying to buy gifts and make Christmas plans? How many of you give less money in tithe and offerings in order to buy Christmas presents? It's okay to admit it. You're certainly not alone. In the month of December, most churches will admit that they get less money in tithe than in any other month. The church, Jesus' bride - his woman, as Pastor Jason put it - gets less time and money from God's children on Jesus' birthday than at any other time. Keep all this in mind, while we switch topics slightly.

Let's look at a story from Luke, which isn't generally considered a Christmas story, but applies to the holiday a lot more than you might expect. Luke 2:41-50 states:
Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
 Pastor Jason began by looking back before Jesus' birth, when the angel came to her and told her she was going to give birth, as a virgin, to Jesus, the Christ that had been prophesied about for hundreds of years. Her and Joseph's job was to get him to age thirty-three. If he was going to save anyone's souls, all they had to do was keep him alive until the age of thirty-three and then the Romans would take care of the rest. They got to age twelve. And they lost him.

The first thing that's interesting about this story is that they go an entire day without even realizing they'd left him. How easy is it to lose Jesus just one day at a time? What I mean by this is it's really easy to say "I don't want to pray today" or "I don't want to read my Bible today" and then "I'll do it tomorrow." Do you really ever feel more like doing it when tomorrow comes around? Pastor Jason talked about people who will miss church one week, thinking they'll be back the next week. Then one week turns into two and before you know it they haven't been to church in a month. You can see the changes in those people, he says. You can see them falling away, their attitudes changing. I, the author of this blog, can vouch for that. As the observing party, it gets to a point where it just hits you and you wonder "How did we get right here?" A month ago they'd been right next to you, their hands in the air, praising Jesus, and now you could barely recognize them as the same person. [You can tell me you don't need church, that you can find God on your own, but my life stands as a testimony that that is not the case. Jesus gave us the church for a very good reason.]

The second thing in this story that Pastor Jason mentions is that it takes three days for them to find him. To this, Pastor Jason said, "When I get to heaven, I'm going to TiVo this moment, because I want to see exactly where they were looking for him." Who knows where all they looked, but they eventually find him in the temple - deep in the word of God. People can spend so long looking for Jesus and not find him, but he's not hiding. He can be found in the Word. If you're trying to find Jesus or trying to understand who he is, it's all there in the Bible. Jesus set up the church; it is his institution for people to find him. If you're looking for Jesus, try looking in the church. Where the word of God is, where the truth of the Bible is preached, that is where you'll find Jesus.

If it's all as clear as day in the Bible, why don't people look there more often? What's stopping them? Pastor Jason gave a scenario that, from experience, I'd say fairly accurately represents two common misconceptions that hold people back from finding Jesus. Why don't you read the Bible? Well, it's so full of contradictions. Show me. Show me these "contradictions." Well, I can't; I haven't read it. Then how do you know there are contradictions in there. Well, I don't want to just believe something on blind faith. You don't want to believe something on blind faith? You say the Bible is full of contradictions, but you haven't actually read it. You're just taking, on blind faith, what someone else has told you, are you not? As humans, we rely on blind faith much more than we even realize. However, science can only explain so much. Science can't explain, as Pastor Jason put it, the "glue" that holds the world together. If science can't explain even that, then why do so many people follow it so blindly. [Note from the author of this blog: I was actually just having a conversation along these lines with a good friend of mine, so I'd like to take a moment to throw some of that into here. Whether it's science or religion, some things have to be taken on faith. No one can possibly prove for themselves everything science has ever proven. Likewise, God calls us to have faith in Him, even if we ourselves can't see things happening that way. So it's important to realize that while we can't individually prove everything, check where something is coming from before you commit to it fully. As my physics professor once said, "Before you say you know something works a certain way, keep in mind that someone at some point made it up, and it's possible that someone was wrong."]

Moving on to the third point Pastor Jason brought up, the timing of this event is quite interesting. As it says in the passage, the reason for this festival was to celebrate Passover. For those unfamiliar with the original Passover story, it occurred in Egypt, right before the final plague. Each Hebrew family was instructed to kill a lamb that had no imperfections - never broken any bones, no diseases, no deformities, etc - and with its blood, they were to cover their door posts. When the angel of death came that night to kill the firstborn son of every house, it would see the blood on the door frame and pass over that house. Now they didn't know it then, but the whole Passover ceremony was symbolic of Jesus. Jesus was the perfect lamb - having never sinned - and it's because of his blood that death passes us over - maybe not literally, but certainly as it applies to our souls. So this whole ceremony is essentially about Jesus, and then his own parents forget about him and leave him there. Mary even scolds Jesus. She says, "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." [Note from Pastor Jason: Even though Jesus had done nothing wrong, he didn't talk back to Mary. He was truly innocent, but still respected his mother. Something to think about next time you get mad at your parent(s).] She'd just left her son in Jerusalem - hadn't even noticed for an entire day - and then asks him why he'd done that to her. At this point Jesus has to be thinking, "Who left who?" How often do we fall into that mindset. Things get hard, we fall away from God a little and suddenly we're on our knees asking "Where are you, God? Why did You leave me?" And God's asking, "Who left who? I haven't gone anywhere." It was you who lost Him.

And that happens all too often during Christmas. We lose Him. We stop going to church to spend time with our families. We take money from his bride, the church, to buy gifts for everyone else. Our time is sapped away in long lines at stores and Christmas time festivities. With each day, the holidays drag us further from Jesus, and it becomes harder with each day to find our way back. Therefore, the goal this Christmas is to honor him. It's his birthday; we shouldn't just maintain our worship; we should increase it.

At this point, Pastor Jason went back to the passage in Matthew. He explained how there is a sort of cultural battle between the shepherds and the wise men in the Christmas story today. And time and time again the shepherds are the ones who win this battle. Sermons are generally preached on the shepherds. This is largely due to the role of shepherds in that society. They were the outcasts, and it's so often preached that who Jesus came for were these outcasts - the broken, those who needed Him most. But here are these wise men. These socially high-class, well-educated men who came to Jesus as well. You see, Jesus didn't just come for the outcasts, he came for the scholars too. These wise men knew Jesus was coming because of the research they had done. They'd diligently studied the prophesies and the stars and waited for the sign of Jesus' birth. If you have doubts about God's existence, then you haven't done enough research. The more you study the Bible, the more you study science, psychology, sociology, the more all signs point to Him.

Now let's take a moment to look at this star the wise men saw a little more closely. This is the sign God chose to signal the coming of Christ. He could have chosen any sign He wanted. Why not a burning bush? He's done that before. He could do it again. But then again, He'd done it before. God has proven Himself to be a very original creator - every person's fingerprint is different, every snowflake pattern is unique. He doesn't like to duplicate anything. Satan on the other hand, is about as unoriginal as they come. He constantly copies what God has already done, destroying - or at least trying to destroy - every institution God has ever set up. Perverting the world to the point it's nearly unrecognizable to what God had intended.

But the point is, God chose to use this star. Let's look at how stars work for a second here. The light from stars that we see here on earth are like little pieces of the past. The closest start outside our own galaxy is approximately 4.3 light years away. That means it'd take over four years for the light of that start to reach us. If it went out, we wouldn't know for 4.3 years. That being said. In order for that star to show up in the sky at the right place and at the right time, God would had to have placed it hundreds of years before those wise men were even born. He placed it long before it even had a reason to exist. So when you feel lost, when you feel broken, remember this. God has put things in motion before you were ever born, so that at the right place and at the right time, He'll be revealed to you. When there is a need, God raises someone to fulfill it. But that person was likely born before that need was even relevant. Each step of the way, God is putting things in place, because He loved you before you were ever born.

If you take nothing else away from this sermon, let it be this. This Christmas, don't leave Jesus behind.

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