12-23-12 Fear Not!

I want you to you to imagine for just a minute

that you are a missionary,

but you are a missionary who has been given a special

and in some respects quite a unique assignment.

An opportunity has opened up

for you to go into an isolated group of people

for just three years.

You are going in alone,

and you know that once your three years are up

you’ll never be allowed to return.

You know, too,

that the people you are going to

have a very distorted and twisted concept of God.

They know He’s there

but they have no accurate idea

of what He is really like.

In fact, in their minds

He is a very distant,

very severe,

very angry God,

a God whose acceptance is directly linked to their obedience,

a God who pours out His wrath on all who fall short of His expectations.

So what would you do with your three years?

What would you try to teach these people?

What kind of a foundation

would you try to establish

that would enable your work

to continue on after you left?

We are up to our ears in the Christmas season right now.

Kids keep checking the tree

to see if anything new has turned up

to shake or squeeze,

adults are frantically trying to finish up

or maybe get started on their Christmas shopping.

But to help us catch our breath

from all the chaos of the season

I’d like to take a few minutes this morning

to look at Christ’s coming

from a perspective we may not have thought much about before.

I think probably if we were in the position

of that missionary I just described

our tendency would be to prepare for our trip

by cramming ourselves full of as much theology as possible

with the hopes that maybe we could

established some kind of a school

that would enable us to then teach those people

some true facts about God

and who He is.

Our goal would be to communicate

as much content as possible

in the brief time we have

so that hopefully they then will take that content

and pass it on to others after we leave.

But, as I thought about this,

it hit me as never before

how differently Christ handled that same type of assignment

when it was given to Him

by God the Father.

This is the time of year

when we become especially aware

of the miracle of the incarnation -

God becoming man

for the purpose ultimately of offering Himself

as a sacrifice for our sins.

But there was another aspect of His time here as well

that was very much like that assignment

given to that missionary.

He had just a few brief years

in which to equip His followers

with the most crucial message

ever to enter the human race.

When the time for His departure arrived

it was essential that He would have

reproduced in His disciples

all that would be necessary

for them to take His message,

or more accurately, the message about Himself

and continue reproducing it

throughout the world.

And as I was thinking about it

I began to see the brief human life of Christ in a way I had never seen it before.

The first great hurdle Jesus faced, of course,

was to find some way of opening the door.

He needed to find some way

of getting these confused, frightened people

to listen to Him,

to honestly consider what He had to say about God.

And He knew

what any missionary who has ever succeeded in their calling has discovered,

that there is only one truly effective doorway

into another person’s life.

He had to find some way

of communicating His love for the people He came to.

He needed to love them right where they were,

just as they were,

offering them just one thing -

His willingness, His eagerness to build a friendship with them.

And the beginning of that message from our God to us,

that invitation to enter into a friendship with Him without fear -

without fear of Him,

without fear of condemnation from Him,

begins right there in that stable where He entered our world.

You do see it, I hope.

You see the amazing significance

of our God coming as a baby.

It didn’t have to be that way, you know.

In fact, we have what many, including myself, believe

are appearances of God,

or at the very least appearances of His messengers

in physical form on this earth prior to the birth of Christ.

If you want a fascinating study to do on your own sometime,

follow through all of the references to “the Angel of the Lord” in the Old Testament.

What you’ll see

is a supernatural being

who speaks with the absolute authority of God,

who allows people to offer sacrifices to Him,

and who looks very much like the literal, physical appearances of God Himself

hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.

When Moses stood before the burning bush

it was “the Angel of the Lord” who spoke to Him,

who then went on to identify Himself as “the God of Abraham”,

talking about “My people” who were in slavery.

I mention this simply because

to our minds it would have seemed perfectly reasonable

for God to assume this same form

when He appeared on the scene in the 1^st century.

He could easily have simply appeared,

and begun His ministry,

and done His teaching,

and then offered His death as payment for our sins.

But He didn’t do it that way

because there was something very different going on

when He came in the person of Jesus Christ.

He came as a baby

in part because there is nothing less terrifying,

less threatening,

more approachable in all the world than a baby.

No one cowers in fear before a baby.

No one hides in shame,

no one shakes in terror of possible wrath being poured forth from a baby.

You see, that baby, lying in that feeding trough,

was the beginning of what would become

His ultimate attack against the lies about Him

that Satan had been feeding the human race

since the Garden of Eden.

There is a fascinating phrase the appears repeatedly

in the events surrounding the birth of Jesus,

a phrase spoken by God to Mary,

and then again to Joseph,

and then again to Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist,

and yet again to those shepherds keeping watch over the flocks by night.

It’s the phrase, “do no be afraid”.

God speaking to His creation,

telling us...all of us, “Do not be afraid!”.

In fact, it was that call that we not be afraid

that He used to open each of those conversations.

And with that phrase He just put it into words,

and then He put it into flesh with that little baby,

telling us that what He has wanted from the very beginning,

what He has wanted with us,

what He has been seeking to create between us and Himself from the very beginning

was our willingness to come to Him without fear,

to enter into a friendship with Him for just one reason

so that through that friendship we would discover

the one truth we find it the most difficult to comprehend,

and yet the one truth that, if we ever gain even a tiny glimpse of it,

will transform our lives forever -

the truth that our God loves us,

He delights in us,

He cherishes us,

He enjoys us,

He likes us,

He knows and understands our pain,

our wounded places,

and He knows how to heal.

There are so many great wonders surrounding the life of Christ,

but in my thinking

very high on the list of those wonders

is how utterly uncomplicated it all was.

Here was God in human form,

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”...

That’s the way John says it.

Emanuel...

You know what that word means, don’t you?

God with us!

God with us!!

And He was.

And He was

so that He could at last

clearly communicate to us

the truth about Himself,

and the truth about us,

and the truth about what was going on between us and Himself from the very beginning.

And what He communicated,

and the way He communicated it

was all so utterly uncomplicated.

Even though He could easily have done it,

He did not invest His time with His disciples

in intricate theological discourses

about obscure or difficult passages from the Pentateuch and the Old Testament Prophets.

What He did do

was to enter our world

in the most disarming way possible -

as a newborn baby

lying in a donkey’s feeding trough.

And then, when the time was right,

He immersed Himself in the lives and the sufferings of this world,

and He just loved us.

And He loved us so deeply,

so unconditionally,

so intensely

that no one even remotely considered the possibility

that this was God.

He just simply couldn’t have been God.

How could God love me that way?

How could God laugh at my stupid jokes,

and cry at my pain and suffering,

and so obviously amazingly enjoy me?

To our minds God is the one who demands,

God is the one who judges,

God is the one who is most certainly angry with me,

and for so many really good reasons.

But this Jesus...

this Jesus just loved us,

and loved us,

and loved us.

And then, when we could not deny that love,

He put into words the unthinkable.

He who has seen me has seen the Father. I and the Father are one.

Mat 11:28 "Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Mat 11:29 "Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and You will find rest for your souls.

And then, as the ultimate affirmation of His love,

He said, “This is my body broken for you...”,

and then He died in our place for our sins.

Not complicated at all.

Just utterly amazing...

God coming to us because He loves us,

presenting Himself to us

in a way that made it possible for us to hear His love,

and see His love,

and, for the first time ever, to truly trust His love.

And this pattern our Lord followed in His efforts to reach us

is the same pattern He calls us to follow

in our efforts to reach others with the truth.

Remember that missionary I talked about when we began?

If he had just three years to reach those people,

three years to lay a foundation

that would hopefully continue to draw those he worked with

into a growing hunger for God after he left

what should he do?

Where should he start?

If he followed the pattern left to Him by his Lord,

he wouldn’t start by putting up a building,

and starting a meeting,

and then trying to get people to come.

He would start by just loving the people he met - really caring about them,

listening to them,

trying to understand who they are as unique creations of God,

and then trying to find ways of communicating his love,

one person, one day at a time.

Only when they began to trust his love

would they be willing to trust his message.

We’ve been here before, I know,

but it’s well worth revisiting.

Do you have someone in your life

that you’re trying to introduce to the truth...to the King?

Don’t begin with the truth,

begin with the love.

Only when you have communicated the love,

only when they’ve figured out that you really truly do love them,

will they be open listening to your truth.

Paul said it so much more simply than I do.

In his letter to the Ephesians he just says, but speaking the truth in love...(4:15).

During the brief time our Lord was here,

He knew that the success of His people

in their ability to communicate Him to their world

would depend most of all not upon the knowledge they had about God,

but rather upon the attitudes they held towards God,

and especially the understanding they had about His love for each of them.

And so He carefully structured His time here

to effectively communicate

that love to His people.

And He began the communication

from the first day He entered our world.

His birth, that birth that we celebrate

in a special way this time of the year

was carefully crafted by God

to communicate a crucial attitude

to those who were involved in that event.

When I mentally picture that baby

snuggled into that hay

with a crowd of rather confused,

rather smelly,

rather dirty shepherds

gathered around, looking on

I hear our God saying so powerfully

and so clearly,

“Now at last and forever more your God

is accessible, approachable

to all those who seek Him.

I truly am here for you,

with you.”

We may have to muck through

a few wrong stables before we find Him, and we’ll probably get our clothes

and our shoes pretty dirty in the process.

But we’ll never have to worry about

not being able to come up with the admission charge,

or feeling like we’ve dressed all wrong for the occasion.

And we’ll need have no concern about

finding the door

closed and bolted.

Because, you see, there is no bolt

on the stable door,

in fact there is no door at all,

and there certainly is no dress code

or charge for admission -

all that’s required

is an honest desire to find our God.

‟And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for those who come to Him must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

Christ came to communicate to us

the amazing, unimaginable truth about our Creator,

that He loves us with an everlasting love.

It is the one discovery, the only discovery we’ll ever make

that has the power to change our lives forever.

How do you see God responding to you

when you mess things up,

or get confused,

or maybe when you get so stressed out you get the flu

rather than resting in His care for you?

What kind of responses do you expect

from the Creator-God of the universe?

Well, to find the answer to the question

begin where He began in His communication of Himself to us -

begin in that stable.

Begin with a God

who will clearly do anything

to make certain we know

that His compassion has no limits,

that His love has no end,

and that His relationship with us

is never ever linked to our ability

to get it right

or do it right

or produce a certain level of performance.

It really truly doesn’t matter

where you’ve been,

or how you’re dressed,

or what you had to walk through

in order to find your way to Him.

All that matters

is your willingness

to take His almighty hand and trust His love.