1 - God Wants to Be With Us

We need to back the story up - right to the beginning

Genesis 1:1–3 NIV

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

The story of creation is simply this - God says ‘let there be...’… and there is. He creates the stars, the world, all the plants and animals in it. And he does it just by the power of his voice - by speaking something into being.

But then, when it comes to humans, God changes thing up a bit

Genesis 1:26 NIV

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

For sure, God takes personal investment in all of his universe. But with mankind, God took special care in how we were made. He formed us directly with His hands.

And it doesn’t stop at the beginning-

God cares deeply about everything related to every single one of us

STORY -

Psalm 139:16 NIV

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

The God who can create universes with his voice watches over every single one of us. He puts us together. And he cares very, very much about what happens to us.

POINT 1

Christmas is about this powerful and personal God coming down to earth

STORY -

Luke 1:26–38 NIV

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.” “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

POINT 2

Christmas doesn’t start with our goodness - it starts with God’s

STORY - Ever notice how so many of those hallmark stories are very similar? Woman is in one situation (rich, detached, single), gets thrown into a different situation she dislikes (poor, large family, small town), and learns to love how good it is?

Mary’s not a good candidate for ‘perfect starter family’. She’s young, she’s poor, she’s not even married.

She seems like a good person, a faithful person for sure - but the point is, Mary being selected wasn’t about how awesome Mary was. It was about how awesome God was.

And Jesus wasn’t born into a palace. He was born into a manger, in a town that didn’t even have a guest room for his family to stay in for the night.

a manger was a feeding trough for animals.

Have you ever seen the formal arrival of a big celebrity, or a fancy politician, or the like? It’s not a small affair. You don’t see the king of england coming to hang out at your neighbour’s house. They’re a big deal, so they get a big deal. They’re here for a purpose, for sure, but really, the whole big show is for us to marvel at how awesome they are.

And the biggest, brightest politician, the highest political figure, the most beloved celebrity - they’re nothing compared to God. God’s the top of everything, He’s the king of the universe.

But here’s God’s son being born. And remember - God is the infinite, all powerful God of the universe. What He says goes. So that means - God picked there, and then. He picked the stable over the palace, he picked the young, scared, single girl over the picture perfect starter family.

And the story of Jesus, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. He faced hatred, persecution, violence. People spat in his face. They turned him away. Nothing about the gospel story says ‘God entered the world and everybody was awesome’.

POINT 3

Christmas reminds us that God made a way back for us

There’s this problem in every life, in every heart. We call it sin. This word means ‘disobeying God’. But the idea is this - that we were made to be with God, and that connection is broken because we all have evil inside of us. And even a little is fatal.

And try as hard as we might, we can’t make up that gap. We can get better, we can do well - but compared to an infinite God, what are we?

But, going all the way back to the beginning. God speaks this whole universe into being. He knows the beginning from the end. He knows every life, every day, every thought. He knows all the ways that we will fail, all the ways that we will fall. And he still makes every single one of us. He still cares for every single one of us.

Ephesians 2:1 NIV

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,

Ephesians 2:4–5 NIV

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.

The only way that we recover, the only way that we can REALLY do better and be better - is by God’s love and God’s power.

And at Christmas, we celebrate the time in human history where God came to earth. When he saw our sin, our problems, our failures - and He came to fix them. He came to die for them.