Carols in The Park

Manger Talk

It's a boy. It's a boy. Congratulations. It's a baby boy. I got to hear that four times and I'm very blessed to have that. If you have children yourself or if you're about to give birth or you know somebody that has children, you know that children change your world. Whilst they might enrage you and give you sleepless nights and troubles, they also enrich you. You stop being selfish. You become a better version of yourself. As I said, they change your world. Well, today I want to talk about a birth that actually changed the whole world. And it was a baby boy, King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the scriptures say. He is the Son of God and he somehow ends up in a feeding trough in a two bit town called Bethlehem. And you might ask yourself, "Why?", because the religious elite didn't believe either that he was the Messiah, the one to be celebrated.

Second question is, why did Jesus come through the lineage he did? The family tree that he decided to come through? Because as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, he could have been born anywhere, and had a family tree filled with greatness. But if you had a look on ancestry.com at his past, you would see one that would be an embarrassment to you. And I'll answer that question with a story. My wife and I and the four boys, we all decided it was going to be a great idea to hop into a car, an enclosed space and drive, for a few weeks, across Australia and we lived to tell the tale, we survived. And amongst the frustration, there was lots of highlights of the trip as well.

One of those was stopping off in Victoria and having a look at Ned Kelly Museum. Again, as a young boy, I kind of idolized him a little bit Just like most of Australia, if we're honest as kids, and if I'm honest, even as adults, I kind of still like him. Why? Well, because he was someone of no identity. He had a checkered background. He was born in a town that wasn't very significant. His family wasn't very significant, yet, he was able to grab himself into the spotlight by under the proviso of doing good things but he was doing bad things, let's be honest. And we recognize that, why? Because we can identify a little bit of his story in ours.

So coming back to the question, why was he born in a feeding trough, in a two bit town, why did he have a lineage that would cause embarrassment? So that we could all identify with him and in turn find our identity in him. We have full access to him. If he's in a feeding trough, royalty can reach him and those who are insignificant reach him. And he was for everybody. But what does that mean for you and him? You and I? Well, we know that he didn't stay in the feeding trough. He grew to be a man. And thank you to Stuart for his great reading of that famous poem, that he would change the world as we know it. Especially in Western civilization, the Christian ethos is at the very foundation of our nation and we flourished because of it. But why did he come? Why did he choose to do this? Well, you see, to find identity in him, we need to realize a little bit about ourselves.

That each and every single one of us have done wrong at some stage in our life. And all has to be given an account for. Why? For we understand our justice system, don't we? That if you break the law, you be come before the judge. Well, all of us have broken God's law and instead of punishing us the way we deserve, he sends his son. His son goes to the cross. If you think about it, willingly goes to the cross. And if you think about two bank accounts, Jesus' bank account, the son of God is filled with good works and righteousness and no brokenness and no sin. And in the other, ours, is all the things that we've done wrong. Everything that we have to give an account for. And yes, that's even our thoughts. Wow.

And so what happens on the cross? A great exchange takes this place. He takes on our sin as if it was his own and he pays for it on the cross. And in the other one, we get given all of his goodness and his gifts and we find our identity then in him, when we get to live forevermore in his presence. That's the meaning of Christmas. That's why we celebrate and that's what we are doing today in some way to acknowledge that.