The Love of Christmas

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone. Happy Christmas week to you. It’s good to see you all here for worship.

There are just a couple of announcements I’d like to highlight from your bulletins. We’re still collecting for the Lottie Moon offering for international missions. So far we have $1,000 of our $5,000 goal. Please consider giving as you’re led.

We’ll be delivering Christmas cookies to residents of Stuarts Draft Retirement Community on Wednesday, so get your cookies made and have them here on Wednesday afternoon.

Don’t forget our Longest Night Worship service this coming week too, as well as our Christmas Eve service.

And we will be having service on Christmas Day. I’ve heard of some churches that will be closed on Christmas Day. What in the world’s up with that? If you want to know what’s wrong with the modern church in America, there you go. But I hope you’ll be here, and I hope you bring all of your family as well.

Jesyka, do you have anything?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Father we come to You during a season when we honor the birth of a baby, and in so doing acknowledge that You reached down to bless us all. To walk in the world as You once did in Eden in the form of a baby, in whose fragile body lay all the signs of sacrifice. Born in humility, growing into his kingdom as the promised one of scripture. We worship Jesus, our Savior and King, and we give thanks to You for this day in His name, Amen.

Lighting of the Advent Candle

On this last Sunday of Advent, we light our fourth candle, the candle of love. God’s love is the foundation of the entire story told in the Bible, from the creation to the fall, to our redemption in Christ, and to our final home in the new heavens and new earth.

God promised Abraham that he would make his descendants a people who would bless all people. God foretold of the One, born of a virgin, who would free the captives, bear our transgressions, suffer in our place, redeem God’s people, and usher in a peace unlike anything ever known.

Isaiah prophesied the words of the Lord, “‘For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love shall not depart from you, and my covenant of peace shall not be removed.”’

[Light candle]

Let’s pray:

Heavenly Father, the whole meaning of Christmas can be explained in one word…LOVE. You sent your gift of pure love to us that first Christmas. Love descended from heaven to be born of a virgin. Love lay in the scratchy hay of a manger in a barn in Bethlehem. All of your love, God, was robed in the delicate skin of a baby and wrapped in swaddling clothes. This final week of Advent helps us to reflect on the magnitude of love that was made manifest in Jesus. For it’s in his name that we ask it, Amen.

Sermon — The Love of Christmas

We’ve seen through this Advent season that Christmas means hope — hope in a Savior, hope in eternity, and hope in there being a meaning and a purpose to the things you’re called to go in this life.

And we’ve seen that Christmas means peace — peace between you and God, peace between your past and your future, the peace of knowing that God is with you no matter where you go or what you experience.

Last week, we saw that Christmas means joy. There’s joy in experiencing the work of Christ in your life, joy in knowing that your salvation is secure, and joy knowing that he is guiding you right to himself.

All three of those gifts that Christmas gives to us — hope, peace, and joy — are complete. There’s not one that’s more important or more necessary than the others. God gives you a full abundance of all three, and why would he do that? Because God loves you.

And that’s where this fourth candle of Advent comes in. Love. Christmas is hope, and it is peace, and it is joy, and I just said that none of those are more important or necessary than the others.

But I will say that love is a little different, especially when it’s God’s love. Because God’s love is what gives you hope. God’s love is what gives you peace and joy. Christmas is many things, but it is love most of all, and it is God’s love for you — for you.

I’m going to give you proof of that this morning by taking a little trip through the Old Testament, and at some point you’re going to ask yourself, “What does any of this have to do with Christmas? Has the preacher lost his mind?”

Yes, sometimes I think so, but no, not in this case. So just hang on and trust me, we’ll get there.

We’re going to start out this morning in Genesis 38, and the account of a woman named Tamar.

Tamar’s story is a strange one, and it’s made stranger because it’s kind of shoved right in the middle of Joseph’s story after Joseph is sold into slavery and before he finds himself in Potiphar’s household in Egypt. But it’s Tamar we’re interested in today. Genesis 38:12-19:

In the course of time the wife of Judah, Shua's daughter, died. When Judah was comforted, he went up to Timnah to his sheepshearers, he and his friend Hirah the Adullamite.

And when Tamar was told, “Your father-in-law is going up to Timnah to shear his sheep,” she took off her widow's garments and covered herself with a veil, wrapping herself up, and sat at the entrance to Enaim, which is on the road to Timnah. For she saw that Shelah was grown up, and she had not been given to him in marriage.

When Judah saw her, he thought she was a prostitute, for she had covered her face. He turned to her at the roadside and said, “Come, let me come in to you,” for he did not know that she was his daughter-in-law.

She said, “What will you give me, that you may come in to me?” He answered, “I will send you a young goat from the flock.” And she said, “If you give me a pledge, until you send it—”

He said, “What pledge shall I give you?” She replied, “Your signet and your cord and your staff that is in your hand.”

So he gave them to her and went in to her, and she conceived by him. Then she arose and went away, and taking off her veil she put on the garments of her widowhood.

And this is God’s word.

This is a pretty messed up, very non-Christmasy story, isn’t it? Just hang on. Tamar was the daughter in-law of one of Joseph’s brothers, Judah. Judah had left his father and brothers and married a woman from Canaan. They had a son named Er, who married Tamar.

But Er wasn’t a nice guy. In fact, verse 7 of chapter 38 says that Er was so evil that God took his life. So now Tamar’s husband is dead, and she’s a widow.

Now follow me, because this might get a little complicated. The way things worked back then, one of Judah’s other sons had to marry Tamar and have a son to carry on the family name. In this case, Judah told his son Onan to take Tamar as his wife. But Onan refused to bear a child with Tamar, and God took Onan’s life also.

So now Tamar is a widow two times over, and she still doesn’t have any children.

Again, according to the times, Judah is supposed to tell another of his sons to marry and take care of Tamar. But he only has one son left, a boy named Shelah. So instead, Judah tells Tamar, “You stay in your father’s house until Shelah grows up, because I’m afraid he’ll die just like his brothers.”

But Shelah grows up, and guess what? Judah never tells him to marry Tamar. In fact, Judah never had any intention of marrying his last son off to Tamar. So Tamar takes matters into her own hands in probably the most terrible way you can imagine.

Judah’s wife dies. A while later, Tamar finds out that Judah is traveling close by to have his sheep sheared. It’s a big event, almost like a festival. So Tamar takes off her widow’s clothing and puts on a veil, and then she sits by the roadside and pretends she’s a prostitute. She’s going to seduce Judah in the hopes that he’ll get her pregnant and have to take care of her.

Judah comes by, and he’s probably had too much to drink, he sees Tamar there but doesn’t recognize her because she’s wearing a veil. And he says, “Come with me.”

But Judah doesn’t have any money with him. He says, “I’ll send you a goat from my flock as payment,” and then he gives Tamar his staff, his cord, and his seal kind of as collateral. Think of it as Judah giving Tamar his driver’s license as proof that he’ll be good to his word.

And Judah does keep his word. He sends a servant with a young goat to pay this prostitute he slept with, but Tamar’s nowhere to be found.

And guess what? Tamar gets pregnant. Judah finds this out, and it’s a huge sin because Tamar isn’t married. So he demands that Tamar be brought out and burned alive.

Tamar comes out, and her stomach’s about out to here, but she’s carrying something else too. She brings out Judah’s driver’s license. She has his staff and seal and cord.

Tamar gives birth to twins — the first is named Perez, the second is Zerah. Judah has to take care of her now. And really, he should have been taking care of her all along. But still, that’s a truly awful thing that Tamar did, and she had to feel that shame for the rest of her life.

Let’s take a look at another woman. Turn just a few books over to the book of Joshua, chapter two, where we meet a woman named Rahab.

Tamar just pretended she was a prostitute, which was bad enough. Rahab actually is one, and by most accounts had been one for a very long time. Let’s read a little bit about what Rahab did. Joshua 2, starting in verse 3 and going through verse 14:

Then the king of Jericho sent to Rahab, saying, “Bring out the men who have come to you, who entered your house, for they have come to search out all the land.”

But the woman had taken the two men and hidden them. And she said, “True, the men came to me, but I did not know where they were from. And when the gate was about to be closed at dark, the men went out. I do not know where the men went. Pursue them quickly, for you will overtake them.”

But she had brought them up to the roof and hid them with the stalks of flax that she had laid in order on the roof. So the men pursued after them on the way to the Jordan as far as the fords. And the gate was shut as soon as the pursuers had gone out.

Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, “I know that the LORD has given you the land, and that the fear of you has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you.

“For we have heard how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan, to Sihon and Og, whom you devoted to destruction.

“And as soon as we heard it, our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the LORD your God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath. Now then, please swear to me by the LORD that, as I have dealt kindly with you, you also will deal kindly with my father's house, and give me a sure sign that you will save alive my father and mother, my brothers and sisters, and all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death.”

And the men said to her, “Our life for yours even to death! If you do not tell this business of ours, then when the LORD gives us the land we will deal kindly and faithfully with you.”

And this is God’s word.

In that time, and throughout most of recorded history, a prostitute was about as low as you could go. The only sort of person worse than a prostitute was probably a leper.

Murderers were treated better than prostitutes. Traitors were treated better than prostitutes. They were immoral, they were impure, they were as far from righteousness as anyone could get.

But here’s a prostitute named Rahab who’s doing something righteous, isn’t she? Joshua has sent two spies to scout out the land. They arrive in Jericho and hide in Rahab’s home for the night, because people would be used to seeing strangers going in and out of there.

But the king hears about these two spies and demands that Rahab give them up. Rahab hides the spies on her roof and tells the king’s men that they’ve left, then she lowers the men down through her window and beyond the city walls.

But before she does, she tells the spies, “I’m going to get you out of here, but you have to do something for me. You have to save my family.”

She gives this long talk about how great God is and how He’s going to give the Israelites the whole of Canaan — that’s verses 9-11. The spies promise to spare her and her family for letting them go, and Joshua keeps their word.

Rahab was spared the destruction of the city. So was her family. But let’s take a minute to really look at who Rahab is right here. First, she’s a woman. In that time and in that culture, women didn’t have a lot of power. In fact, they almost had no power.

Second, she was a Canaanite. She was part of a people so vile and evil that God had told the Israelites that all of them had to be killed, even the children and the animals.

Third, she was a prostitute. We’ve already talked about how sinful prostitutes were considered.

And fourth, she’s not even a believer. Look at what she says. She knows all about what God has done for the Israelites — everyone in Canaan has by now — but look at verse 11:

“And as soon as we heard it,” she says, “our hearts melted, and there was no spirit left in any man because of you, for the Lord YOUR God, he is God in the heavens above and on the earth beneath.”

Rahab had heard about God, and she’s scared of that god, but she didn’t follow God. She would eventually, but not in this moment. In this moment, she’s just doing anything to keep herself and her family safe.

I have one more person I want to talk about. This is the saddest story of the three. Turn to the book of 2 Samuel, chapter 11, where we meet a woman named Bathsheba. David is king of Israel. He is wise, he is good, he has the support of the people. And then we have one of the most terrible parts of scripture. Second Samuel 11, verses 2-5:

It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful.

And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”

And this is God’s word.

Poor Bathsheba. All she did was take a bath. She was minding her business, doing what the law of Moses said she had to do. It says in verse 4 that she was “purifying herself from her uncleanliness.” Women had to do that every month after their cycle.

And here’s David outside, spying on her. Seeing how beautiful she is. He calls some of the palace officials and says, “Who’s that over there?” He’s told that she’s the daughter of Elian, the wife of Uriah the Hittite. And David just has to have her. And he’s the king. The king can have anyone he wants.

He sends messengers, according to verse 4, to take her. That word “take” is way too soft for what those messengers did. That word in the Hebrews means to “seize by force.”

Bathsheba was kidnapped, in other words, and brought to David, who then raped her.

On top of all that, Bathsheba gets pregnant. We all know what happened next. David sends Bathsheba’s husband to war, right to the front lines, because if Bathsheba’s husband dies in battle, David’s off the hook. He can marry Bathsheba (whether she wants to marry him or not) and everything will be taken care of. So David thinks.

But poor Bathsheba. First she’s raped. Then the king sends her husband to war, and her husband is killed. And then the baby that David put inside her dies seven days after he’s born. So many terrible things happened to her, and none of them were her fault. She probably spent most of her life wondering, “Why did God do this to me? Why did God let this happen?”

Three women — Tamar, Rahab, and Bathsheba. Three outcasts. Three sinners. Two of them did terrible things, one of them had terrible things done to her. All of them could say, “God doesn’t know who I am, much less care about me in any way.”

So why in the world am I talking about these three women at Christmas? And why in the world am I talking about them on the Sunday of Advent when we speak about God’s love?

Because I have one more scripture I want you to look at. Turn to the gospel of Matthew, chapter 1. When we think of the Nativity story, we most often think of the gospel of Luke, who tells us about shepherds and angels and the manger. Or we think of the later parts of Matthew, where he tells us of the angel appearing to Joseph and the visit by the wise men.

But this first part of Matthew chapter 1 is often skipped over, because it’s just a boring old genealogy of Jesus’s ancestors filled with a lot of names we don’t know and can’t pronounce. In fact I almost had Matthew 1:1-17 as today’s scripture, but I’d spring my tongue trying to speak some of those names.

A genealogy is important, though. It anchors Jesus in history. It shows that this isn’t just a made-up story — here’s his family, his earthy father and grandfather and great-grandfather and all the way back to Abraham, proving to the Jews that this is the Messiah.

More than that, to the Jews of Matthew’s time, a person’s genealogy was like a resume. It was where you listed all the powerful people in your family line, all the great people, all the respectable people.

But look at Matthew 1, verse 3: “ ... and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar ... ”. There’s Tamar’s name written into the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Tamar, the woman who pretended she was a prostitute so she could commit incest.

Look at verse 5: “ ... and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab ... ”. There’s Rahab’s name written into the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Rahab the prostitute, the woman who made sin her living.

And look at verse 6: “ ... And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah ... ”. Who’s the wife of Uriah? That’s Bathsheba, the woman who was raped. Her name is written into the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And for that matter, so is David, the man who raped her and had her husband killed.

In total there are five women listed as relatives of Christ in Matthew chapter 1. Mary is the last, of course. Ruth is the other one, and I could have included Ruth in this sermon too, because Ruth was a foreigner. Ruth wasn’t one of God’s chosen people.

You have to understand that when the Jewish people offered their genealogy, their family tree, they never included women. Never. Because women at that time and in that culture were basically possessions. But here in the genealogy of Jesus Christ, of the Son of God, there are the names of five women.

And why is that? For a very simple but very powerful and important reason: when it comes to the family of Christ, no one gets left out because of who they are or what they’ve done.

If you go to him in faith, he will accept you and forgive you. That’s what we say to nonbelievers, isn’t it? But you know what, we need to say that to ourselves and to each other too.

Because being a believer, being saved, doesn’t mean we won’t completely mess up our lives at some point. Just because you’re saved doesn’t mean you can’t fall flat on your face.

How easy is it for you to say that Jesus saved you? As a Christian, that’s probably pretty easy for you to say. But how easy is it for you to say that Jesus loves you? Seriously. If we’re honest, that’s a little harder for us to say, isn’t it?

We can sing it — “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” But can you tell yourself that? The Bible might tell you so, but does your heart tell you so? Not always, does it?

Because we’re still people. We might be saved, but we’re still fallen and we can still fall. We might have faith, but we can fail that faith. We might be given every piece of armor we need to stand against the devil, but sometimes we don’t put that armor on and he runs right over top of us.

We sin, and sin greatly. We don’t pray as much as we should, don’t think of God as much as we should, we forget that we’re made for another world and instead chase after worthless things in this one. We thank Jesus for saving us, but we seldom thank him for loving us. And do you know why? Because deep down too many of us think that it’s easier for him to save us than love us.

But that’s just not true. Christmas is about God coming to earth, about a man named Jesus who was fully divine and fully human living and dying in this world so that at the end of our days, we can go and be with him. But what drove God to do that? Pity? No. It was love.

God came here to save you because he loves you. And God continues to love you in spite of whatever failures you suffer, whatever wrong choices you make, and whatever you do or say or feel that leads you to believe his grace and mercy and love cannot overcome it.

Look at Tamar. Hers is a terrible story, doesn’t it? But the God who authored Tamar’s story is the same God who authors the ultimate story — the story where he wins, where all of his promises come true, and where we’re given grace by a savior who couldn’t have come into the world unless Tamar was once in it.

And how is that possible? Because God can take the hardest, the most impossible, the most complicated life, and transform it.

Look at Rahab. She was a prostitute and a liar. But do you know what she also was? She was the first Gentile believer.

Hebrews 11:31 says that, “By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient ... ”. By faith — faith in God in heaven above and on the earth below, and it’s by grace that we’ve been saved through faith.

She told the spies, “For the Lord YOUR God” did all these miraculous things, and then he became the Lord RAHAB’S God.

And how was that possible? Because when you come to Christ, your past no longer matters. The world will always define you by what you’ve done, God defines you by whose you are.

Your slate is wiped clean not just of the sins you did yesterday, but of the sins you do today and the ones you’ll do tomorrow. All because Christ sacrificed himself on the cross. All because God came into this world, and he couldn’t have without a prostitute named Rahab.

Look at Bathsheba, who led a life of suffering and loss. She was the victim of rape. Her child died. How could God love her when he allowed such terrible things to happen to her?

2 Samuel 12:23 is the verse that talks about that illegitimate child of David and Bathsheba dying. But the next verse, verse 24, covers a nine month period and we see that Bathsheba has another child, a son named Solomon.

Solomon was what we would call these days a “Rainbow baby.” A rainbow baby is what people call a healthy baby who is born after a mother has lost a previous baby. It comes from the idea of a rainbow appearing in the sky after a storm.

Because of Solomon, there was Jesus. But because of Bathsheba, there was Solomon. Solomon wrote a lot of the book of Proverbs. You know that. But Proverbs 31, that beautiful scripture that speaks of the ideal woman, is attributed to King Lemuel.

Did you know that many commentaries say that Lemuel, which means “for God,” was a pet name that Bathsheba had for Solomon? Most scholars believe that King Lemuel and Solomon are the same person. It’s actually Solomon who writes Proverbs 31. If that’s true, and since verse 1 says that these words were first spoken by his mother, that means the woman described in Proverbs 31, the ideal woman, is Bathsheba. That’s how far God brought that poor broken woman. That’s how much he healed her.

All of these women suffered greatly. Some of that suffering was because of their own choices, some of it was because of the choices of others, and some of it was just because life is plain hard. No one in their right mind would claim any of these women as his own because of their sin. But Jesus did. He didn’t just claim them, he calls them family and lets everyone know.

That’s exactly what he does for you. You’re family. You’re his brother, his sister. Because he loves you. That’s why he came. And do you know why he loves you? Because he sees you.

God sees you. How’s that make you feel? For a lot of us, even as Christians, it doesn’t make us feel so great that God sees us. That he sees everything we do, and every word we speak, and especially every thought we think. All the sins we commit, even the sins we commit that we don’t realize we’re committing, are laid out right there before him.

And you know what? When you realize that, it’s pretty easy for you to start thinking that God might forgive you. God might even die for you. But God doesn’t really love you. How could he, when he knows how much of a terrible person you really are deep down?

When you think of God like that and then you hear me say that God sees you, what does your mind turn God into?

I brought a visual aid today. Too many of us hear the phrase “God sees you,” and we turn him into this. This is not, technically speaking, an Elf on the Shelf.

This was part of the Christmas decorations my mom would put up every year. Every year, she’d hang this from the lamp beside the end of the couch where I’d always sit. And so for a solid month, I’d have to sit there and feel that elf staring at me.

I cannot tell you how much I hate this thing. When Mom was at work, I’d take this off the lamp and shoot at it with my Star Wars and GI Joe action figures.

Because that elf was watching everything I did, just waiting for me to screw up so he could go rat me out to Santa. That’s the whole point of the Elf on the Shelf, isn’t it? It’s designed to make kids feel guilty. “That elf sees you, and he’s going to tell Santa if you screw up.”

Is that the way God sees you? A lot of you think so. But over and over, the Bible says just the opposite.

Remember when Sarah told Abram to send Hagar away? No one wanted Hagar anymore. She was no longer useful, so she was invisible to everyone she knew. But God saw her. She met God in the wilderness and said, “You are a God of seeing. Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”

Remember when Jesus called Nathanael to be a disciple? Remember what he said? “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.” He saw Nathanael, Jesus knew Nathanael’s private thoughts, and called him like he calls you. And if you haven’t seen The Chosen yet, find it, because that part with Nathanael under the fig tree is incredible.

What about the woman at the well? What did she say as she ran back to her village with joy? “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

What made all the difference in Hagar’s life, and Nathanael’s and the woman at the well’s? What saved Tamar and Rahab and Bathsheba?

God saw them when no one else did. God saw them, and God sees you. He’s paying attention to you. He understands who you really are.

And he says, “That one, that’s my child. My son. My daughter. I’m going to go down there and save that one. And once I do, I’m going to turn every stumbling block they have into victory. I’m going to make sure every valley they walk through leads to a mountaintop. I’m going to make sure every grief they suffer leads to joy. Because that one’s mine, and there’s nothing that can separate us now.”

That is the hope of Christmas. That is the peace of Christmas. That is the joy of Christmas. And that, friends, is the love of Christmas.

Let’s pray:

Father it’s so easy for us to remember your saving grace, your power, and your wisdom, but it’s also so easy for us to forget your love. Your love for each of us. An unending, unbending love that once reached down from heaven in the form of a baby, and a love that every day, every moment, is present in our lives. Help us to remember that love. Help us to feel that love. Help us to greater understand that love so that it may heal our broken places and lift us up when we feel cast down. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, amen.