The Miracle in the Manger

Greeting

Before I begin, can we give it up to the worship team?

Wow. You all did amazing! Most importantly, I can feel the presence of the Lord in this room tonight.

I believe tonight is a night of miracles. I believe tonight many of you are going to encounter the Lord Jesus in such a personal and special way.

Let’s go to our reading now. It’s about the birth of Jesus, the one that we are celebrating and worshipping tonight.

Reading

Luke 2:1–7 NIV

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

The Miracle in the Manger

Introduction

Before I get into my message, I want to honor a very special group of people who are in the room today. I want to honor all of the mom’s who made their annual family Christmas photo happen!

Can we give it up to the moms?

We see you!

They had to put up with bad attitudes, bad hair days, complaints about itchy clothes, and I’m just talking about their husbands. I haven’t even gotten to the kids.

I’m kidding…

But when you think about this for a second, we get that Christmas card and the family looks amazing!

The family looks happy!

They look united!

They totally don’t look like they’ve been bribed to take that photo.

But we all know, that there is a lot of work that had to happen in order for all of that to come together…

Transition

And I think sometimes, when we see the picture of the manger, we forget about all that it took for that family to get there.

Let’s look at this one photo I chose.

“All is calm, all is bright…”

But was it?

The text leads us to believe that it wasn’t.

Consider the fact that Jesus is not in a hospital, and not in a bedroom, and he’s not even in the living room… he’s in a manger! A place for the family animals…

You have to slowly read through the story and set aside the Christmas story you grew up believing.

But, I want to begin by letting us know that just like that family Christmas photo can be messy, and just like the birth of Jesus was messy, life is going to be messy…

But if we can see the bigger picture, laying in that manger was a miracle - the Messiah come to earth.

[Pause]

And perhaps within the messiness of the manger in your life, there is also a miracle.

Text

Let’s look at these clues in the text… we read that the Roman Emperor is wanting to take a head count of how large his Kingdom was, and so he calls for a census of the entire empire.

Now in order to do this properly and efficiently, everyone had to travel back to their home town.

Now, imagine for a second, Joseph comes to Mary and tells her, “Baby, you that baby moon we talked about?”

And I imagine Mary isn’t having it, because she’s nine months pregnant…

She’s probably telling him, “Yes, but we were supposed to do that two months ago.”

But Joseph is trying to turn lemons into lemonade, so he tells her, “Baby, it’s better late than never…”

So Mary concedes… “Where are we going? To the Bahamas? Hawaii? What did you have in mind.”

Joseph quietly tells her, “I was thinking my parents house.”

And you can imagine how good that went…

[Pause]

OK, that didn’t really happen, that’s the movie version, but Joseph did take his pregnant wife back to his hometown because the law mandated it.

This was the worst possible time for this trip! Why? Because Mary is 9 months pregnant. She’s ready to have this child at any day.

And to make matters worse…

The distance from Nazareth to Bethlehem was 90 miles…

Church, you need to understand what kind of 90 miles I am talking about…

This is not 90 miles in a Tesla Model X with Full Self Drive, climate controlled cabins, and vegan leather seats.

This is a 9 months pregnant woman on the back of an animal… what kind of animal, you ask? Does it even matter? She is nine months pregnant and riding on the back of an animal for a multi day 90 mile trip that they have to take just to hang out with her in laws.

[Transition]

When they finally get there, Mary is relieved and asks Joseph, “Let’s just check ourselves in so that I can lay down… where did you make the reservation?”

And Joseph without making any plans ahead tells her, “I didn’t make one. I wanted to be spontaneous!”

You can imagine how that’s going over, right ladies?

And then, it goes from bad to worse because the text tells us that there was no room for them anywhere in Bethlehem…

So while Mary is stewing over her husband of the year… the unthinkable happens…

Her water breaks, and this baby is coming.

Here she is, 90 miles away from home and none of this is what she had planned for the birth of her son. Things had turned into a mess.

Application

The Spiral of Our Life

All of these things that happened during the birth of Jesus are real. Yes, I’ve done some embellishment of the story, but the facts are the facts.

Mary was pregnant teenager, not with her husband’s son, but with the Son of God.

Mary went into labor, not in her home but on a very untimely trip 90 miles away.

And, there was no room for them, so Jesus is born in a manger, wrapped in swaddling cloths, and placed in a feeding trough.

If you’ve ever wondered why the Jews in Jesus’ time struggled to believe that this Jesus was the Messiah, look no further than his very humble entrance into this world as Exhibit A as to why this baby could not be the Jewish Messiah.

[Transition]

And isn’t that a bit like how life could be for us?

We make our plans, we plan for the future, and we believe that everything is prepared for… and then life happens… and sometimes it’s just a big mess.

I want to scrutinize a saying that you might have heard before… they say the windshield of a car is much larger than the rear view mirror, so we are to look at life accordingly. We are to be more focused on where we are going than we are at looking back…

And that is true…

But, I also know that if you never back at where you’ve come from, you will fail to appreciate where you are today.

What I mean by that is, sometimes, last year’s mess was used by God to get you to where you are needed today.

Not every mess in your life has a bad ending. No, as a matter of fact, we needed the mess in our life to appreciate the victory we are standing in today.

Can anyone relate to that tonight?

Miracles Need Messes

I need to keep pulling on that thread…

The title of our message tonight is The Miracle in the Manger.

When we here the word ‘miracle’ we start to perk up, don’t we?

We love a good miracle story…

Pentecostals and Charismatics REALLY love a miracle story!

But, I want you to think about the juxtaposition of a miracle…

In order for someone to be miraculously healed, they first have be sick…

If someone wants to experience a miracle in their finances, they first have to be in an impossible situation…

If someone wants to see a miraculous deliverance, there first has to be a tragic addiction…

This is the reality of miracles.

Miracles are born out of impossible situations.

Said differently… miracles need messes.

A Necessary Mess

Now, let me put these two ideas into our story…

The Virgin Birth

At the time of our scripture, when Mary was a pregnant teenager, that was a mess… As her parents, they had to have felt shame. They did everything they could to raise their daughter right. When Mary was greeted by the angel Gabriel, she was called blessed and highly favored. So, clearly Mary was a very good girl. She was engaged to Joseph, and HE KNEW that baby wasn’t his, because he was doing the honorable thing and waiting to be intimate with her until they were married… And what did Joseph get in return for his honor?

So Mary’s parents, Mary and Jospeh… all find themselves in the middle of this mess…

But what does the rearview mirror say about all of this?

Isaiah 7:14 NIV

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.

Isaiah writes 600 years before Mary is pregnant that a virgin will conceive… Mary, I know your situation feels like a mess right now, but there’s a miracle in the manger.

Immanuel, God with us, has to come from a virgin.

And God sought out a girl who was blessed and highly favored, engaged to a just man.

So maybe this mess wasn’t in your plans, but God is about to bring a miracle out of this mess.

The Birth in Bethlehem

As we’ve already said, Joseph and Mary took an untimely trip to Bethlehem… this was the worst possible time for the trip… she’s having to give birth to her son away from home and her doctors and what is familiar…

But what does the rearview mirror say about all of this?

Micah 5:2 NIV

“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”

The prophet Micah writes 700 years before the birth of Jesus that the ruler over Israel had to come through Bethlehem.

Mary, I know this was untimely, but the Lord has to move you from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that there is irrefutable proof that Jesus, whose origins are from ancient times, would enter into our time at the exact location that he needed to come through.

Sometimes when you feel out of position, could it be that you are exactly where God needs for you to be?

Mary, there’s a miracle in your manger, but that manger has to be in Bethlehem.

Conclusion Swaddling Cloths

Finally, and there are so many more examples from our text, but we read that Mary wraps her son in swaddling cloths.

In the time of Christ, there was an annual sacrifice called the Atonement. This was the big sacrifice that happened every year by the high priest.

Now, sacrifices were happening in the temple almost daily… but there was one time a year, that a spotless lamb was offered up by the High Priest to make forgiveness for the sins of Israel.

There was only one city in that nation that produced the spotless lambs… and it was Bethlehem.

Every year, as lambs were being bred, they would wait for a spotless lamb to be born and when that lamb was born it was wrapped in swaddling cloths and set aside from the other spotted lambs.

Do you see it?

Mary did not expect her son to be born in Bethlehem, but the spotless lamb of God needed to come from Bethlehem. And becuase she had no clothes for her son, she wrapped him in the same kind of cloths used to wrap the lambs who become the sacrifice in the temple.

Because 33 years later, that miracle in the manger, would become the Lamb of God, slain for all of mankind.

And because Mary was obedient to the word of the Lord, and becuase Joseph was obedient to the Lord, and because Jesus was obedient to the will of His Father, his death on a cross has made a way for you to experience everlasting life with the father.

Call

Friends, life can be messy.

You didn’t plan the diagnosis.

You didn’t plan the divorce.

You didn’t plan the season you’re in—but neither did Mary plan the manger.

But the God we serve does his best work with the mess of our lives.

If you do not have a relationship with Jesus, in a moment I am going to give you an opportunity to start one.

But before I do that, I want you to look into the rear view mirror of your life.

Do you have some questions about things that have happened to you?

Do you have unresolved frustrations or broken relationships that need to heal?

Do you look back and see a mess? I’m not saying it’s all a mess, there’s a lot of good back there. But are there some things that feel messy?

My promise to you today is that with Christ, and in time, you’re going to get a much better understanding of everything you’ve gone through.

I don’t promise happiness, but I will promise you joy.

That’s not a slight of hand that I did there, but it’s the reality that joy is a choice you make. And when you’ve made a decision to follow Jesus, you have a reason to be joyful. When you are in relationship with your savior, you have a reason to be joyful.

And that, for many of you, will be your miracle.

God wants the miracle in the manger to now be the miracle in your heart and in your life.

What looks like a mess right now may one day be the picture you look back on and realize—God was in it the whole time.

SALVATION PRAYER AND NEXT STEPS

Light Up The City Moment

Let’s take a moment to celebrate all of our friends here who made a decision just now.

Before we go, there is one more thing that we want to do together. Go ahead and get that candle ready, and in a moment we’re going to light each other’s candle, but before we do that let me share something with you all that is very near to our church. We are on a journey of lighting up our city with the good news of Jesus and of His kingdom.

This moment is symbolic of what it was take for us to do that - one person, lit up with the love of Jesus, lighting up another person, who will light up another person.

So as we light up the candle of the person on the edge of the row, I want you to light up the person next to you, who will them light up[ the person next to them, until we have lit up this church.

And in the same way, we will light up our city, one person at at time.

Until all the city knows about Jesus, and joins us in worship and adoration of Jesus, the Miracle in the Manger.