Sermon Tone Analysis
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Not Another Christmas Story
Christmas is later this week.
As I was looking for another Christmas message, I thought about the usual things.
Joseph & Mary,
The babe in the manger,
The Magi,
Mostly the stories in Luke Chapter 2.
But God kept drawing me to a different story in Luke chapter 2.
And by now, you should be used to me looking at things differently.
Jesus at the Temple
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Every year, Jesus’ family went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
See, family travel is nothing new.
When Jesus was 12, after the days of the feast, everyone started home,
Everyone except Jesus.
Sounds like a 12 year old boy, doesn’t it.
Jesus parents thought he was with someone else in their group.
This was not just a family trip, apparent a whole company of people traveled from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover.
Have you have had you child slip away without you knowing?
There is a special type of fear there, isn’t it.
lk 2 45-
Can you imagine, three days searching for your lost child.
And not just any lost child, but the Messiah!
If Adam and Eve were afraid after they ate the fruit, imagine Joseph and Mary explaining to God they had lost His Son!
After three days they find Him in the temple.
But Jesus is not just hanging around,
He is sitting with the teachers.
He’s listening to them and asking questions.
Pretty bold for a 12 year old boy.
I remember when a friend of mine and I attended a mens prayer breakfast.
Our thoughts and questions were often poo-poo’ed because we had not gone to seminary.
And here is a 12 year old boy talking with the teachers of the law.
Not just Sunday School teachers,
This was more like wandering into a prestigious seminary and sitting down with the PhDs!
lk 47-
They were astonished at his understand!
Here was a 12 year old boy giving the most learned men in the nation a run for their theological money.
How could a 12 year old boy know so much?
How could His understanding be so developed?
This was not the only time people would be astonished.
How could He speak with such authority?
The answer came from a story later in the life of Jesus, recorded in John chapter 8:
Before Abraham was, I AM!
This statement I AM is a REALLY big deal.
ex 3 13-
I AM hayah /haw·yaw/ is the name of God!
But it’s more than that.
When Jesus said “I am He”, those who came to arrest Him drew back and fell to the ground.
hayah /haw·yaw/
Yes, the name I AM has power, but there is more to it than that.
Jesus is the Beginning and the End, but of what?
Before Abraham was, before the world was, Jesus IS.
This is not just a smart 12 year old boy.
Jesus existed before the world, before the universe, before even time and space.
jn 1
Jesus is not only before all things, they all exist in Him.
Jesus is not only before all things, they all exist in Him.
This 12 year old boy created those teachers he was talking with.
And the air they used to speak.
And the gravity that keeps them from floating away.
Even the time they experience exists because of this 12 year old boy.
This is the 12 year old boy asking questions of the teachers.
This is the babe who was born in a manger.
The Babe in the Manger
We all celebrate the babe in the manger, and that’s a good thing.
We even refer to Him being the new born King.
But have you really thought about Him being God?
Words are funny things,
They aren’t just sounds or characters on paper.
They communicate thoughts ideas.
This Word, this Logos, made EVERYTHING!
Nothing was made without this Word.
Life itself was in Him.
This Word,
God Himself.
The very thoughts and ideas of God.
Compressed into a tiny little baby human.
Born in the most humble of circumstances.
To a poor family, from a back-water little town.
Born in barn, because there was no place else that would make room for him.
The song “Mary Did You Know” ends with the line:
The sleeping Child you’e holding is the Great, I Am.
The babe we celebrate doesn’t just grow up to be our saviour,
He was our saviour then,
and He is still the babe in the manger now.
Before Abraham, before Adam, before creation itself, this babe not only existed, but exists now.
I know, quite a mind bender.
Creator enters creation
So why would the creator enter His creation?
Especially in such a humble fashion?
Yes, we know that Christ was born to save the lost.
But that is merely the Cliff Notes version.
We experience creation only through our senses.
We treat what we see and hear as normal, and we assume is the way things should be.
We assume the world should be right and just, because what God created is good.
God created light, and it was good.
God created the land and the sea, and it was good.
God created the plants and the trees and it was good.
God made the sun, the moon, and the stars, and it was good.
God created the fish and the birds, and every animal, and it was good.
Then God made mankind, and it was very good.
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