Once in Royal David's City
Notes
Transcript
Many of us are finishing this year far poorer than we started it - and not just financially. Whether it be loss of health, loss of livelihood or loss of someone dear to us - 2020 has been a year of considerable hardship for so many.
Maybe you’re one of the many, struggling to make sense of the events of this year and with little hope for the next. Perhaps you have questions: “Why me?”; “Why my family?” Maybe you’ve some questions for God. Perhaps you’re angry with him.
I don’t have all the answers. But I can tell you that the God I worship, the God of the Bible has great compassion for those who face hardship, oppression, injustice, and loss.
And God’s generosity towards the vulnerable is at the centre of the Christmas story as today’s carol reminds us.
Verse 2 says:
With the poor, and mean, and lowly,
Lived on earth our Saviour holy.
The carol reminds us that God’s Son, Jesus Christ, did not come to this earth to mingle with kings, dignatories, or celebrities. The Saviour who is God and Lord of all came to mix with the poor, the mean and the lowly.
Those without material possessions; those without physical beauty; those without social standing, power or influence.
The message of Christmas is that God came for the have-nots, for the unlovely, for the forgotten of this world. He came to be with them, because they’re incredibly precious in his eyes.
But there’s more! Because the same verse reminds us:
And his shelter was a stable,
And his cradle was a stall.
Jesus didn’t only come for the poor; he became one of them! The Creator and Sustainer of the universe himself became poor! Laid in a manger - even in his birth he was excluded from the normal shelter that others enjoyed and his life would be full of hardship and rejection - a far cry from the glory and riches of heaven.
But this is good news, because it was the deliberate plan of the all-wise God. The apostle Paul captures the essence of that wisdom in a nutshell, when he says:
For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.
Paul is not thinking of poverty in terms only of a lack of worldly possessions. He’s thinking of eternal possessions - and the most valuable and satisfying of all eternal possessions, which is to know God.
To be without God in the world is to be truly poor. Yet that is precisely what we are because of our sin - without hope and without God in the world.
The message of Christmas, though, is the message of a great exchange, for those who will recognise their desperate need. Jesus Christ took our poverty in order that we might receive his riches. He took our sin in order that we might receive his righteousness.
When did He become poor? Certainly, by coming down to earth from heaven. But, more than that, he became poor when he gave himself up to death on a cross. He was never poorer than when, on the cross, he experienced desperate isolation from God and God’s wrath against sin, which were all due to us, in order that we might receive God’s mercy and favour.
This Christmas is likely to be very different from previous years, as the world remains in the grip of the pandemic. But as this festive period gives opportunity to reflect on the hardship and loss that this year has brought, I pray that you too might recognise your real poverty without God and that you might discover the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. For the baby born in Bethlehem is now Lord of all and he still lives with the poor and lowly - with all who call on his name, acknowledging their own poverty and giving thanks for his grace!