The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.
SPEAKER_01Well, welcome to you. My name is Glenn Scrivener, and a big welcome to Brighton and Hove, to Shoreham, to Hangleton, and to Marina. Have I got everybody? Is that everybody? I think that's everybody. Fantastic. And uh we are thinking together about Advents, this series, uh, all about humanity, or really all about the gods who became human. What does that tell us about who God is? What does that tell us about who we are? Um as we think about Christmas, I'm guessing that uh my Christmases were a little bit different to yours growing up. Uh I remember waking up very early on Christmas morning, not just because I was so excited about the presents, but because the sunshine was just blazing through the curtains. Uh because Christmas Day is one of the longest days of the year, isn't it? Isn't it? In Australia. Uh where I grew up. Hey, who who here has had a hot Christmas? Have people had hot Christmases? Yeah, a few people. Proper, proper hot Christmases, right? You you wake up, you some people are shaking their heads. No, stop getting Christmas wrong, Glenn. Oh, well, I'm about to tell you how a proper Christmas happens. All right, you you wake up early in the morning, you pad down into the kitchen, and maybe you have a uh, I don't know, a slice of pineapple or a mango, some kind of tropical fruit for breakfast. Uh we were a church going home, we'd actually go to church on Christmas Day, and I would make sure that I wore my very best church clothes. So board shorts, and uh I ironed my surfer t-shirt uh because it was a special occasion. And uh we were a righteous family, so we did not open our Christmas presents until after Christ uh after the church service. Isn't that that's righteous, isn't it? Um I I say this to lots of people, and they they tell me that uh uh some people are so righteous they delay gratification until after a church service. Some people even delay it until after the Queen's speech. Is is there anyone so righteous? Yes, yes, and not ashamed to say it. Yeah, absolutely. That is delay gratification, that's why you are the person you are today, you know. Um and then we would uh eat a traditional Australian Christmas dinner, um, obviously not turkey, um, because no one would actually choose turkey unless unless compelled by centuries of peculiar tradition. Um I mean you you know that you don't actually like turkey, don't you? Um you know this because you never eat it on any other day of the year, right? I mean, I'm not saying that turkey is disgusting. It's not disgusting, it's just inedible, isn't it? It's it is like a a food dehumidifier, just sucking the moisture out of every cell in your body. It has all the consistency and yet none of the flavor of cotton wool. Um which is why your traditional British Christmas lunch, you have to have like cranberry sauce and gravy and like stuffing and bread sauce. What is bread sauce? It is lubricant. Like just to wash the whole and why why are the Brussels sprouts there? Like, it's purely for moisture content, isn't it? That's the only reason they are there. And at some point I'm gonna get emails from people after this. They're gonna say, oh, you don't know. Auntie Mabel has a wonderful recipe for turkey. And if you actually soak the bird in Coca-Cola for nine months and wrap it in 12 pounds of bacon, then it's actually edible, you know. But I think in that combo, it's probably the Coca-Cola and the bacon that's doing all the heavy lifting. I'm just I'm just saying. So in Australia, we're we're not so keen on the turkey. We we would have maybe a barbecue of of some lovely food. I don't know, some kind of pork or beef or seafood. And and we would, like you would, we would eat till we burst, and then burst we did outside for a swim and uh play some backyard cricket, and we would round off the whole day with a traditional Australian carol. Uh jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, Christmas in Australia on a scorching summer's day, jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is butte. Oh, what fun it is to ride in a clapped-out rusty ute. Uh that's Christmas Australian style, and I know what you're thinking, uh, because I've spent half my Christmases in Australia, half my Christmas is here. Um there are a lot of things that British people can tolerate. You're a very tolerant bunch, very tolerant. You've um you've forgiven us for Danny Minogue. Thank you so much. Um please have Kylie as a peace offering. Um she is your You understand a lot, but there's one thing I've found that British people cannot understand. Uh, you cannot understand a hot Christmas, right? Um I think you might be right. Okay, having spent half my Christmases in the UK, I think now that Christmas is meant to happen in dark places. Have you ever noticed that all the Christmas carols that we sing, you know, in the bleak midwinter, they're kind of set in the darkness. You won't be surprised to learn we didn't sing that one in Australia, in the bleak midwinter and silent night, and all the great Christmas readings. You know, if you if you go to one of those traditional carol services, you have the nine lessons and the carols, and and you'll hear all sorts of dark themes, like Isaiah chapter 9. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. When does Christmas happen? Christmas is not a celebration of your sunny circumstances. It's not because life is so bright that we gather together and celebrate. It's actually because we are walking through a valley of deep darkness. And we celebrate a light that has come from somewhere else. And we did not produce the light. We received the light with gladness because we are walking through that valley of deep shadow. That's where Christmas happens. And in a second we're gonna hear from John chapter one, perhaps the great Christmas reading. And I wonder if as we read about uh the Lord Jesus, as we read about this cosmic portrait of Christmas, let's look out for how themes of light and darkness interact with one another. Let's have the reading.
SPEAKER_02And the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of man. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out, This was he of whom I said, He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me. For from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.
SPEAKER_01So did you catch that? In in verse 5, it says, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. I think it's really important to know that Christmas happens in dark places. Because Christmas can be a horrible time of year, can't it? Especially if 2019 has been a hell of a year for you. Christmas doesn't seem to help at those times, does it? Christmas only seems to hurt if your year has been an abysmal year. If you've lost someone you love this year, Christmas doesn't help, it hurts. You've got an extra place at the dinner table, and you feel the loss even more keenly on Christmas Day. I think we all need to know that Christmas happens in dark places. But how do we handle the darkness? I think there are four kinds of Christmas, really, that map on to four ways of handling the darkness. The four kinds of Christmas are this: you've got your Scrooge, you've got your shopper, you've got your Santa, and you've got the stable. And we're going to think about John chapter 1 under those four headings. Here are four approaches to dealing with Christmas that are really four approaches to dealing with the valley of the shadow of death that we all have to walk through. And the first of those four kinds of Christmas is Scrooge. Are you a Scrooge? Do we have any Scrooges here? Well, Ebenezer Scrooge, in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, he famously said this: every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a steak of holly through his heart. Merry Christmas to you too, Ebenezer. Dickens wrote this beautiful description of Scrooge. He said this: External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm him. No wintry weather could chill him. No winds that blew was bitterer than he. No falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. No pelting rain was less open to entreaty. Here is Scrooge's strategy for the darkness. Become darker. It's cold outside, you become colder. It's bitter out there, you become bitterer. Life is hard. Act accordingly, right? And while we might point the finger at Ebenezer and he's just a figure of fun, and nobody's really a Scrooge, are they? Well, I don't know. How do you handle the toughness of life? Does the toughness of life just make you tougher? When life gets hard, do you get harder? When life gets bitter, do you get bitterer? That's kind of the Scrooge way of life. And Scrooge gets something right. He gets right that we are walking through a valley of deep shadow. He gets right that even though there might be some kind of light out there, it dawns in the darkness. The light shines in the darkness. And Scrooge takes that seriously. And I think we ought to at least prize him for that. He takes life seriously. He's not like the Santa kind of person that we're gonna see in a second. He doesn't shut his eyes to the land of deep shadow. He's very much in tune with the darkness. But of obviously, the problem with Scrooge is that the darkness gets into him. The bitterness gets into him. Can you can you sense that in yourself sometimes? In a hard and bitter world? Can you sense that infecting you? You know that's wrong, don't you? You know that actually the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it. You know that light is stronger than darkness, don't you? You ought to know that light is stronger than darkness. Unfortunately, George Lucas has just totally ruined it for us, hasn't he? You know, that the whole Star Wars philosophy, the whole Star Wars theology has actually brainwashed us into thinking that light and darkness are these equal opposite forces that require balance. Is there balance between light and darkness? It's nonsense. You know, you come into a room, there are a whole bank of light switches. Next to those light switches, you do not find an equal and opposite bank of darkness switches, okay? You don't switch on the darkness and the darkness has a big punch-up with the light, right? You switch on the light and the darkness must flee. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it, cannot overcome it. The light is far stronger. And so maybe you realize that being a scrooge in the midst of this dark world is not the right attitude. And so instead you become a shopper. That's the second kind of Christmas. And the shopper says to themselves, Well, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful. So if you've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. And the shopper mentality is, well, eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die. So let's max out the credit cards. We'll worry about that in January. Let's have a blowout and let's wear the gorgeous Christmas jumpers and have a heck of a time, right? Let's let's celebrate like there's no tomorrow. Because in the shopper mentality, there is no tomorrow. Interestingly, the the shopper pretty much has the same view of the world as Scrooge. They're just a lot more fun to be around, right? And they they they basically have the same philosophy that we've come from nothing and we're headed nowhere. But in the middle, in this brief moment, let's enjoy our time in the sun. Let's make hay while the sun shines. That is the shopper mentality. And there's something that the shopper gets right. We were built for joy. We were totally built for joy. I mean, just have a look at these verses in terms of where we have come from. In John chapter 1, verse 1, the story of the world is that we have come from light and life and love. Doesn't that make you want to celebrate? John chapter 1, verse 1. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of all mankind. So we have come from light and life and love. That is the origin story of this universe. It's important to remember that, isn't it? Because pretty much from Monday to Saturday, we're being told a different story of the world, isn't it? The story of the world that we are told from Monday to Saturday is that we have come from darkness and we're headed towards darkness, right? But in the middle, we might have a little bit of fun. The Bible story is very, very different. The Bible story is we've come from light and we're headed for light, but right now we're in a valley of deep shadow. Do you see it's it's it's exactly the other way around, isn't it? If we trust the scriptures, if we come into the the world that Jesus is telling us is the true world, well, we've come from light, we're headed for light, we are intended for joy, we're intended for celebration. And actually, Christmas is kind of a snapshot of the way that Jesus pictures the future. So the way that Jesus speaks of the future throughout the Gospels is it's a time of feasting. It's a time of family celebrations. We are the family of Abraham, drawn from the four corners of the earth. Israel has gone global, we are this one family united around one table, enjoying one feast. Sounds like Christmas at its best, doesn't it? A time for light and celebration. The trouble is that the shoppers don't really believe that. They believe we've come from darkness, we're headed for darkness, and let's enjoy our brief moment. The Bible says the very opposite. We've come from light, we're headed towards light. But the shoppers are going to run out. They're gonna run out of money and they're gonna run out of hope, aren't they? If you really think that life is all about enjoying this brief moment in the sun, my goodness, you're gonna be over the hill pretty soon. The money's gonna run out. The hope is going to run out. And you're gonna you're gonna need a greater vision. You're gonna need a vision for life that goes far beyond this world and all that we can get out of it. And so maybe at that point you you become a Santa. Not that you start believing in Father Christmas. The Santas of this world are not the people who believe that there is a big fat man living at the North Pole. The Santa's of this world are the people who believe that there is a spiritual realm. Maybe somebody up there likes me. But basically their vision of God is pretty much Santa in the sky, right? What is our vision of Santa in the sky? Well, you know, he he is for children, isn't he? Santa's for kids, right? And you write to him with your requests. Uh you have to be good in order for him to fulfill your requests, but you still you make your requests, you send them off, and probably they they get lost in the post. You never really hear from Santa. You don't really want to hear from Santa. Uh you just w you just want his stuff, don't you? I mean it would it would be very odd if Santa actually pulled up a chair at Christmas lunch, wouldn't it? I uh is anyone else nervous about what Santa might say after a couple of glasses of red wine? I mean I mean, push beneath the ho-ho-hos. I think he's a deeply creepy individual. Can we can we be clear about that? I mean, he's making a list. He's checking it twice. He's trying to find out who's naughty and nice. Santa Claus is coming to town, right?
SPEAKER_00He sees you when you're sleeping, right? He knows when you're awake.
SPEAKER_01Like, what? He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake. I mean, what do you call such a person? They are a grotesque and monstrous moralist, aren't they? Santa? I mean, and have you ever noticed how Santa he he he only gives the nice presents to the rich kids? Isn't that isn't that like immensely unfair? How unjust for Santa to do this. You know. He is an impersonal deliverer of stuff who's making a list and checking it twice. In some ways, he he kind of reminds me of simply a Moses put up into the heavens. Did you notice in in our reading? In verses uh in verse 17, uh, we we hear about the kind of gods that would just be Moses pumped up on steroids and put up into the heavens. Do you see verse 17? For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now, Moses himself knew of the God of grace and truth. Moses himself trusted in the God of grace and truth. But what John is referring to here is that in the old covenants, there were people who lived as though God is a great lawkeeper in the sky, watching, waiting, like a big CCTV camera, trying to spot your mistake. He's making a list, he's checking it twice, he's gonna find out who's naughty and nice. The law came through Moses. And look, the law is good, it is holy, it is righteous, it is good, it is the good life written out for us so that we can see it. And yet none of us live up to the good life. If the great Santa in the sky was to give us our just desserts, we'd all get coal for Christmas. None of us would be good enough. So when people think of God, so often they think of simply uh a legal regime that stands above us, like a great North Korea in the sky. That's what the anti-theist Christopher Hitchens used to call God. You know, he's like he's like North Korea in the sky, the thought police, convicting you even of thought crimes, even when you sleep, right? How did Christopher Hitchens think of God? Well, he he just thought of God as the great legalist, the great lawgiver. He just thought of God as the great Santa in the sky. What is his problem? What is our problem if we keep on getting God wrong? Well, it's there in verse 18. What is our great problem when we think about God? No one has ever seen God. That's a problem, right? We don't know what we're talking about when we talk about God. No one has ever seen God. And in the Bible, that's that's not just like a conceptual problem, and it's not just like God would be a tricky pictionary clue. Um, God would be a tricky pictionary clue if you think about it, but but this is more about knowing God. Do you see how it's parallel in verse 18? No one has ever seen God. The only God who's at the Father's side, he has made him known. Do you see? To see God is to know God, to know God is to see God. The real problem is not just a conceptual one, it's a relational one. We don't know God. We don't know the source of our own being and life. In him we live and move and have our being, says Acts chapter 17. And yet naturally we don't know God, we haven't seen him. It's like the heavens are a big mirror, and we claim to look up and to know what God is like. But isn't it fascinating that warlike people look up to heaven and all they see is a warlike God? Isn't that interesting? Or groovy people look up to heaven and all they see is groovy vibes and lava lamps and beanbags, right? And rational people, right? The thinkers, the philosophers, they look up to heaven and what do they see? Oh, God is a rational mind. And you think, are you telling me anything about God? They're not telling you anything about God, they're just telling you about themselves. So often when people talk about God, they're just saying man in a loud voice. Okay? They're taking a vision of themselves, pumping it up on steroids, putting it up into the heavens. And so often it is this legalistic God that we imagine. I'm an evangelist, I go around the Place talking to people about who is Jesus. And so often the people who say they don't believe in God, I just I have a question back for them. Which God don't you believe in? And usually the atheist says, oh, you know, just the big guy, you know, just God. And I ask them, you know, please describe this God who you don't believe in. And they end up describing this bearded individual, right? Far away, who might reward the good children, right? And they have rejected Santa, right? And usually what do I say? I say, well, I don't believe in that God either. Can I tell you about Jesus? Because verse 18's got tremendous news for a humanity that doesn't know God, that has never seen God. Because the verse goes on, but the only God who is at the Father's side, that's Jesus, he has made him known. Well, that's great news. There is not some distant individual, high on power, low on personality, a CCTV camera in the sky, watching and waiting to spot your mistake. We believe in the Jesus God. The Jesus Gods. No one knows what God is like at all. You must come to Jesus, the Son of the Father, and then you know what he's like. Verse 18 insists that we be Christ-centered. It insists that we exclusively look at Jesus if we want to know what God is like. It insists that the only God we should ever be talking about is the Jesus God. I used that phrase, the Jesus God. Some of you have heard me say this before, but I had a series of talks that I was giving in Exeter University, and there was a woman who came along from Iran, and she was taking copious notes of everything that I was saying, and really fascinated by the scriptures. We got into a conversation one evening, and I said, What's your story? She said, I grew up in Iran, a very dutiful Muslim. I went along to the mosque. I said the prayers in Arabic. I don't speak Arabic, but but I knew my stuff as a Muslim. But aged 14, my uncle smuggled to me a copy of the Gospels. And he said, Read these. And so she started reading, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and she said to me, I got halfway through Luke's gospel, and I realized that God could not be the God of the Ayatollahs, the God of the religious authorities in Iran. God could not be the God of the Ayatollahs, he must be the Jesus God. I love that phrase. The Jesus God. You see, she was encountering in the Gospels this laughing, shouting, weeping prophet who spoke like no one has ever spoken before, who cut the lofty down to size and raised up the lowly. And she thought to herself, that's what God's like. Forget the God that I've been imagining, forget the God that I've been told about. Forget the God that the religious authorities have been indoctrinating me with. If this isn't what God is like, I'm out of the game. But if this is what God is like, I'm jumping in with both feet. And I do say this to you like if you come today and and you wouldn't necessarily call yourself a Christian, verse 18 is telling you, look at Jesus. Is this a God you can believe in? You know, Lord Byron, the poet, he said, if God is not like Jesus Christ, he ought to be. I think Byron was right. He just needed to complete the thought. If God is not like Jesus Christ, he ought to be. But verse 18, good news. God is entirely and exactly like Jesus Christ. Which is why Jesus is called the Word of God. Did you notice that as the reading began? The Word of God, capital W. That's a title for Jesus. Why is Jesus called the Word? It's because he is the communication of God, he is the expression of God, He is the exact representation of God, He's the image of God, He's called the Son of God here. That's because He's a chip off the old block, right? He's exactly like his dad. You want to know what God's like? Look at Jesus. And that brings you to the stable. That brings you to a God that is unlike any other God that religions have ever imagined. Here comes a God who in verse 14, notice this, in verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us. That's so different to every other way we tend to think about God. We tend to think, let's begin with man and let's imagine the most perfect kind of a human and let's shove them up in heaven and worship that. That's the way human religion works from the bottom up. That's not the way Christianity works. That's not the way the gospel works. This is not how Jesus rolls. The word became flesh. The one who was there in the beginning, who was always the expression of God, the one who was always the communication of God, the one who was always the outgoing voice of the Father. He comes down, he comes all the way down to become flesh. And this is Christmas. This is the true Christmas, the word becoming flesh. Think of that word flesh. It's a very base word, a very gritty word. You know, if you if you ask a philosopher what is humanity, a philosopher will tell you humanity is a rational animal. It's not very inspiring, but that's what they'll tell you. You know, you ask a biologist, what is humanity, they'll say, we are the species, Homo sapiens. Again, not very inspiring. If you ask a butcher, what is man, you actually get this word, flesh. It's that kind of base word. It's that kind of gritty word. In Latin, carnas is the word, it's where we get incarnation from. It's also where we get chili concane from, right? And if you go to a Mexican restaurant and you order chili concane, what are you ordering? You're ordering chili with meat, with flesh, right? The word became flesh. The word became meat. I was giving a talk at a a student gathering just last week. And sometimes, you know, students they do these sort of jokey introductions and they, you know, say, what would you rather? Would you rather have hands for feet or feet for hands? And this is meant to be an insightful introduction to the speaker so that people are at are at ease with me. And they ask really ridiculous, you know, would you rather take on, was it is it like one horse-sized duck or ten duck-sized horses? And you know, they ask these these sorts of questions, which are plumbing the depths of my psychology and and really opening me out to the audience. But last last week, this this student said to me, um, and just sprung it on me. She said, Um, if you could be a food, what food would you be? And I just said, I am food. And so are you. She said, Okay, thanks. Well, um, give it up for Glenn. And then she left the stage, just white as a sheet. Um, it's true though, isn't it? I'm food, and so are you, right? We are flesh, right? We are meat. It's it's the basest possible word. Sarks in the Greek, the basest possible word that John could use, having described Jesus as the loftiest thing he could imagine. He is the word of the Father, who in verse 1, he was with the Father, and he is God. He was God and he is with God. Okay, getting into the this doctrine of the Trinity, that the Son of the Father is fully divine, and he is with God. So back in verses one and two, uh, to be with God is actually to be towards God. That would be a more literal translation of verses one and two. From the beginning, before there were people or planets or protons, there was love, because there was always a son of the father who was towards the father, in the presence of the father. In verse 18, he is at the father's right hand. What does it say in verse 18? In verse 18, this is why you have paper Bibles, because you know, paper Bibles they don't buffer, do they? As opposed to the digital ones. He is at the Father's side. In the old King James Version, verse 18 says, The Son has ever been in the bosom of the Father, right? It's a phrase that John uses twice in John's Gospel to talk about this relationship between Son and Father. The Son is in the bosom of the Father, he's towards the Father, he's at the Father's right hand, he is at the Father's side. Being in the bosom of the Father is actually that phrase is used again in John chapter 13. Do you remember in John chapter 13? If you haven't come across it before, it's the night before Jesus dies, and they've just sung some songs, they've just had a good meal, they've just been drinking some good wine, and it it speaks of John, the beloved disciple, reclining and resting his head on the bosom of Jesus. Resting his head on Jesus' chest. So he can he can hear him breathing, he can hear his heartbeat. Maybe there's an arm of the Son of God around the beloved disciple at this point. John, the beloved one, is in the bosom of Jesus. And Jesus has been eternally in the bosom of the Father. And here is Christianity in a nutshell. The one who has ever been in the bosom of the Father opens his arms wide to humanity and says, Lay your head here. Come near to my heart. Let me put my arms around you. Let me bring you into this family love. This family love that predated and produced the universe. Come on in. The waters are just fine. This is what Jesus does to us. The word who is forever towards the Father, he becomes what we are, so that we in him can become what he is. The Son of God became our brother, so that we in him can become God's children. He became what we are, that we might become what he is. This is the way that Christmas has been explained for 2,000 years. It's beautiful, isn't it? Who is this one who became flesh? He's the one who has eternally been in the bosom of the Father, eternally filled by the spirit of adoption. And now he becomes flesh. What does that tell us about who God is? What does that tell us about who we are? Let's just think about that as we finish. What does it say about who God is? That it's Jesus, the word who became flesh, who reveals him to us. T. F. Torrence, Tom Torrents, he was a chaplain in World War II. And he became the moderator of the Church of Scotland later in life. But he he tells this story of being on the front lines in Italy, and that there had just been a great battle. But he was going over the battlefield and actually giving last rites to people who had been mortally wounded. He came across Private Phillips, a young 19-year-old soldier who'd been mortally wounded. He was bleeding out. He had only minutes to live. And Tom Torrance says, this young private looked up at me and said, Padre, Father, Padre, is God really like Jesus Christ? It's an interesting question, isn't it? You've got minutes to live. Bullets are flying. Here's what you really need to know when you're when you're about to meet your Maker. Here's what you really need to know. Padre, is God really like Jesus Christ? And Tom Torrance was able to, from this verse and many others who he had memorized, he said, No, God is entirely and utterly the Jesus God. It's so poignant that the God who is really there is a God who himself bled out as a young man. Isn't he the God that Private Phillips needs? Isn't he the God that you and I need? This God who would take our side, who would become flesh, who would come all the way down into the valley of deep shadow and join us in it. What does it say about God that the word became flesh? You know, there was an ancient debate going on in the church about whether they should call Mary the mother of God. I don't know what you make of that. Did you think she should be called Mary the mother of God? I think the big mistake in answering that question is to think that the question has anything to do with Mary. Because it doesn't. The big question is to figure out who is in her womb. Is he God? You better believe he's God. He is the God who would stoop and serve and suffer and bleed and die for you and me. Is Mary the mother of God? Yeah. Because who's in her womb? Doesn't tell you anything about Mary, tells you everything about the one who she bears. The one who she bears is God come to the rescue. God coming all the way down. You know, what is what is a philanthropist? You know that word philanthropist? We we tend to think of a philanthropist as a very rich individual who's just profligate with their money and they give to good causes, right? Literally, the word from Greek just means a lover of man, a lover of humanity. Isn't it amazing to think the God of the universe is a philanthropist? Very rich, very rich, very generous. Deep pockets, long arms. He is a lover of humanity, a lover of the human cause. He is a humanitarian. Think of that word, humanitarian. What do you think of when you think of a humanitarian? You might think of someone crossing an ocean to go and look after the underprivileged and the dispossessed. God is a humanitarian crossing the great chasm, heaven to earth. For us, what do you think of when you think of a humanist? Think of God the human. Here is a God who throws his lot in with humanity. God has a future. Our future. He throws his lot in with us, right? Now we have a future. God's future. We are now swept up into his life. The word became flesh. What does it say about God? What does it say about humanity? Isn't it interesting that Christ takes out humanity at conception? From the very outset. You've thought about Luke chapter 1 already in this series. The angel says to Mary, What is conceived in you is from the Holy Spirit. When did Jesus become flesh? When did he become flesh? He didn't wait. He didn't wait until there was some kind of incipient human being who had some potential and some attributes and some achievements, and then he thought, Oh, okay, humanity has climbed this far, I'm going to meet them halfway. Is that what Jesus did? No chance. Jesus met us at conf at conception. He became flesh as a single cell in Mary's womb. When does life begin? Christmas tells you when life begins. You can go back to the Psalms and you can look at verses about conception in the Psalms. But the big thing that tells you when life begins is Christmas. The word became flesh when Christ took on our human nature. When was that? At conception, as a single cell in Mary's womb. And that is such good news because it means you do not have to climb towards your human dignity. God has come all the way down. He did not wait until we had a certain level of achievements, a certain level of self-sufficiency. This is a vision for humanity. It's not about our attributes, our abilities, our achievements. God comes all the way down. That's why Christians love the unborn. Because God loves the unborn. That's why Christians love the little guy. Because God loves the little guy. He became the little guy, right? This is why Christians become humanitarians, because God is the great humanitarian. And Jesus in the bosom of the Father sweeps us up into his own life. The Son of the Father becomes our brother. So that we, if we put our hands into his hand, we can become children of that same father. Why has he done it? He's done it to redeem humanity and the whole world. Man in biblical thinking is set at the top of the world to steward the world, to bless the world, to care for the world. Man's destiny and the earth's destiny is kind of of a piece. So what does God do? Well, here comes God the Son, and in becoming man, he's basically taken the wheel of this world. He's switched on the satnav and pressed home. He's taken us by the scruff of the neck in order to redeem us through his cross and his resurrection, and in order to bring us back to that vision of light and life and love. That's what it means that the word became flesh. So this is the ultimate Christmas gift, isn't it? What does it mean for the Scrooges of this world? Okay, the Scrooges of this world, well, it's darkness now and darkness forever, isn't it? No. No. A light has dawned at the darkest place. To be with you, to be for you, to shepherd you, to walk you through the valley of the shadow of death. What does it say for shoppers? Well, you might be having a blowout now because you think there's no future. There is a future. It's God's future. And he's made his future into our future. Will you get on board? Will you invest in that future feast? It's not about a blowout now and then darkness forever. It's about huddling together in the darkness now, knowing the light now, and investing in his future kingdom of light. That's what God says to the shoppers of this world. What about the Santas of this world? You think it's light now, it'll be light forever because there's fairy tales and puppies and rainbows and warm woolen mittens and brown paper packages tied up with string. No, get serious, get real. This is a dark world. We need to get real about our helplessness, we need to get real about our suffering. But then we need to meet a God who has met us in our darkness and in our suffering. We need to meet the God of the stable. He offers He offers hope to the Scrooges. He offers true joy to the shoppers. He offers the reality of a real and living God to the Santos. He offers light in dark places to you and me. Do you know him? Would you like to know him? Let's pray. Our Father, we praise you for Christmas. We praise you that in the face of the Lord Jesus, we see your love for humanity. We see your love for the lost. We see your love for those who are in dark places. And I pray that by the Spirit of Jesus you would meet each and every one of us. Would you show us the true gift of Emmanuel? God with us. That we might walk with him through this dark place and into your feasting joy. Amen.