SPEAKER_00: In 1961, Yuri Gagargan, the Russian cosmonaut, was the first human to ever journey into space.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about how incredible that moment was.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Soviet Union was by definition, they were an atheistic country.
SPEAKER_00: And when Uri returned, he famously declared that he had gone to space and he did not see God.
SPEAKER_00: In theory, proving that the Russians were right.
SPEAKER_00: Now, C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis was still alive at the time, and he wrote an essay in response titled The Seeing Eye, rebuking the idea.
SPEAKER_00: Man does not relate to God as if he is on the second story of an apartment building and going up to him.
SPEAKER_00: You do not go higher in your own space.
SPEAKER_00: No, man relates to God as Hamlet does to Shakespeare.
SPEAKER_00: Hamlet is in the world that Shakespeare created.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you actually think about it and you ask the question, how is it that Hamlet could actually know Shakespeare?
SPEAKER_00: There is really only one true way if Shakespeare wrote himself into the story.
SPEAKER_00: Fast forward, Dorothy Sayers, a mystery writer who wrote novels about the detective Lord Peter Whimsey, about halfway through the series of novels entered a love interest for Peter named Harriet Vane, and they fall in love.
SPEAKER_00: Now, experts on Dorothy Sayers believe that she looked into the world that she had created.
SPEAKER_00: She looked into the character that she had created, and she saw how complicated and lonely he was, and she loved him, and so she wrote herself into the story in order to save him.
SPEAKER_00: Friend, I'm here to tell you that that is what God did.
SPEAKER_00: He created us, he sees us in all of our complexity, our sinfulness, and yet our magnificence.
SPEAKER_00: And he loved us enough to write himself into the story to save us.
SPEAKER_00: Christmas is that truth.
SPEAKER_00: God coming as the baby, the king, and the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 2 reads, In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that a census be taken in all the inhabited earth.
SPEAKER_00: This was the first census taken by Cornelius, the governor of Syria.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city.
SPEAKER_00: Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him and was with child.
SPEAKER_00: And while they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth, and she gave birth to her firstborn son, and she wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the end.
SPEAKER_00: Behold him there, dependent, fragile, a helpless babe.
SPEAKER_00: The creator has entered into his creation.
SPEAKER_00: He has emptied himself, not of his deity, but of his privilege, honor, and visible glory, because he is taken on flesh.
SPEAKER_00: He has assumed limitations.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the one who holds all things together must now be held together by Mary.
SPEAKER_00: The one who fills all space now fits into the arms of a young Jewish girl.
SPEAKER_00: How could this be?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the universe is 92 billion light years across with an estimated two trillion galaxies.
SPEAKER_00: How could the one who spoke it all into being now be wordless?
SPEAKER_00: Crying in a manger.
SPEAKER_00: The infinite has become an infant.
SPEAKER_00: God has written himself into the story.
SPEAKER_00: He is no longer simply heard, he is seen, touched, and embraced.
SPEAKER_00: The word became flesh so that the invisible God can now be made visible.
SPEAKER_00: God revealing himself.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we sought him or we deserve him, but because of divine descent.
SPEAKER_00: But why?
SPEAKER_00: Why take on the poverty and limitations of our flesh in order to draw near to you, friend?
SPEAKER_00: To sympathize with our weaknesses, to be tempted and tried as we are, to hurt as you hurt.
SPEAKER_00: He sees you.
SPEAKER_00: As Shakespeare knows Hamlet, Jesus knows you.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture says his thoughts towards you outnumber the sand on the shore.
SPEAKER_00: You can search the world over, and you will never be known the way that Jesus knows you.
SPEAKER_00: The angels surrounded his birth, announcing to the shepherds the night in the nearby field of his birth.
SPEAKER_00: Gabriel announcing to uh to Mary at his conception that this baby is no ordinary child, rather, he is the king of heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Luke chapter 1, verse 30.
SPEAKER_00: The angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He will be great, he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the glory, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.
SPEAKER_00: Caesar Augustus ordered the census, but it was God who was ordering the steps of his king to be born in Bethlehem in the city of David.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew tells us that there were signs, stars in the heavens that were announcing the long-awaited king.
SPEAKER_00: Magi travel from the east.
SPEAKER_00: They come to worship and bring gifts.
SPEAKER_00: All of heaven watches with anticipation because its king has entered into creation.
SPEAKER_00: Even a heavenly host, a choir of angels, sing announcing his birth.
SPEAKER_00: King Herod fears him, and he uses all of his might, the might of the sword, that he might extinguish him, but angels have warned ahead.
SPEAKER_00: But why is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords lying in a feeding trough?
SPEAKER_00: He is the only one to ever choose the circumstances of his birth.
SPEAKER_00: Why is this his story?
SPEAKER_00: Born in obscurity to a poor peasant family, his earthly father, an uneducated carpenter.
SPEAKER_00: They are displaced from their home, unwelcome amidst the shuffle, without money or clout, faceless in the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: How is it that the king of heaven's only visitors at his birth are lowly shepherds?
SPEAKER_00: But they were invited by angels.
SPEAKER_00: Invited by angels.
SPEAKER_00: He used the authority of heaven to invite smelly, forgotten, ragtag shepherds.
SPEAKER_00: And they find him amongst the animals, wrapped in rags, lying in a feeding trough.
SPEAKER_00: Friend, he is so lowly because he is accessible to you.
SPEAKER_00: The distance of being born in a palace or with a silver spoon or with privilege, that distance was too far from you.
SPEAKER_00: Too much of an obstacle, so that he laid down every right in order to be accessible to you.
SPEAKER_00: Are you suffering physically?
SPEAKER_00: So did he.
SPEAKER_00: Have you been denied or forsaken by those closest to you?
SPEAKER_00: So was he.
SPEAKER_00: He understands.
SPEAKER_00: Have you been misunderstood or mocked or pushed out?
SPEAKER_00: So was he.
SPEAKER_00: He understands.
SPEAKER_00: Do you feel the weight of circumstances as if they are too much to bear, as if you were going to be crushed underneath them?
SPEAKER_00: So did he.
SPEAKER_00: Comprehend the humility of God.
SPEAKER_00: It is not a posture, it is his very heart.
SPEAKER_00: Unlike earthly kings who use their power to be served, he used his power to serve.
SPEAKER_00: Jonathan Edwards says, Christ's condescension is not a lowering of his greatness, but the expression of it.
SPEAKER_00: The king who was clothed in humility used his authority to make himself accessible.
SPEAKER_00: Wearing a crown of thorns, he came not to conquer nations, but to conquer your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And that leads us to our final image, the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 1, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Now the birth of Jesus was as follows.
SPEAKER_00: When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.
SPEAKER_00: But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: The light of the world has come into darkness.
SPEAKER_00: He did not shout salvation from heaven, but he stepped into our sinful fallen world.
SPEAKER_00: When the angel announces to Joseph, you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what salvation means.
SPEAKER_00: That the cradle is inseparable from the cross.
SPEAKER_00: To quote Absalom, only God can make satisfaction, but only man ought to.
SPEAKER_00: Thus the God man must do it.
SPEAKER_00: Or again, John Owen, he took our nature that he might take our sin.
SPEAKER_00: As John the Baptist later announces, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
SPEAKER_00: See, the baby in the manger was born to die.
SPEAKER_00: How magnificent is it that he who will judge all of creation did not come to crush sinners, but to be crushed for them.
SPEAKER_00: Listen to Isaiah 53 that was written 700 years before the coming of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so he did not open his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: They spit upon him and they slandered him.
SPEAKER_00: He did not open his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: They shouted, Save yourself! Yet he did not open his mouth because the Lamb had come to save you from your sin.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, salvation is not an idea, it's a person, not a philosophy or a moral system or even a path to follow, but the person of Jesus, God in the flesh, who has written himself into the story, the baby who knows you, the humble king who is approachable, the lamb who saves you.
SPEAKER_00: But friend, the question is, do you know him?
SPEAKER_00: Because some of the most haunting words that Jesus ever spoke were in reference to the fact that each of us will stand before him on that final day and he will say to many, Depart from me, I never knew you.
SPEAKER_00: And you ask, How can I know him?
SPEAKER_00: If you bow your knee, if you surrender, the God of the universe has drawn near, and the thing that separates you from him is your pride.
SPEAKER_00: Will you now?
SPEAKER_00: Will you now, as scripture says, repent and believe?
SPEAKER_00: After hearing how near he has come to you, all that he has done to make himself accessible to you, will you bow your knee?
SPEAKER_00: Will you repent?
SPEAKER_00: And will you believe?
SPEAKER_00: Will you cry out?
SPEAKER_00: I need you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I need you.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe in your finished work on the cross, in your death and resurrection to give me life.
SPEAKER_00: Will you ask the Holy Spirit right now to cleanse you and to come into you, to take residence within you, so that you might be a child of God?
SPEAKER_00: Would you pray with me, our Heavenly Father?
SPEAKER_00: There is no God like you.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray if there is anyone here that does not know you, that right now they would cry out in faith and that you would save.
SPEAKER_00: You are the God who saves, you are the God who draws near.
SPEAKER_00: There is no God who is as magnificent and humble and just you are incredible.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you.
SPEAKER_00: We love you.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.