O Come Let Us Adore Him: Advent Week 4

God's intentional love is powerfully demonstrated through the Nativity story, where He chose to enter our world in the humblest circumstances. By being born to an unwed couple in a manger and first announcing His arrival to lowly shepherds, God showed His love is for everyone, not just the privileged. This divine love extends beyond the manger through Jesus' ministry, death, and resurrection, demonstrating that nothing can separate us from God's love. Today, we're called to mirror this same transformative love by reaching out to the overlooked and marginalized in our communities.

Transcript

So this morning, as we continue our sermon series in Advent, I want to talk a little bit about how the Nativity isn't just a story, but it's actually God's love in action in our lives. So I hope that we all know by now that God created humanity because he wanted to share his love with us. The creation narrative back in the story found in Genesis chapter one is the recounting of God's mighty work of creating not just us, but the entire universe. And through this narrative, we recognize that we, as God's people, are the pinnacle of God's creation. We were created in God's image and God's breath resides in our lungs.

From the very beginning of Scripture, God sets out to show us exactly how much he loves us. But in Genesis chapter three, we recognize that us, as God's creation, we begin to become tarnished because of our sin and our disobedience. And to me, from the creation story found in Genesis, it's almost like the rest of the Old Testament is the story of God trying to work out fixing the mess that we've made. The scriptures that we have from Genesis all the way through the Old Testament are a beautiful love story. The creation story in all the Old Testament is recounting of God's loving pursuit of each one of us.

Despite our sin, despite our rebellion, the Old Testament tells the story of God continually providing a way for his people to experience Him. Even when they turn their backs on the law and on the prophets, even when we neglect God, God still shows up for us. God's there through the fall of humanity. God's there when the people rebelled and cursed God. They began to worship idols and turn their backs on God.

When God's people were kept in bondage as slaves in Egypt, God was still faithful to show up. When the people wandered in the wilderness, God was there with them. When God promised his people a home of their own, God delivered on that promise. God is faithful.

And we recognize that God shows up in the person of Jesus. When people thought they were living in the darkest of dark times, they felt like God had abandoned them. God had not spoken to them through the prophets in 700 years. They felt alone and lost. Just as Jesus was faithful to prove God's love for us, God's faithfulness in the past should continue to fuel our hope in a future that God has promised us.

Because God has been faithful to us over and over and over again, we can trust that God will continue to be faithful not just as he's been, but as he's proven to be in the past. He will be in the future. And the story of God's love for humanity is made clearer in the story of the Nativity because God's promise of redemption that he made long ago is fulfilled when Jesus comes. So I hope that by now you know that the manger in Bethlehem isn't the beginning of God's love for us. It's just a part of God's eternal plan of our of his love breaking into our world.

And what I love about a God like the God that we serve is that his love didn't wait for us to get it all right, right. God's love doesn't go down the checklist to make sure that we haven't made any mistakes. God's love meets us where we are in the situations we find ourselves in. So I want us to read the story that's found in Luke chapter two. This is the story of the Nativity or the birth of Jesus Christ.

It comes to us in Luke chapter 2:1 through 20. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to pull them out and make notes. Underline, make sure that you can go back to the story if you have questions and do some research on your own. But if you don't have your own Bibles today, you can follow along on the screens. Here is the word of the Lord for us today.

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 the 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. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks. At night, an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth, peace to those on whom his favor rests.

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has told us about. So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph and the baby who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child. And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds had to say to them. But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen which were just as they had been told.

This is one of my favorite stories, the Nativity. The Nativity story shows that God was intentional about showing up in a specific time, in a specific place to redeem humanity. When it seemed like life couldn't get any harder. The Jewish people had felt abandoned by God under Roman rule. They needed a savior and they needed him now.

And God heard his people's cry. You know the phrase being kicked while you're down? You've heard that before.

This is how I bet the Jews would have felt at this time. They would have felt like there was no hope. Battle after battle, empire after empire. They would have continually been oppressed since the year about 587 BCE. So for nearly 600 years, the Jews had gone from one empire to another.

One despot ruler to another. And though this beautiful Nativity story, and through this story, it shows that when Christ came, he didn't show up to the seat of power in Rome. He didn't show up to start a fight with the Roman Emperor. Jesus showed up in a small town in a tiny region of the world to an oppressed people living as outcasts in their own land. Jesus was born in a place where there wasn't clean rooms, in a time where health care was not readily available.

And when he was born, he was placed in a manger, the lowliest place imaginable. Kings are born in palaces, right? But God, the King of the universe, is made flesh in a small town to couple with poor means. And he's wrapped in cloths, not clothes cloths, and placed in a feeding trough for animals. This should remind us that God's favor is not just for the rich.

God's favor is not just for the elite and the powerful. God's love is for the broken and the abandoned also.

But I want to remind you here that God's love is not exclusive to anyone. While we have really focused on the poor and the marginalized in this story, we have to remember that those who came to visit Jesus were not just the lowly, right? In Matthew's telling of this Gospel, the magi, considered people of significant means from the east, also come to visit Jesus. This act shows that God's love is accessible to all. Rich, poor, powerful, humble.

God loves us and God wants to show up in our lives wherever we are. So the Nativity story reflects God's willingness to enter the messiness of human life in order to do whatever is necessary to redeem our brokenness. The story proves that the systems that were put in place to lift some up and to oppress others is not strong enough to keep God from acting to make things better for all.

Think about it a little bit like this. Think about a king choosing to leave a palace with servants, with gold things. And I don't know what's in a palace other than gold things, right? Like imagine leaving wealth and luxury to go live among the poorest of the people that you govern.

That's what God does. God became incarnate in the time, in the place and among the people that he chose to dwell among because it was significant. God's coming, as he did to Joseph and Mary and Bethlehem, proves that the kingship of God needs to be understood differently from the worldly understanding of kings.

Since God chose to become incarnate in the way that he did. What do you think that says for us? Listen, I was born at St. Francis. I wasn't born in a palace.

Many of us were born in just plain hospitals and that's how we were entered into the world. The Son of God didn't show up today with health care and with people attending to his mother. Jesus showed up at a time when life was hard and God gave his son to a couple that was unwed who had to travel a long distance just to follow the rules of their oppressive rulers.

What does that say for us? What do you think God's expectations are of each one of us in response to God's nativity story?

The humility of Jesus birth narrative should inspire us to reflect God's love through humility and acts of service.

Through the Nativity, we should clearly see that God's love doesn't play favorites. It reaches everyone everywhere. We read earlier in Luke chapter two, eight through ten that those angels that announced Christ's birth to shepherds, verse 8 says this. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around them and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, hey, don't be afraid. Yeah, okay, that fixes everything. But then they said, I bring you good news that will cause great joy. For who? For all the people.

The angel announced Jesus birth to shepherds. Ordinary overlooked people. Highlighting God's love is for everyone, not just those in power as would have been expected, or those who had wealth. In the time when Christ was born, it was thought that God only loved those who were wealthy. God only was with those who were in power.

God's favor shown upon them. That's how they ended up in the positions they ended up in, right?

These were the people that were presumed to be favored by God. The poor, the sick, the lame, the hurting. They were all thought to be experiencing some sort of divine retribution for sin in their lives or sin in their parents lives. It basically was God loved those who looked like they were lifted up and God despised those who were held down. And that's terrible theology.

And the hard part is some of that theology still finds threads in our current time today.

The understanding that good things happen to good people is not a hypothesis that bears itself out over time. I think we all have experienced good and bad things in our own lives and I don't know any of you to be kings or queens, but I think all of us, just like Mary, as we heard last week can be considered to be highly favored. Mary was a poor betrothed to a carpenter young woman, and yet she was highly favored. Friends, wherever you find yourself, you can consider yourself highly favored to God doesn't play favorites.

But while the angel shows up to the shepherds, the message that was delivered was not strictly for the lowly and the overlooked either. The angel declared, I'm bringing you good news that will bring great joy to all the people, underscoring that God's love for us is universal for all of us. And when the angel delivered the message to the shepherds, what was the result? How did the shepherds respond? They went.

They had to go see Jesus for themselves. Sometimes the message of God is so powerful that it gets us up and moves us out of where we are. But we have to listen.

It appears that the angels chose the absolute right people to tell the message of the coming of the Messiah too. Because the shepherds not only got up and went to go see Mary and Joseph and the baby, and everything was exactly the way the angel said, but Scripture tells us that then they got up and they told everybody that they could talk to about what they had seen and how it was happening exactly the way that the angel told them it was going to happen. When the angel showed up and revealed God's means to the shepherds, God expressly chose to identify with those who were oppressed, those were overlooked, those were who were lowly. And the shepherds then became the first to evangelize the coming of Jesus. They went out and spread the word concerning what they had saw, and people believed that God was finally here.

The shepherds in the story serve as a reminder of how a simple act of kindness, even to someone who is overlooked, can transform a life mirroring God's love for all of us. We are called to be people of love, even to those who are vastly different than we are.

As a result of the angel showing up to the least of these, as we hear Jesus talk about later in his life, we are expected to share the good news of the gospel, even with those who've been left out of other aspects of our society. We are close. We are called to be close with those who are lost and those who are unloved. Earlier this week I had a meeting had a meeting that I was scheduled to go to to meet with some folks from a different church to talk about some things that our church was doing that they were interested in. My meeting was at Shades of Brown just down the street.

And as I was walking up to the coffee Shop. I noticed Bruce sitting outside at one of the tables. His belongings were spread over his table and kind of falling into the ground and into the tables and booths next to him.

You may not know Bruce, but if you spent any time in Brookside, I bet you've seen Bruce. Bruce is one of the homeless men who is constantly here in Brookside. I see him almost daily when I come to the office. Bruce can often be found in the spring and in the fall when the weather is nice out in our Brookside collective park. He's jamming on an air guitar and singing to a microphone that doesn't exist to a crowd of people that are only in his head.

It's really sweet to watch Bruce just enjoy his life. Even in the midst of homelessness and what is clearly some mental health crises, Bruce finds joy daily.

Bruce and I have talked many, many times over the last seven years that I've been working here in Brookside. He's eaten our barbecue during our Monday Thursday meals. He's charged his phone with the outlets in our park. As a matter of fact, he was one of the first people to show up at some of our events when we first did movie nights and some of the other big events that we did here in Brooklyn. Side.

I say hello to Bruce every time I see him, and I call him by name, but I'm not sure that Bruce recognizes me or even knows my name. Bruce suffers from debilitating mental health issues, and here he is right out front of where I'm supposed to have my meeting. So, of course, as I'm walking in, I say, hey, Bruce, how's it going? I decide I'm going to sit down next to him, and we start talking. And I knew that the folks were running a little bit late, so I had some time.

Let's just chat. It was cold out there, but the sun was shining, so it made it a little more bearable. And the heaters back behind him were keeping him nice and warm. And as I walked up, I noticed that he was drawing and writing in a notebook. And so I asked him what he was working on, and he was delighted to tell me about some of the things that he had written in his notebook.

And he handed it to me, and I began to open it up and thumb through the leafs of paper. And I saw drawings and writings. He had drawings of leaves and flowers and a desert scene with cactuses and rocks. If you never stop to speak with someone like Bruce, you might not know the kind of person that they are. And Bruce is very talented.

I'M not sure that very many other people take notice of Bruce, but in those few moments of us just sitting there talking with one another, Bruce just gushed. He was telling me about his love life more than I needed to know. He was telling me about where he sleeps at night. He was telling me about his interactions with law enforcement. And then he also started talking about things that I didn't understand and couldn't make much sense of.

But Bruce, by all accounts, is one of the people who are lowliest in our world today. And he became so excited when someone just showed up and listened to him speak, gave him some positive attention for once. All it took was a cup of hot chocolate and listened to him for about 20 minutes or so. And then Bruce got up and he just left. Didn't say goodbye, just he was done, packed up his stuff and he went on his way.

But in those few moments we had together, Bruce felt legitimized. I didn't have to preach to him. I didn't have to tell him about Jesus. I didn't try to talk to him about my faith. I just sat with him in the middle of his life, and I listened to what he had to say.

And through this encounter, I know that he felt loved. Probably for the first time in a while. I know that he felt special. And he thanked me for listening to him. And he was gone.

The story of the shepherds being the very first to receive the news of the Savior of the world legitimized those same people that were underprivileged and left out. God chose to send a message to them intentionally. And these shepherds would have been viewed much in the same way as Bruce is looked at around here in Brookside. He's often neglected and asked to leave places that people don't feel like he should be in. Could you imagine the news of the Messiah coming into our world being delivered to a person like Bruce?

I want the message of God's salvation to come to me, right? But instead, God chooses the lowliest. And so we have to choose to spend time with the lowliest, too, if we want to really know how God works. And it's not easy. But I imagine for those shepherds back in that time, the feelings they would have felt would have been incredibly powerful.

That's probably exactly why the shepherds got up and ran to go find where Jesus was. It's probably why they felt so excited to tell that story with everyone they could find. For the first times in their lives, they felt special, like they had a purpose that God was for them.

It is important for us to humanize the people in society who have been dehumanized because of their status. This is made clear through the Nativity story where God shows up to the lowliest, the smelliest, the most ostracized of the time and announced the good news to them. Not in line, but first, because God did it. We have to do it too. To best serve God in the ways that God expects us to.

We have to ask ourselves, who are the shepherds in our lives, those who are often overlooked? Is it young people? Is it the poor? Is it the elderly? Is it the people who have disabilities?

Are those the people who are shepherds in our lives? Those are the people that need the most care and the most love.

The birth of Jesus is God's declaration. You are not alone. God shows up within humanity to show us what love looks like, right? The birth of Jesus begins a ministry that would change everything about the world. I want to remind you, Jesus didn't stay a cute little baby in a manger like he wasn't wasn't that way his whole life.

At 30 years old, Jesus changed the entire world by turning the understanding of kingdom upside down. The King of the Universe came to serve the least.

That is life changing for people who have always been the least.

Jesus lifted up the poor. He validated those that society deemed less than. He showed the world that true forgiveness looks like love. And he showed it to every person he met, even those who were caught in the middle of their worst sins. In the Book of John, we read exactly how much God loves us in John 3, 16 and 17.

You may have heard this one before. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Jesus is a promise of salvation, not of judgment and condemnation. This scripture reminds us that God's love was so great that he gave us His Son not just for one generation, but for all times.

Not just for one race or one group of people, but for all people. Through the gift of Jesus, the whole world can be saved. And this baby, born in Bethlehem and placed in a manger in one magical moment, changes everything about our hopes and expectations.

Have you ever been invited to see a family in the hospital as they've given birth to a baby? As a pastor, I get that invitation occasionally. Some of you guys need to have some more babies so I can come and visit. You in the hospital, Chuck and Andrea. Just kidding.

That'd be a miracle. Yeah, it's happened before. All right, so here's the thing. Like, because of my position, because of my role, because of my job, I get that invitation. It's literally my profession that offers me this beautiful opportunity to spend time praying with families and just loving these young couples who've for some of them, had their first children.

These are some of the most beautiful and tender moments of a family's life together. It's literally because of what I do that allows me to share in these precious moments. Imagine being a shepherd, invited not just to meet a newborn child, but the long awaited Messiah, the Savior of the world. Imagine the joy and the awe of such a moment. You have been left out for so long, but I want you to come and see this brand new baby that changes everything.

These shepherds who would have been regularly treated as I have seen Bruce get treated here in Brookside, would have had a life changing experience there in the stable with this newborn baby. It wasn't their position that granted them honor. It was God seeking to lift up the lowly that granted them this honor. And this is the same God that we serve today that seeks through us to lift up the lowly. That is who we are called to be friends.

The great news is that God's love didn't magically stop at the manger. It continues through the cross and onto eternity. God's love for us today and through the gift of Jesus Christ, we can know that God will be with us from now until the end of all things. The Apostle Paul writes about how deep God's love is when he writes to the Church in Rome and it comes to us. In the book of Romans, chapter 8, 38 and 39, he says this.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Jesus our Lord. These are beautiful words and a promise of hope for us forever. Nothing can separate us from God.

In his letter, Paul assures his readers and us today that through Christ Jesus, God shows us a love that began at creation, was made personal at the manger in Bethlehem, led to the cross of salvation and promises us an eternity when everything as we know it will change. God's work of redemption and salvation are brought into a special focus during this Advent season. As we've talked about every year, Advent is this beautiful look Back and this kind of spiritual look forward to what God is going to do as God completes Christ's work in our world. The book of Revelation tells us much about how our story will be intertwined once again with God's work own story at the end of creation. Even at the end, God's love will be made known fully through the promised return of Jesus to complete God's work that Jesus started.

Revelation chapter 21 verses 3 through 6 says this and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying look, God's dwelling place is now among the people and he will dwell with them. They will be his people and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain. Hallelujah.

For the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then he said, write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, it is done. I am the alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. This prophecy from the book of Revelation promises us a future where God will dwell with his people forever. That moment where Jesus shows up and becomes incarnate in the life of the people at the time will then be. We will feel that again when Christ comes to return and change everything once again. We will experience that same feeling that the shepherds and Mary and Joseph would have felt in the nativity scene.

The promise of God's eternal love should give each of us courage to love others boldly and to forgive generously, just as we are loved and forgiven through Christ. So friends, today as we lit the candle that symbolizes love, we should remember that God's love was born into the manger reaching us in our everyday lives. And that will continue to work in us and on us through eternity. So friends, I want you this week to reflect on how Jesus humble birth speaks to God's love for you as an individual. And I want you to find a way this week to mirror that love of God that you experience with somebody who might feel overlooked or unworthy.

Now this doesn't mean we have to run out and find a homeless person that we give a Christmas gift too. This means that some of our friends who have been left out of church, we remind them that God's there with them and for them to this week and always maybe reflect on how the presence of Christ in our life brings joy Peace and purpose. And may it be especially so here during these last few days of adventure. The greatest news of all time is that God's love didn't just begin in a manger, but was fulfilled on a cross and will endure with us through all eternity. You are loved and highly favored.

God, friends, is with us. Let's pray.