Let it Make a Difference // Message in a Bottle, Part 4

When Christmas is done and dusted – what do you do with it? Put it back in the cupboard with the decorations for next year – or let the message of Christian burn on in your heart? CHRISTMAS IN REVIEW So how have you gone, in those busy weeks leading up to Christmas? Did you enjoy yourself or was the stress just too much? Was it a kind of rich experience or did the cares of this world; all that stuff, you know, that we do leading up to Christmas, did it rob you of the Christmas you think that you should have had? Over these last few weeks on the programme we have been working our way through a series of messages that I've called 'Message in a Bottle'. The whole Christmas story was born out of the shepherd heart of God; the heart of God to draw us into His arms. Have a listen to the Scripture that we used in the first programme, three weeks ago, Ezekiel, chapter 34, verse 11. And by the way, if you have a Bible, grab it; open it up because we are going to spend some time in God's Word today. This is what Ezekiel wrote; this is what God said: I, Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with them, so I will look after My sheep. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on the day of clouds and darkness. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice. God has this heart like a shepherd does for his flock of sheep, to look after us and to care for us and to love us. And out of that is born this incredible story of Christmas. You know how it all came about: Joseph and Mary, these two young people, ordinary people; nobodies like you and me, called to bring Jesus into the world. Not a king and queen; a teenaged girl and a young carpenter. Now all the stories of Christmas, I guess, are as familiar to all of us as breathing in and out everyday. I mean, we go through Christmas each year, but when you scratch underneath them, which is what we have been doing the last few weeks on the programme, I don't know, there's a gritty reality of life in the story of Christmas. It's a kind of a surprise, I mean, Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit; it's a virgin birth. And there was a prophesy centuries before, that Jesus would be born to a virgin. The prophet Isaiah wrote in chapter 7, verse 14 of Isaiah: Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign – the virgin will be with a child and she will give birth to a son. Great! You look at it from two thousand years on as we do and you think, "well, there's a virgin birth and that's what happened and that it was God's story." But back then, imagine the shame she went through when she had this pregnancy out of wedlock, at a time when that wasn't an acceptable lifestyle choice as it might be in society today? Even though God prophesied about that centuries before, who would of thought Mary, and who would have believed Mary going, "well, you know it was the Holy Spirit that did it?" Give me a break! So Mary went around with this shame and Joseph was going to dismiss her quietly until God spoke to him in a dream. And then Jesus was born in a stable and not a palace, in this place, Bethlehem. Even that was prophesied about centuries before. In Micah, chapter 5, verse 2, it says: But you Bethlehem, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for Me, one who will be ruler of Israel, whose origins are of old, from ancient times. See, that's a prophesy pointing forward to the birth of Jesus Christ, in Bethlehem. And of course, Herod tried to kill Jesus – they had to flee to Egypt. Again that was prophesied about centuries before in Jeremiah, chapter 31, verse 15: This is what the Lord says, "A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning with great weeping; Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted because her children are no more." There's a prophesy about the way that Herod slew all the young children under two years of age. And so I guess we have been looking at all things the last few weeks on the programme and I remember the first time I began to take a cold, hard look at the Christmas story – you know, the realities, the history. I was a bit disappointed. I mean, somehow I wanted to keep that idealised pantomime view of Christmas; the cutesy Mary, Joseph, donkey, baby in a manger thing. I mean, we like to idealise things. You know when Hollywood makes a movie out of a true story, they embellish things. You know, we like to do that. But Christmas isn't a pantomime. The true story of Christmas – of Jesus' birth – is about hardship, about pressure, about discomfort, about danger. I mean, Mary was on a donkey for a week or two, heading for Bethlehem for the census, in the last weeks of her pregnancy. That would have been fun! And then she gave birth to Jesus in a smelly, grotty stable, surrounded by ...