Talk to Blakehurst Baptist Church Leisure Group Christmas Luncheon, 19 November 1998
Isaiah 9:1-2
Weary, we arrive once more at Bethlehem,
Asking if this yearly journey is needful or worthwhile.
But, O God! Our God indeed!
As Christmas approaches our hearts start to beat to your music,
And our minds acknowledge a wonder set in straw
Worth a thousand journeys and a thousand more.[1]
“A wonder set in straw”: the wonder and mystery of Christmas. What does Christmas mean to you? Perhaps it invokes images of presents given and received, family gatherings, eating well (or too well), perhaps the recollection of childhood happiness, long lines of crawling traffic in the summer sun, or the tragedy of a car accident.
Behind the frantic rush, the commercial pressure, the sweating and bustling crowds, and the glitter of tinsel, Christmas is a time for families to get together, for friends to renew acquaintances, and a time when we remember a special birth in a young family almost 2000 years ago: we remember how Jesus Christ our Saviour was born.
His birth came to be recognised as one of the most significant moments in world history, but at the time news of his birth made no headlines. In 1809 people’s minds were fixed on Napoleon’s march across Europe, but in that year five babies were born who would later influence millions of lives: British Liberal politician William Gladstone, English poet Alfred Tennyson, US writer Oliver Wendell Holmes, English scientist Charles Darwin and US President Abraham Lincoln. But their births went virtually unnoticed, except by their family and family friends.
Eighteen hundred years earlier Caesar Augustus ruled the Mediterranean world, and news of his decision to hold a census reached every home from Europe to Arabia. Who would have thought that Caesar was God’s instrument for fulfilling Old Testament prophecy? Who would have noticed the young couple crouched in a dimly lit stable at Bethlehem? Who would have heard the first cries of the baby Jesus? Who would have cared?
The arrival of Jesus fulfilled many prophecies, several of them recorded by Isaiah. In chapter 7, verse 14, Isaiah says, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” In Isaiah’s time, under King Ahaz, the people were far from God.
They rejected and killed the prophets and instead consulted mediums and clairvoyants to discern the future and make decisions. They were discouraged and disillusioned, perhaps thinking that since they had given up on God, he had given up on them. Yet God cared about their welfare, and into their world of gloom and doom Isaiah speaks words of hope and encouragement:
There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past (God) humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan –
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light;
On those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned (Isa 9:1-2).
Verse 6 explains why a light has dawned: “For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given.” This child was “born” of human parents, and “given” as a gift from God.
G. Campbell Morgan wrote of him, “He was the God-man. Not God indwelling a man. Of such there have been many. Not a man deified. Of such there have been none save in the myths of pagan systems of thought; but God and man, combining in one Personality the two natures, a perpetual enigma and mystery, baffling the possibilities of explanation” (The Crises of the Christ, Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1936, 79). This is the mystery of Christmas.
Then, in words redolent of Handel’s Messiah, Isaiah says that “the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” This child would be endued with executive authority, and have a four-fold name: the first two in relation to his title of ‘Immanuel’: “Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God”; and the latter two in relation to the conditions his birth would bring about: “Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
As Isaiah looked with prophetic insight into the future and visualised this special infant deliverer, we look back with historic hindsight and celebrate the fact that it has all happened! This week, let us remember what God has done to deliver us from sin, enter into the joy that Christ brings to our lives, and worship the king born in an animal food trough who now rules the universe, and who reigns within our hearts.
Sermon 830 copyright © 1998 Rod Benson. Preached at Blakehurst Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia, on Thursday 19 November 1998. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).
Reference
[1] Bruce Prewer, Brief Prayers for Australians Vol. 3 (Adelaide: Lutheran Publishing House, 1992), 70.
Note: Almost all of my sermons are numbered, but I found this short unnumbered sermon or talk today in my files. I post it here for those who may be interested in my early Blakehurst ministry. A second previously unnumbered Blakehurst sermon follows this one.
iDigress 