Talk to Blakehurst Baptist Church Leisure Group Christmas Luncheon, 16 November 2000.
Psalm 139:13-14
God could have come as a preformed child, found, like Superman, in a field somewhere – arriving not from Krypton but from heaven. Or God could have immediately created a whole body, as he did with Adam when he formed his flesh out of the dust . . .
But God chose a more time-consuming process of human formation: In solidarity with this human race, God entered this sphere of reality in the womb of a human creature . . . For nine months the Creator was kept alive by a creature in a state of nourishing protection, dependent on Mary’s care – the food she ate, her digestive system, her blood.[1]
That is part of the mystery of Christmas. Let me share three things the Bible teaches about you, and about Jesus, as we reflect on what Christmas means.
First, you are unique (Psalm 139:13).
There’s no one in the world just like you. God does not create carbon copies – he creates originals. If you were to search the whole world, you wouldn’t find two people who had the same footprint or fingerprint or voiceprint as yours. God made you unique because he wants you to know how special you are, how much you matter to him.
Jesus too is unique. There are not degrees of uniqueness, so Jesus is just as unique as you and I are. But with Jesus, there are other qualities that mark him out as different from us. He is God’s one-and-only Son who came from heaven to earth, born of the virgin Mary, to die for all of us. He alone could be our Saviour. He alone can rescue us from sin and death.
Second, you are complex (Psalm 139:14).
Scientists will never learn all there is to know about the human body, or mind, or spirit. Often we are a mystery to ourselves. Have you ever been in a group where everyone reacted one way to a circumstance, and you found yourself reacting in the opposite way? Each of us is unique and complex. No one is simple or two-dimensional. Each one is complex and multi-dimensional. That is how God made us. He values us.
Jesus too is a complex person – in fact, more complex than you or me. Someone has said that, when he became a man, “he combined deity with humanity and joined them eternally.” That’s how much God loves us: enough for his Son to identify fully with us by becoming a human being, and changing his being forever.
Third, you have a purpose in life.
Job 10:8 says, “Your hands formed and shaped me.” When God did that, he did it for a purpose. God created everything in the world for a purpose, including you. You’re not here by accident. You’re not just taking up space. But you need to discover why you are here, and how God wants you to influence the world. It’s never too late to make a difference in someone’s life.
Jesus too had a purpose. When he was born his parents named him “Jesus” because they knew he would save his people from their sins. Later in life, Jesus explained that he had come “to find and restore the lost” (Lk 19:10, The Message). That’s you and me.
As Christmas approaches, let us give thanks for one another, and for God’s wonderful gift of Jesus Christ, his Son who came to our world as a baby to be our Saviour. My prayer is that you and I will receive Jesus in a fresh way this Christmas, and join him in finding and restoring other lost people. Truly, Jesus is the Way; he is the Truth; and he is the Life.
Sermon 831 copyright © 2000 Rod Benson. Preached at Blakehurst Baptist Church, Sydney, Australia, on Thursday 16 November 2000. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).
Reference
[1] Eric L. Johnson, “Playing games and living metaphors: The incarnation and the end of gender,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 40 (2), June 1997, 272.
Image source: Flickr
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. Another previously unnumbered Blakehurst sermon precedes this one in today’s posts.
iDigress 