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Advent waiting    Christmas mess

READ Luke 1:26-38

READ Luke 2:2-7

READ Luke 2:8-20

We could look at many different aspects of the incarnation. We can focus on salvation, forgiveness, hope, love, God's plan for the world, humility, the miraculous, or God's upside-down ways of working.

Or we could look at one of the reasons, the "why" was that Jesus came because life is messy. We could focus on the messiness of Christmas. Christmas mess

• First mess – genaeology - Matthew 1.
• Second mess - Mary's was a classic crisis pregnancy. She was unmarried and a teenager.
• Third mess - The no room for Mary and Joseph at the inn was obviously a housing crisis.
• Also, Joseph is invited by the Lord to be a type of foster parent for Jesus, who is clearly not his biological son. But Joseph is asked to nurture Jesus anyway.

Let’s look at the genealogy. Jesus was born into a Messy family.

Matthew 1

It seems to be an embarrassing family tree! And we don’t really like this passage because it’s not even a story? Horrible hard to pronounce names! Yet behind the sometimes unfamiliar names this text is jam-packed full of stories—stories of how God worked through the messy lives of women and men. This genealogy is a little different, as it sprinkles in a few mothers in the long line of fathers: Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law, Judah, by pretending to be a prostitute; the Canaanite Rahab who actually was a prostitute; the Moabite Ruth; Uriah’s wife, whom we know as Bathsheba; and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Each of the women mentioned here were gifted to serve God’s people. All of these people - with little power, no prestige, and no future, served God in their own way.

• Tamar, who seduced her father-in-law, Judah, by pretending to be a prostitute;
• Rahab, the Canaanite who actually was a prostitute;
• Ruth the Moabite;
• Uriah’s wife, whom we know as Bathsheba;
• Mary, the mother of Jesus.

And you thought you had a problem in your family! This was the family Jesus entered, the world Jesus entered, and when we’re honest, it’s the world in which we all live. All these symptoms are like we live with today!!

Jesus didn’t enter a perfect world. It was a horrible world for the poor people – who were waiting to be freed.

This world – the night before Xmas - was awaiting. Just like we’re waiting. We’re waiting for the event that changed the world forever.

And it all started in genesis

The time between Adam and Eve and the night before Christmas, the earth was cursed (Genesis 3). In the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve chose their own way, they decided to do what THEY wanted, and mankind turned away from God’s grace and favour. Sin brought suffering, toil, difficulty, trouble, pain, and eventually death. And here is the big answer to the biggest WHY? Of ever. Why did Jesus come? To help mankind to be friends with God again.

Heaven Was Silent

As history was written, prophets came – men of God with a word from Heaven. Elijah, Elisha … Isaiah, Jeremiah … Ezekiel, Daniel … men hearing from God. But then there was silence. The prophet Malachi closed off the sacred writings of the Old Testament, and then 400 silent years. People still came to the temples and synagogues … but there was no more revelation. After all man’s failure to meet God’s standard, perhaps He had abandoned us? Left us to our own doomed devices?

The day before Jesus came, Heaven was silent.

Men Were Looking for a Saviour

Way back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first sinned, God did not ONLY judge them. In His holiness He HAD to deal with sin, BUT he also gave a precious promise. A promise that those prophets reiterated time after time. The promise was of a coming Saviour. That God would not leave the earth under the curse. That He would not leave His creation to destruction – but He promised to send a deliverer – someone to make a way back to Eden … back to restored relationship with God.

And men knew the promise, and they looked for the Saviour.

Some looked in sincerity for their promised Messiah

Religious leaders looked for the proving of their theory

Political activists looked for a hero to lead them

Mixed motives there were … but the day before Jesus came, men were looking for a Saviour.

When God Himself, in His perfect wisdom, was ready

The day before Jesus came, God was checking His watch.

This was the world the day BEFORE Jesus came. He arrived the next starry night in Bethlehem, and the world could never be the same again. He came and changed everything that matters.

He came, and lived and died WHY? to put away the curse that infested the earth. Oh, the weeds still grow … the suffering continues … but because He came it has been dealt with. Jesus gave His life to overthrow the reign of sin. Romans 8:18-22 tells us that “the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs” right up to the present day. BUT, there is now an end in sight. The creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God … the earth will be delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Just around the corner is the moment when all things will be brought back again under the perfect Lordship of Jesus Christ. He has already paid the price for sin … the price of His own blood. God raised Him from the dead, and now He sits at the Father’s right hand waiting for His enemies to be made His footstool.

His arrival shattered the silence of Heaven. (Hebrews 1:1-2ff). He came and fulfilled all the hopes and aspirations of those who sincerely looked for God’s promised Saviour. He has made a way back to God. Not just to remove the suffering, but to bring us right into full fellowship with God again – forever and forever.

He came at the perfect moment … “When the fullness of the time had come.”

Thank God that where sin abounded, GRACE did much more abound.

Everything changed when Jesus was born. Because He had come, all things were made possible. The poor would receive good news; the broken-hearted could be healed; the captives might be set free; the blind receive their sight; the oppressed could be lifted up into liberty. Of course, His arrival went largely unnoticed by most of the world o the time. But it doesn’t diminish what it achieved.

READ Romans 8:18-22

Earth groans and waits.

For her time to come

Why? Because it’s messy.