More Than a Sentimental Journey
John 1:1-5
In an hour or so,
Carla, Hannah, Josh, and I will pile into the Caravan,
set my INS (“internal navigation system”) for
the
east-southeast to
-it’s a little more than inconvenient...it’s
about 4 hours each way
-it’s a little pricey...we’ll spend roughly
$60 in gasoline
-it’s dangerous...after all, we will be on
I-70 for a total of 200 miles
-it’s kinda’ silly when you think about
it...we’ll be on the road for 4
hours...be with my family for another 4 hours...and then turn
around and head back to
-and just to be clear—this won’t be the “quality
time” on the trip like
you imagine us pastor families having
--we probably won’t discuss this
sermon or talk about our
individual quiet times...instead
Josh & Hannah will argue over
who’ll get the back row (Josh
will)...Josh will disappear into a
pillow cave and wake up when we pull
into their driveway...
Hannah will listen to music on her
MP3 player and read two
or three books...and Carla will intend to read, but will end up
doing her version of the
bobble-head wife
---in other words,
our family will be just like millions of other
families...taking just another Christmas journey
This morning, I want to consider the first Christmas journey
-no, not the one you’re thinking
of...not the one with Joseph and
Mary-great-with-child
traveling from
--that Christmas journey is
the one we’re familiar with, of course,
but it’s actually the third Christmas journey
-the second Christmas journey is described in the middle of Luke,
chapter 1, when
Mary-not-yet-so-great-with-child, travels south
from
--great story, just not the first journey
of Christmas
The first, and greatest, Christmas journey of all was the journey from
heaven to earth...from the
throne to
-we think of it terms of
earth...Mary and Joseph, angels and
shepherds, sheep and cows
-we know it so well we can
tell it practically by heart
-today listen to the same
story from a different perspective
Read John 1:1-5, 14
There you have it...heaven’s view of Christmas and the most amazing
journey ever...so incredible, in
fact, that there have been millions of
people over the last two millennia
who have simply said they cannot
believe it
-it’s just too good to be true
John’s Gospel begins: In the beginning was the Word.
-“Word” is a nickname, of sorts,
for the Son of God who is God, who
is with God, and who had lived
forever in heaven...well, to be
completely accurate, we need
to say that the Word, the Son of
God designed heaven...He created it
--John 1:3 à Through
him all things were made; without Him
nothing was made that has been
made.
So heaven was His home. He created
it. It was His perfect place, a
place of satisfaction with the
best of everything, more magnificent
than all the stars on a
cloudless night, more magnificent than the
most beautiful sunrise or sunset
you have ever seen or the most
beautiful music you have ever
heard, happier than the happiest days
that any of us have experienced
in all of life
-that was home for Jesus...it
was all He ever knew
But this first Christmas journey brought Him from there to here
-v. 14 à The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
--He moved to our world...born to one of our
women, in one of our
stables, in one of our
villages, in one of our countries, right here
on our earth...technically, His earth...because He created it, too
Leith Anderson, who pastors in
the city of
-he is taken, of all places,
to the
sees something he’d never
seen anywhere
--on the dump in
who make their
homes...shacks are constructed out of the
things other people
have thrown away, and their children are
sent out early every
morning to scavenge for food out of
other people's
garbage, so they can have family meals
-people are born and grow up
there on the garbage dump
-people have their families,
their children, their shacks, their
garbage to eat...they finish out their lives
and they die there
without ever going any
place else, even in the city of
--the only life, the
only world they know is that garbage dump
As astonishing as that is, what really caught his attention is the fact
that there are Americans who
also live on the garbage dump
-they are missionaries...Christians
who have voluntarily chosen to
leave the States and go
there to share the love of Jesus Christ to
people who otherwise would
never hear it
--people who leave the
greatest country in the world and go
over there to live on
a garbage dump
Amazing...but not as amazing as the journey from heaven to earth
-the Son of God made the journey
and knew what He was doing
--knew where He was going
--knew what the sacrifice
would be
-Jesus left heaven to come to
earth on mission to save humanity
--the earth and people He had
created had gone terribly wrong
---we chose sin, and sin
had turned us against God...and what
was once paradise
on earth had become evil, vile, and
corrupted by the
effects of sin
--if we were God, most of us
would probably opt to cut our losses
---just wipe out the
earth and the human race and possibly start
over again—maybe
--God could have done that,
too—that’s His prerogative
-except—we read two chapters later in John’s Gospel that God
loved the people of the world
so much that He sent His Son—His
only Son—on a journey from
heaven to earth
Not only a journey from heaven to earth but also from eternity to time
-heaven’s perspective of the
Christmas story says in the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was
God. He was with God in the beginning.
--the beginning? when was that? when was the beginning?
---go back in time as
far as your mind will allow you to go
----1000
years? 2000? 10,000?
million? billion?
eleventy-billion? a billion trillion? some of you—like
me—are
trying to remember yesterday
---as far as you can
imagine...double it...you’re still not close
In the beginning the Word was
-He already lived and existed because he
never began
--and then, a little over
2000 years ago, He began His journey
from eternity to time
--He came into our calendars,
to our clocks, to our way of thinking
and organizing schedules
--He counted birthdays and
spoke of the days of the week and
lived in terms of bedtime
and work days and days off
When he came into time He became part of our history
-the Bible tells us in Galatians
4:4 that He came at exactly the right
time, the perfect time
--it was an unprecedented
time in history...Roman rule brought
Roman peace and Roman
roads and the ability for the news of
Jesus (or the “Word”) to travel the globe
Jesus stepped from heaven to earth...from eternity into time...and
He
also stepped into a body
-John 1:14 à The
Word became flesh.
--the clear meaning
is: the Son of God was not previously
flesh
-previously, the eternal Son
of God was only spirit...just as God the
Father and God the Spirit
--when He became flesh,
He took on a human body...and took
on the limitations
brought on by being confined to a body
---now He gets
tired and hungry...He feels pain...He suffers
earaches and
sore throats and the common cold
I try to wrap my tiny, finite mind around that...that the eternal,
powerful Son of God left heaven
and became contained in a
microscopic human embryo
-when Jesus first arrived on
earth, it wasn’t in
up north in Galilee in the
non-descript
-when Jesus completed the
first, and greatest, Christmas journey
He didn’t appear as a
cuddly, wuddly wittle baby
--the Son of God, creator
of the universe, showed up as a
cluster of cells
without eyes or hands or feet or brain
-for the first time in all of
eternity, God was limited...He was
restricted by the uterus of
a peasant Jewish teenager
--although Jesus is
described as the light of the world, His first 9
months on earth were
spent in total darkness
When finally born that night, He looked like any other middle-eastern
boy...dark hair, dark eyes, dark
skin...scrawny and screaming
-I’m still convinced that part
of the shepherds’ amazement was the
sheer fact that this baby,
whose birth was announced by an
angel army, looked so
pathetically, boringly normal
--He couldn’t do miracles
or tricks...He couldn’t even make His
eyes focus...He
couldn’t feed Himself...couldn’t walk...
couldn’t
speak...couldn’t do anything for Himself
---and the hope of
the world was entrusted into the care of
a carpenter named Joseph and a girl
named Mary
---and yet He was
totally and completely God
The Word became flesh and took on a human body with human
organs, a human face,
fingerprints, a belly button
-but here is the miracle: when he became human, he was no less
God, 100 percent God and
100 percent human at the same time
-and he did all of this
so that he could become our Savior
In the simplest forms of arithmetic we could figure out that one perfect
man could, perhaps, pay for the
sin of one other sinful person, but
certainly not for all of us...unless...
-unless, of course, somehow
there could be a unique combining of
that human's humanity with
God's infinity
--that is what we have
wrapped up in Jesus
--because He was 100
percent human and 100 percent divine,
we can add to the formula
a multiplication factor of infinity so
that when He died on
the cross He, and only He, could pay
for all the sin of all of us
In a few minutes, my family is beginning a journey of a 4 hours and a
couple hundred miles...we’re
going to be fighting traffic out in the
cold while you are warm and
comfortable in your home...we’re going
to spend money for gasoline that
could have gone for something
much more exciting
-why?
--not
the chili...not the decorations...not the gifts
-it’s because of the loony
people on the other end called “Morgans”
--some are obnoxious...some
are loud...some are plain weirdos
---all of them are rife
with imperfections
-but they’re family and...despite our better judgment, we love them
Christmas is also about a journey...not a sentimental one that evokes
all sorts of fuzzy emotions...
-Jesus leaving heaven for earth
--stepping into time and
flesh and humanity
-the journey to Judea and back
to
--the journey was messy,
painful, and ultimately deadly...and
Jesus took every single
step leading from heaven to the cross
because of His love for
you and me
Read Romans 5:6-8
He came to us because He loved us.
He came to save us from our sins.
Accept him.
Be saved from your sin and let the purpose of the great Christmas
journey be fulfilled in you.
Respond in faith by surrendering heart and life and soul.
Join your voice with the voices of heaven shouting, singing praises,
hallelujahs to Jesus Christ the eternal Son of God, our Savior and our Lord.