Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, December 3, 2024.
A little Pneumonia can’t keep a pastor down over Christmas! I am back – almost at full strength – to talk about the fantastical stories of the conception and birth of Jesus, the Christ of God.
NO WAY can the church just gloss over these incredibly foundational theological pillars. NO WAY is the church being “sensitive” to non-believers by ignoring the reality of the divine nature of Christ.
Today, we talk about why.
It is very important that we talk about why.
I pray that this edifies you and also challenges you.
If you like the video – like it on YouTube and maybe even share it. Let’s get the Word out!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, December 3. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, December 3. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Tuesday, December 3
Well, good morning, good morning, my brothers and my sisters. This is the third attempt at live streaming from the church this morning. The first two failed. You saw, I think, one of the posts that was up there. But here we are. It would appear as though we are broadcasting. We are live streaming. I turned on the Christmas lights for you so you can see the beauty. You see the sun beaming in through the stained glass window. I see that little reflection in the camera lens. Such a beautiful decoration. Simple. Very nice. Oh my, look, these were made this year. Very nice for the ends of the pews. Pretty cool. There’s our tree and our wreath and all the stuff. There are the Advent candles, poinsettias everywhere, everywhere. You want to see some poinsettias? Let’s take a look at our poinsettia tree. I’ll give you the guided tour here. There’s a wreath. And here is our yearly tradition of stockings. Special stockings for the kids, stockings for all of the family members. There you go. Passing out cards and little knickknacks and doodads. There’s our poinsettia tree. How about that? Now it is my job every year to try and keep these things alive. There’s more stockings. Oh my goodness. My job every year to try to keep poinsettias alive, the best advice I ever got was to use ice cubes. Yeah. Ice cubes. Once a week, come over with your bucket of ice cubes and put a couple of ice cubes into the poinsettias. They’re a very hardy plant and that seems to have done the best job. So there you go. Christmas in church town. Let me tell you, brothers and sisters, last week was wild. It was a tough, tough week for a lot of reasons, but we got through it. And there we go. Hold on a second. Oh my goodness gracious. Turn this thing around. Oh my goodness gracious. It’s been so long since I used it that now it’s all wacko, wacko, wacko, wacko. We know about wacko, don’t we Sue? We know about wacko. I will be on here for just a little while this morning. I wanted to touch base with you. It was, I got an upper respiratory thing last week that turned into pneumonia. So we fought our way through it last week and I finally listened to my wife and went to the doctor yesterday, got the appropriate medications instead of just whatever I was trying to mask the symptoms to get through the day. Last week was wild. I mean, it’s one of those calendar years where you go Sunday and then we had council meeting cause it was the last week and then we had Thanksgiving Eve. Well then you had Thanksgiving and I was cooking for that and then we had the first Sunday of Advent followed by, well no, after Thanksgiving we had the decoration of the church and bringing up all that stuff. And then we had first Sunday of Advent followed by the Christmas hymn sing. So that’s a lot. It’s a lot. We got it done. I am feeling better and you can still tell that I’m not 100% and I won’t be 100% for a little while yet, but I’m well on my way. I’m well on my way. So there you go, gentlemen, listen to your wives and go to the doctor sooner rather than later. I just thought, you know, I got to tough this week out. I got to do it and it was kind of, I probably could have gotten to the doctor. Although even when I called, they said they are double booked all day, every day. I mean it must be really wild. So I was happy that they got to check in on me and then take care of me. So we’ve been talking, obviously we switched. I tried to transition last week from preaching of the gratitude we have of our salvation. What do we truly have to be thankful for? And we go around the room, right? And we talk about all the different things and people and stuff that we have to be thankful for. That’s all totally legit. As Christians, that all begins with salvation, right? Being a child of God is our foundation as a human being. And remember, the scripture is very clear. If you are not adopted into the family of God, you are not a child of God. So all of the people say, “Well, aren’t we all children of God?” No, we’re not. We’re all born separated from God. We’re all born in rebellion to God. As we read last week in scripture, or last Sunday in scripture, we are born enemies of God. For as we were still enemies of God, he chose to give his life for us. And I use the example, imagine you have a true enemy, a true enemy who wants to harm you and they’re in front of you. And the choice is given to you, him or me. And I choose to sacrifice myself so that my enemy may live. That’s powerful stuff. And that’s what Paul is talking about when we looked in Romans and when we opened up the idea of a hope of our salvation for when we were still enemies of God. So we transitioned from the Thanksgiving preaching through Wednesday evening into Sunday morning. And I began to talk about the cornerstone of Christmas, which is the, we call the Christmas story. And really has two parts, right? The conception of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then the birth narrative of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you were here for the Christmas hymnsing, which place was packed, then you heard the birth story. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Alex, Sandy, April, everybody. There you go. Like I said, I’ll be here as long as I can. I got the walking pneumonia and the boogie woogie flu right now. So we’re working on it. We’re working on working on getting better. Good nutrition, lots of water, proper medicine right now. And like I said, got through last week. It was a spectacular week. It was different for me because I did not participate in the singing, which was out of the question. Because I don’t think I had pneumonia all last week. I had an upper respiratory thing, took my voice Monday and Tuesday, barely had it on Wednesday. And then I have a propensity because of the damage done to my lungs to things develop. And I know this, and my wife knows this, and she works so hard to take such good care of me and I don’t listen. And I just ground through the week. The preaching was on point. I felt it. And I didn’t want to break that momentum. Does anybody know what that feels like? Like I didn’t want to go and be told that I was sick. I wanted to stay focused and on point. I don’t know if that makes sense to anybody else, but that’s sort of the way I am driven in terms of goal orientation and drive. So I didn’t want to go and say, “Oh, you’re very sick. You should probably lay down and rest and do all these things.” And then go, “Okay, now I’ve got this divided.” Sorry, guys. But there we are. So Christmas, we said Christmas or Advent evening, the Christmas hymn sing, we read the birth narrative and that’s important. And this morning I just want to go over the conception narrative. Now you will hear throughout Christmas and throughout Easter that Christians really should give up these fantastical stories that are unbelievable. One of the big stumbling blocks for people if you want to be a seeker sensitive church are these fantastical stories of the angel and Mary and all of that stuff. Yeah, it’s true. But this week that’s behind me. It’s all writing this week. I got to write the weekly, I got to write the monthly, I got to write the bulletin, I got to do all these things. So it’s all here. We should be good. If it’s here, we should be good. And yeah, so we want to talk about… It embarrasses me. It does not make me feel as though we are being true to ourselves or that we are doing any good for anybody outside of the church if we lie about our faith or hide aspects of our faith. Our holy scriptures are the divinely inspired infallible Word of God. They never fail in their intended purpose. So every story that’s in there, every pericope, which is a story, right? Every parable, every teaching, every narrative, all of it, every poem, every Psalm, all of it never fails in its intended purpose. So when we look at the conception narrative, what is its intended purpose? We can’t hide that. We know from scripture that Jesus Christ himself will be the salvation of many and the stumbling block of salvation to many. We know that truth by its very nature is divisive because if this is true, then other stuff isn’t true. And I don’t think we’re doing any favors to non-believers. I don’t think we’re doing any favors to individuals outside of the kingdom of God if we lie about our faith, make up things about what is said and what is meant, or hide things. So we’re not going to hide this narrative right here. This is from Luke 1. I’m going to make this point, and you can already tell I’m hanging on as long as I can. And then Thursday I want to talk about being hopeless. I dream of the day that I am hopeless. Think about that before Thursday. In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, she’s pregnant with John the Baptist, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman. The Lord is with you.” Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Israel forever.” So we’re learning already about the Messiah foretold. You don’t use the word forever for somebody who’s going to be born, live, and die. Now we use the word forever as we are saved and we will live forever with Christ in the kingdom. Mary asked the angel, “How can this happen? I am a virgin.” The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy. He will be called the Son of God.” There it is. The baby to be born will be called holy, different, holy, set apart. You’ve got all the other human beings on the earth and then you have Jesus. And he will be called the Son of God. These are very, very important pillars of our Christian theology. So no, we do not shuck the story about the virgin birth or the virgin conception. We listen to it because it is fundamental to who Jesus is. Let’s finish it. What’s more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age. People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month for nothing is impossible with God. We’ve heard that before. We will hear that again. And it is important to understand and believe that nothing is impossible with God. When he said he would make it so, when all through the prophets, all through the Old Testament, the Christology, the prophecy of the Christ is foretold, it is Luke 1. Luke 1. This is the fulfillment of that prophecy. And how can it be? Because the very simple fact that God is omnipotent and God is sovereign and nothing is impossible with God. Mary responded, and this is wonderful, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” And then the angel left her. Simple story, a very short story, a very fantastical story. Good morning. But not a story that we can deny or hide or lie about or shy away from. Because it is the story of who Jesus truly is. Fully human, born of a woman’s womb, fully divine, conceived of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus Christ is not fully human and fully divine, then he is not the sacrifice that is necessary for humankind. So right from the beginning, in Luke 1, in the narrative of Gabriel sharing with Mary what will happen to her, nothing is impossible with God. And then of course, it happening, we have the birth narrative going for the census. Good morning, Catherine. And all of those things, and Jesus being born, and we see this little human baby with God’s divine nature. He is born to be the sacrifice of all humankind. And he is born to willingly sacrifice himself for all humankind. We cannot rule God. We cannot say, “Look, we finally got God where we want him. We finally have God on a leash and we can sacrifice him for ourselves in a selfish act.” No. And we’ll talk about more of this in the spring when we get to Easter. No. It wasn’t a selfish act. My goodness, we can do this to God to save ourselves. No. Jesus willingly sacrifices himself in a selfless act so that a way may be created for us to be saved by his grace. The wrath of God that should fall upon we as sinners, us as sinners, fell upon Jesus Christ. He sacrificed himself. As a result, we are covered by that righteousness. We are covered by the divine nature of God. We do not have it now. We are covered by it. All of that, all of that stems from that little story that I read. If that is not true, then nothing is true. If that is not true, then as Paul says, all of our preaching is foolishness and we are wasting our time and we have believed a myth, a legend. We have believed lies all of these years. Those experiences that you have had with God by the power of his Holy Spirit, all in your imagination, the power of God that raised Christ from the dead living in you and changing, transforming you, all your imagination, demons, angels, not real, spiritual realm, physical realm, everything that the Christian has his or her eyes open to, somehow it’s all just been implanted in us by reading this book of stories just as though we were fantasizing about the Lord of the Rings or something of that nature. If that little story isn’t true, so know, church. You cannot skip over that little story. No, church. You’re not being sensitive to non-believers by leaving out the very foundational pillars of Christian theology. No, church. You’re also not doing any favors by making gigantic Christmas shows of a secular nature that then incorporate some of these sacred elements. How about, church, you do what I just did and open up the scriptures and read them and then talk about why those stories are there because we know that the word of God is the divinely inspired infallible word of God. Whatever fails in its purpose, so the first theological question we ask whenever we read is, “Why is this in here? What is it saying at the time?” And scripture is always very layered. We know that all of scripture is for the time and then for, if you want to look at concentric circles, and then for immediate prophecy. Christ will prophesy that he will be the sign of Jonah, that he will be raised to tear down this temple, will raise up three days, and for posterity for all of history until his return. So look at it at those levels. Sometimes we don’t want to do that. We want to either deny the power of the word or the reality or the truth of the word in our day and age by assigning it only to that day and age. You can’t do that. Scripture is rich and deep and layered and complex. It’s meant to be that way so that over 2,000 years later, a dude sitting in a small church in a small town is still talking about and bringing out the theology of the conception story. There’s no other book that you’ve been talking about for over 2,000 years that you haven’t just figured out. Scripture is not like that. It is the living word of God. And as we pray, which we didn’t this morning, and that’s my fault, for God’s divine wisdom to pour into us and through us as we go into your word, dear Lord, in Jesus’ name, thank you, that is where we are with it. So to recap, this Christmas, and Christmas is wonderful. I’m not a big Christmas person. You say, “What? You’re a pastor. This is like Super Bowl.” No. What I mean is I’m about this story. I’m about the birth narrative. I’m about Christmas telling us exactly who Christ is, fully human and fully divine. And celebrating the incarnation, Emmanuel, God with us. I’m about that. The monstrosity that our culture and global culture has turned Christmas into, I’m not into. I will enjoy the lights in some of the less gaudy decorations. I enjoy the way the poinsettias are here at the church, et cetera. Don’t get me wrong on that. But all of the over the top stuff that I know has been added to this celebration, celebration of the incarnation is what we should call it. What has been added to this celebration has been added to distract us, to distract believers and non-believers alike from the true nature of this celebration. And it is celebrating Emmanuel, God with us. It is celebrating the birth of Jesus, fully human, fully divine. It is an opportunity for us to recognize that and thus understand that as a foundational pillar of our faith. Amen. So don’t get me wrong. Unless it’s like way secular, gross, over the top, I don’t poo poo anything about Christmas. Do your thing. Have your family traditions. Do all of those things. But Advent has been created by the church. It’s not biblical. It’s created by the church to point our eyes on one thing and that is the birth of Jesus, the Christ of God, fully human, fully divine. If we do not recognize it as such, if we do not recognize him as such, what are we doing? Because we’re not saved. It’s all a lie. Just saying. So no, we’re not doing in world any favors by denying our Christian theology of Christmas, the celebration of the incarnation. Easter is the celebration of the resurrection, celebration of the incarnation. Everything else that you want to do should be spinning in concentric circles around that. And that’s my message, right? And I like to see that. I like to hear that. That is the reason for the season. The only reason for the season. And I do believe whether it’s within the church or outside of the church, so much garbage has been added to Christmas so that we are can be easily distracted from that fact that the stories are there. The narrative is there. The teaching is there to teach us exactly who Christ is and why he is the only human being, fully human, fully divine, the only human being to ever walk the face of the earth who did not deserve to die willingly sacrificed himself for you. Amen. So, I did a pretty good job. Jesus hanging in there. I’m going to call it quits for today. Thursday, we’re going to dream of the day that we are hopeless. This is hope week here at church town and we are going to dream on Thursday of the day we are hopeless. Let that sink in a little bit and we will see you again. Good Lord willing, the river don’t rise and my throat doesn’t explode on turning on the lights on Thursday. Amen. God bless and Merry Christmas.
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