Christmas ( Dec 20, 209)
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CHRISTMAS M3 SERMON NOTES DEC. 20, 2009
TITLE: Trading Spaces
TEXT: Galatians 4:4-5; John 1:1, 14; Luke 1:26-35
(Track Quotes more cleanly.)
BIG IDEA: God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
According to Dr. Martin Sanders, 80% of all exercise equipment is purchased in the 2 weeks before Christmas and the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but typically by spring: 85% is no longer being used: it sits idly for a year or two then is eventually posted on Craig’s list or e-bay.
Change is hard to come by.
Dr. Edward Miller, who has served as the dean of the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, has said that patients with heart disease so bad that they must undergo heart bypass surgery could avoid the return of pain and the need to repeat the surgery and stop the course of their disease before it kills them by switching to a healthier lifestyle. But, very few do. Dr. Millers says, "If you look at people two years after heart bypass surgery, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle (by diet and exercising)… Even though they know… they should change their lifestyle… they can't."
According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die, the scientifically studied odds of being able to change are nine to one. That's nine to one against you.
Change is hard for anyone, but change is especially hard for someone who is homeless and addicted to drugs.
This week in The Vancouver Sun, I read a front page story about a man named Thomas, (show photo and article as a prop) who has been addicted to drugs from the time he was a young boy and homeless for years, has been experiencing real change because God has shown up in his life through a woman from Kerrisdale whom some of you know…
On this fourth Sunday as we look at the story of God becoming a human being, we’re going see how we too can experience real, lasting change.
In Galatians 4:4-5 we read that God in the fullness of time sent his Son Jesus Christ to be born of a woman so that that we might become the sons and daughters of God.
Please turn to Luke 1:26-35.
In Luke 1:26-35 we read these words:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called [a] the Son of God.
We read here that Mary was greatly troubled when the angel Gabriel appeared to her.
People in Scripture are always troubled at first when they encounter an angel. When we think of an angel perhaps we think of a chubby, baby-faced cupid strumming a love song on a guitar, but angels are breathtaking creatures that inspire awe.
The angel Gabriel says to Mary, “You have found favour with God, and you will be with child. You will give birth to a son and you will give him the name Jesus.”
Mary responds by asking the angel, “How can I give birth to a son since I am a virgin? How could I give birth to a son since I have never slept with a man?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you so the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”
In the passage we read how God’s Spirit comes upon Mary and as a result she miraculously conceives. And she will give birth, as unbelievable as it sounds, to the God who becomes a human being. The God-man.
In John1:1 we read:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The “Word” here, logos, to the Greeks referred to “the eternal rational principle that governs all things.” The Jewish people, on the other hand, used it as way to refer to God. John makes it clear that the Word here was God.
Then in verse 14 we read, “The Word became flesh.”
John 1:14:
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only [Son], who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
In Eugene Peterson’s rendering of this verse in the contemporary version of Scripture The Message, we read, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.”
The mystery of Christmas is that the maker of all things shrank down, down, down—so small as to become an embryo, a single fertilized egg, barely visible to the naked eye.
“Immensity cloistered in thy womb,” said the poet John Donne.
“He made himself nothing,” said the Apostle Paul.
Augustine, in the 5th century, wrote:
Maker of the sun,
He is made under the sun.
In the Father he remains,
From his mother he goes forth.
Creator of heaven and earth,
He was born on earth under heaven.
Unspeakably wise,
He is wisely speechless.
Filling the world,
He lies in a manger.
Ruler of the stars,
He nurses at his mother's bosom.
He is both great in the nature of God,
and small in the form of a servant.
This is remarkable. God became an embryo, a fertilized egg, a little baby, born in a cave under the watch of the animals, a baby who had to be breastfed, burped, taught to sleep, toilet-trained, a baby who had to learn to walk, talk, to read, and then to write. A young person had to learn from his father Joseph how to hammer a nail, how to use a saw, and use a carpenter’s plane.
Why?
He became what we were--a son of man, so that we could become who he is--a son of God, a daughter of God.
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we read:
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
How was one person, Jesus Christ, able to pay for all the sins of the whole world?
Jesus was able to pay for and take all of our sins upon himself because he was both God and human. If he were just a perfect human being then, he could only pay the sin of one other person. But because Jesus also was fully God, he was the one person as both a human being, but also as the infinite God, who was able to pay for all of our sins when he died for us on the cross. His humanity plus his infinity as God enabled him to pay for the sins of all people on the cross.
Mark Batterson commenting on these verses, said, “Jesus makes us a deal we can’t refuse.” He says, “Give me all your sin. I’ll give you all my righteousness. And we will call it even.” He trades places with us. He trades spaces with us.
“He came to our place. He took our place. And he invites us back to his place.” (Dick Foth)
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
Like Mary, when we say “yes” to God, when surrender to God, God enters us like an embryo and his life grows within us and we become like God.
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
Marian Wright Edelman says,
“When God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, He goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn’t release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And God puts the idea or purpose into the mother’s heart. And she puts it in the baby’s mind, and then – God waits. The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.”
The great events of the world are babies being born… because each baby, each human being has the potential to become a person who carries in their body the very life of God.
The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4 we have this treasure of God’s life in our jars of clay, our earthly bodies, and the life of Jesus is revealed in us…
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
Cynthia Maus writes:
God became man so that human beings might become like God. (i.e., through the Spirit).
He took residence on the earth that earth might be more like heaven.
He showed us in His own Son that flesh need not be a devilish thing, but full of grace and truth…
God writes His truth not in flaming letters on the sky, nor does He cast them in bronze or chisel them in marble for the guidance of the race. He writes His truth in human life.
When God’s spirit lives in us, we can become like God.
The promise of Christmas is that God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
This past Tuesday on the front page of The Vancouver Sun there was a story about a homeless young man named Thomas Willis (show photo) who had lived in front of the London Drugs in Kerrisdale and at nights slept in the back alley.
Thomas is not sure, but he believes he was born in Winnipeg. He did not know his father, and his mother, who was addicted to drugs, abandoned him when he a baby, just five months old.
He went on to live in a series of group and foster homes. After he was five, he changed homes about every three months. He was physically and sexually abused in them.
When he was seven years old, he was introduced to cocaine by one of his foster parents, who started Thomas using heroin when he was 8.
As a boy he ran away from his foster homes again and again, but when was 13, he ran away for good. He has lived on the street since he was 13.
He came to Vancouver about 5 years ago.
Four years ago, he was on the streets when he met a woman Kerrisdale from our community whom some of you would know, Sherrill Mair. Sherrill (in the same spirit another member of our community Dr. Kerry Telford Morrissey who died in the plane crash off the waters of Saturna last month) saw Thomas as a person, not as a problem. She saw him as a neighbour. At first, they would talk occasionally, and they got to know one another a little, and she would help Thomas out in small ways, though she never gave him money because she knew it would go to buy drugs.
Sherrill said, "I knew he had caused problems in the neighbourhood from time to time, probably when he was high, but there was something in his eyes that said there was a longing in him, that told me he wanted help."
Sherrill one day asked him what it was he truly wanted.
"He told me he wanted to get off the street," Mair said.
"'REALLY?' Sherrill said. “Yes, REALLY!”
One of the first things she did was drive Thomas to the hospital for an ultrasound. Thomas said, "People don't usually let a street person in their car," he said. "That just doesn't happen. But she was the only one who would drive me to appointments. She is a very brave woman." She drove him to detox. She drove him to doctors' offices and government agencies. She got him signed up for welfare. She picked him up when he got arrested. She gave him gift cards for food. She helped him find a place indoors to live. She started a small trust fund for him. (One of the donors is Mair's 14-year-old son, who donates $10 a month to it from his allowance.)
But, Thomas still struggled with his addiction and Sherrill wondered if her help had done any good. But, Thomas is now in a recovery house, attending AA and NA meetings regularly. He has even helped other homeless people get off the street. In January of this coming year, Thomas Willis, 27, will enroll in high school.
His friendship with Sherrill has ignited in him a passion for a new life.
"If it weren't for her," Thomas said, "I'd still be on the street, if I hadn't killed myself by now.
"She's my angel. She is the thing that God sent me to believe…"
When a human being like Sherrill adjusts her life to become friends with someone like Thomas (a person who has been homeless and who struggles with an addiction), Thomas can change. Mental health experts say that the simple act of being a person’s friend can alter their brain chemistry and improve their functioning in the world.
God adjusted his life for us in the ultimate way. He left the comforts of heaven to come to earth—a journey far greater than one of us moving from the penthouse at the Shangri-La Hotel into a back alley on the Downtown Eastside. God in Jesus Christ, the God-man, took our sin upon himself so we might be forgiven, filled with the Spirit of God, enter into a friendship with God, and be made new.
God becomes like us so that we might become like him… and when happens, as is true for Thomas this Christmas, earth becomes a bit more like heaven.
Pray:
CHRISTMAS M3 SERMON NOTES DEC. 20, 2009
TITLE: Trading Spaces
TEXT: Galatians 4:4-5; John 1:1, 14; Luke 1:26-35
(Track Quotes more cleanly.)
BIG IDEA: God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
According to Dr. Martin Sanders, 80% of all exercise equipment is purchased in the 2 weeks before Christmas and the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but typically by spring: 85% is no longer being used: it sits idly for a year or two then is eventually posted on Craig’s list or e-bay.
Change is hard to come by.
Dr. Edward Miller, who has served as the dean of the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, has said that patients with heart disease so bad that they must undergo heart bypass surgery could avoid the return of pain and the need to repeat the surgery and stop the course of their disease before it kills them by switching to a healthier lifestyle. But, very few do. Dr. Millers says, "If you look at people two years after heart bypass surgery, 90% of them have not changed their lifestyle (by diet and exercising)… Even though they know… they should change their lifestyle… they can't."
According to Alan Deutschman, author of Change or Die, the scientifically studied odds of being able to change are nine to one. That's nine to one against you.
Change is hard for anyone, but change is especially hard for someone who is homeless and addicted to drugs.
This week in The Vancouver Sun, I read a front page story about a man named Thomas, (show photo and article as a prop) who has been addicted to drugs from the time he was a young boy and homeless for years, has been experiencing real change because God has shown up in his life through a woman from Kerrisdale whom some of you know…
On this fourth Sunday as we look at the story of God becoming a human being, we’re going see how we too can experience real, lasting change.
In Galatians 4:4-5 we read that God in the fullness of time sent his Son Jesus Christ to be born of a woman so that that we might become the sons and daughters of God.
Please turn to Luke 1:26-35.
In Luke 1:26-35 we read these words:
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end."
34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?"
35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called [a] the Son of God.
We read here that Mary was greatly troubled when the angel Gabriel appeared to her.
People in Scripture are always troubled at first when they encounter an angel. When we think of an angel perhaps we think of a chubby, baby-faced cupid strumming a love song on a guitar, but angels are breathtaking creatures that inspire awe.
The angel Gabriel says to Mary, “You have found favour with God, and you will be with child. You will give birth to a son and you will give him the name Jesus.”
Mary responds by asking the angel, “How can I give birth to a son since I am a virgin? How could I give birth to a son since I have never slept with a man?” The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you so the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.”
In the passage we read how God’s Spirit comes upon Mary and as a result she miraculously conceives. And she will give birth, as unbelievable as it sounds, to the God who becomes a human being. The God-man.
In John1:1 we read:
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The “Word” here, logos, to the Greeks referred to “the eternal rational principle that governs all things.” The Jewish people, on the other hand, used it as way to refer to God. John makes it clear that the Word here was God.
Then in verse 14 we read, “The Word became flesh.”
John 1:14:
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only [Son], who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
In Eugene Peterson’s rendering of this verse in the contemporary version of Scripture The Message, we read, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighbourhood.”
The mystery of Christmas is that the maker of all things shrank down, down, down—so small as to become an embryo, a single fertilized egg, barely visible to the naked eye.
“Immensity cloistered in thy womb,” said the poet John Donne.
“He made himself nothing,” said the Apostle Paul.
Augustine, in the 5th century, wrote:
Maker of the sun,
He is made under the sun.
In the Father he remains,
From his mother he goes forth.
Creator of heaven and earth,
He was born on earth under heaven.
Unspeakably wise,
He is wisely speechless.
Filling the world,
He lies in a manger.
Ruler of the stars,
He nurses at his mother's bosom.
He is both great in the nature of God,
and small in the form of a servant.
This is remarkable. God became an embryo, a fertilized egg, a little baby, born in a cave under the watch of the animals, a baby who had to be breastfed, burped, taught to sleep, toilet-trained, a baby who had to learn to walk, talk, to read, and then to write. A young person had to learn from his father Joseph how to hammer a nail, how to use a saw, and use a carpenter’s plane.
Why?
He became what we were--a son of man, so that we could become who he is--a son of God, a daughter of God.
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
In 2 Corinthians 5:21 we read:
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
How was one person, Jesus Christ, able to pay for all the sins of the whole world?
Jesus was able to pay for and take all of our sins upon himself because he was both God and human. If he were just a perfect human being then, he could only pay the sin of one other person. But because Jesus also was fully God, he was the one person as both a human being, but also as the infinite God, who was able to pay for all of our sins when he died for us on the cross. His humanity plus his infinity as God enabled him to pay for the sins of all people on the cross.
Mark Batterson commenting on these verses, said, “Jesus makes us a deal we can’t refuse.” He says, “Give me all your sin. I’ll give you all my righteousness. And we will call it even.” He trades places with us. He trades spaces with us.
“He came to our place. He took our place. And he invites us back to his place.” (Dick Foth)
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
Like Mary, when we say “yes” to God, when surrender to God, God enters us like an embryo and his life grows within us and we become like God.
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
Marian Wright Edelman says,
“When God wants an important thing done in this world or a wrong righted, He goes about it in a very singular way. He doesn’t release thunderbolts or stir up earthquakes. God simply has a tiny baby born, perhaps of a very humble home, perhaps of a very humble mother. And God puts the idea or purpose into the mother’s heart. And she puts it in the baby’s mind, and then – God waits. The great events of this world are not battles and elections and earthquakes and thunderbolts. The great events are babies, for each child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged with humanity, but is still expecting goodwill to become incarnate in each human life.”
The great events of the world are babies being born… because each baby, each human being has the potential to become a person who carries in their body the very life of God.
The apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4 we have this treasure of God’s life in our jars of clay, our earthly bodies, and the life of Jesus is revealed in us…
God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
Cynthia Maus writes:
God became man so that human beings might become like God. (i.e., through the Spirit).
He took residence on the earth that earth might be more like heaven.
He showed us in His own Son that flesh need not be a devilish thing, but full of grace and truth…
God writes His truth not in flaming letters on the sky, nor does He cast them in bronze or chisel them in marble for the guidance of the race. He writes His truth in human life.
When God’s spirit lives in us, we can become like God.
The promise of Christmas is that God becomes like us so that we might become like him…
This past Tuesday on the front page of The Vancouver Sun there was a story about a homeless young man named Thomas Willis (show photo) who had lived in front of the London Drugs in Kerrisdale and at nights slept in the back alley.
Thomas is not sure, but he believes he was born in Winnipeg. He did not know his father, and his mother, who was addicted to drugs, abandoned him when he a baby, just five months old.
He went on to live in a series of group and foster homes. After he was five, he changed homes about every three months. He was physically and sexually abused in them.
When he was seven years old, he was introduced to cocaine by one of his foster parents, who started Thomas using heroin when he was 8.
As a boy he ran away from his foster homes again and again, but when was 13, he ran away for good. He has lived on the street since he was 13.
He came to Vancouver about 5 years ago.
Four years ago, he was on the streets when he met a woman Kerrisdale from our community whom some of you would know, Sherrill Mair. Sherrill (in the same spirit another member of our community Dr. Kerry Telford Morrissey who died in the plane crash off the waters of Saturna last month) saw Thomas as a person, not as a problem. She saw him as a neighbour. At first, they would talk occasionally, and they got to know one another a little, and she would help Thomas out in small ways, though she never gave him money because she knew it would go to buy drugs.
Sherrill said, "I knew he had caused problems in the neighbourhood from time to time, probably when he was high, but there was something in his eyes that said there was a longing in him, that told me he wanted help."
Sherrill one day asked him what it was he truly wanted.
"He told me he wanted to get off the street," Mair said.
"'REALLY?' Sherrill said. “Yes, REALLY!”
One of the first things she did was drive Thomas to the hospital for an ultrasound. Thomas said, "People don't usually let a street person in their car," he said. "That just doesn't happen. But she was the only one who would drive me to appointments. She is a very brave woman." She drove him to detox. She drove him to doctors' offices and government agencies. She got him signed up for welfare. She picked him up when he got arrested. She gave him gift cards for food. She helped him find a place indoors to live. She started a small trust fund for him. (One of the donors is Mair's 14-year-old son, who donates $10 a month to it from his allowance.)
But, Thomas still struggled with his addiction and Sherrill wondered if her help had done any good. But, Thomas is now in a recovery house, attending AA and NA meetings regularly. He has even helped other homeless people get off the street. In January of this coming year, Thomas Willis, 27, will enroll in high school.
His friendship with Sherrill has ignited in him a passion for a new life.
"If it weren't for her," Thomas said, "I'd still be on the street, if I hadn't killed myself by now.
"She's my angel. She is the thing that God sent me to believe…"
When a human being like Sherrill adjusts her life to become friends with someone like Thomas (a person who has been homeless and who struggles with an addiction), Thomas can change. Mental health experts say that the simple act of being a person’s friend can alter their brain chemistry and improve their functioning in the world.
God adjusted his life for us in the ultimate way. He left the comforts of heaven to come to earth—a journey far greater than one of us moving from the penthouse at the Shangri-La Hotel into a back alley on the Downtown Eastside. God in Jesus Christ, the God-man, took our sin upon himself so we might be forgiven, filled with the Spirit of God, enter into a friendship with God, and be made new.
God becomes like us so that we might become like him… and when happens, as is true for Thomas this Christmas, earth becomes a bit more like heaven.
Pray:
posted by Shigematsu at 1:23 PM
1 Comments:
I especially enjoyed this posting because the author goes into and gives out relevant scripture to the birth of Christ. Usually the sermons are the typical ones where they just touch on the birth of Jesus. If it's a rough draft, it's a good one. I'd really like to post it on my blog for Christmas but it is a CPS reform blog (Child Protective Services) and want to make sure it's okay if I either share it or link to it as this is really beautiful. You can email me at bwalexander3@yahoo.com to let me know.
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