For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich….Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift of Jesus! (2 Corinthians 8:9, 9:15)
Messy World, Messy Stable
Carrie McKean wrote in Christianity Today: When we think about the night of Jesus’ birth, maybe we think of a snowy globe manger scene. All is calm. All is bright. Shake it and the snow gently swirls, then settles over the plastic Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus again. But that’s not correct.
Carrie and her husband volunteered to serve on the outskirts of Beijing, China. It was a Christian mission called New Day Foster Home and cared for medically fragile orphans. Most mornings they walked a mile to work behind a flock of sheep and their shepherd. They smelled that shepherd’s stable long before they saw it. It was filthy. In summer, flies buzzed. In winter, sludge froze solid. It wasn’t like the plastic snowy globe manger scene at all.
Carrie realized afresh that the Son of God came down to be born in Bethlehem into a messy world like that stable in China. Christ came into our filthy, smelly world, full of broken people, broken promises, and broken relationships. A world with disease and mental illness; earthquakes, floods, and fires; and lots of death, mourning, crying, and pain. Yet the Son of God came down to be near us, with us. He is Immanuel.
Thank God, Jesus doesn’t ask us to clean up the mess before he comes. He enters into our messes, with us. He put on human body and soul. He emptied Himself without renouncing or diminishing His deity and became the Shepherd for us, His dirty sheep. Christ didn’t leave us in our mess, but He leads us to green pastures to heal us, rescue us, save us from our sins, and restore our souls. Jesus is the God who sees dirty sheep in a dirty world and comes down to tend us Himself. What a Savior!1
Some Scriptures And Quotation
John 1:1-11: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him (the Son of God) all things were made….In Him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind….The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. The Son of God was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. Jesus came to his own people, and even they rejected him.
Christmas is not about the living God coming to tell us everything’s all right. John’s Gospel isn’t about Jesus speaking the truth and everyone saying: “Of course! Why didn’t we realize it before?” Christmas is about God shining His clear, bright torch into the darkness of our world, our lives, our hearts, our imaginations—and the darkness not comprehending it. It’s about God coming as a human being, speaking words of truth, and nobody knowing what He’s talking about. (N. T. Wright)
More Scriptures And Quotation
Job 9:33-34; 1 Tim 2:5-6: If only there were someone to mediate between us, to bring us together, to remove God’s rod of punishment from us, so that His terror would frighten us no more….There is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom [a substitutionary sacrifice to atone] for all kinds of people.
God became a man since you, a human being, could not reach God. Now you can reach God through Christ Jesus, the mediator between God and human beings. God became a man so that following a man, something you can do, you can reach God, which was formerly impossible to you. (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 AD)
More Scriptures And Quotation
Luke 2:7; Galatians 4:4-5: Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in a manger, because there was no room available for them….When the set time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship [as God’s children with all rights as fully grown members of a family].
The Lord of all comes as a slave amidst poverty. The hunter has no wish to startle His prey. Choosing an unknown village in a remote province, Christ was born of a poor maiden and accepts all that poverty implies, for He hopes by stealth to ensnare us (in a good way) and save us. If He was born to high rank and luxury, unbelievers would say the world had been transformed by wealth. If His birthplace was Rome, they would think transformation came by political skill. If He had been the son of an emperor, they would say: “How useful it is to be powerful!” But Christ chose surroundings poor and simple, ordinary and unnoticed, so that people would know it was God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, alone who changed the world. This was His reason for choosing His mother from among the poor of a very poor country, and for becoming poor Himself. (Theodotus of Ancyra, died 303 AD)
More Scriptures And Quotations
Isaiah 7:14; Luke 1:31-35: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call Him Immanuel….The angel said, “You will conceive and give birth to a son and call Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High….His kingdom will never end….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 the Son of God.”
Despite our efforts to keep God out, He intrudes. The life of Jesus is bracketed by two impossibilities: a virgin’s womb and an empty tomb. Jesus entered our world through a door marked “No Entrance” and left through a door marked “No Exit.” (Peter Larson) The virgin birth has never been a major stumbling block for me. It’s far less mind boggling than the God of all Creation stooping so low as to become one of us. (Madeleine L’Engle)
More Scriptures And Quotation
John 3:16-18: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
There are many reasons God saves you, Christian: to bring glory to Himself, to appease His justice, to demonstrate His sovereignty. But one of the sweetest reasons God saved you is because He loves you. If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If he had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning. Whenever you want to talk, He’ll listen. God can live anywhere in the universe, and He chose to live in you by His Holy Spirit. And the Christmas gift He sent you in Bethlehem? Face it, Christian friend. God is crazy about you! (Max Lucado)
Notes: Quotations have been adapted for length and clarity. 1 Filthy Night, Fetid Night, Christianity Today, December 19, 2023.