“But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.’” [Luke 2:10-11]
Merry Christmas all! Today is a day of joy and celebration! It’s essentially day one of God’s rescue mission to save His people from darkness! Do you see it like that? Do you see that you are so helpless without Him that His coming to earth is worth celebrating like this? Do we see that there is a reason to be full of joy, full of hope, and full of peace? I know I often forget all of this. But it’s incredible! Think about it, we were all walking to our death and all of a sudden God comes down to earth to save us, to pull us out of darkness. How relieving is that! He is finally here and this day is a day to remember that we were once lost, and now we have been found. We were once broken, and now we are made whole. We were once dead, and now we are alive! No wonder we go all out at Christmastime to celebrate and be merry, we have so much to be merry about! But what is so incredible to me is how God chooses to do His work…
This is not just a nice story about a baby and a star and some shepherds and livestock. This is not just a story to make you feel good inside. This is not just a story to tell around the Christmas tree while sipping hot chocolate. In fact, this is not just a story at all. This is history. This is our God. And this is just as relevant today as it was on that night when Christ was born. This is truth. This is our beautiful reality.
“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” [Philippians 2:6-8]
God chooses to leave His throne and come to earth as a human, to humble himself to the level of a man, to come save us. Save us from what exactly? From ourselves, and from the evil one. As a shepherd protects his sheep from attacks with his rod and from themselves with his staff, so did God come down to protect us from the evil one and from ourselves. David said, “Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” [Psalm 23:4] He came to save us from death, for He is our shepherd. He is a God of love and life. And He is a God of justice, so He came to save us in love and truth. But He came as a baby—the most helpless and vulnerable form. And He came out of a scandalous situation since His parents were not yet married. His parents would have faced a lot of opposition because of their circumstances. This amazes me, why in the world would God choose to enter the world like this? He can do whatever he wants right? Right. So he chose to make something beautiful out of something unlikely. He was born in a humble manger, out of a scandalous circumstance. The God of the universe came into the world in an unlikely way and changed the world forever. Later in life He would save the world as the product of another unlikely circumstance. Death—something very obviously negative—He turns into the most joyful and beautiful event to ever occur because it saved us.
“O holy night, the stars are brightly shining;
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope, the weary soul rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”
-O Holy Night
My God likes to take unlikely circumstances and make them beautiful. Things that no one would ever expect to produce anything good. Nathanael said to Philip, “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” [John 1:46] What better way to show the world how glorious and powerful He is? It makes sense for good things to come of good circumstances, but good things from bad circumstances? That’s when people pay attention. That’s when people are changed forever.
“But a certain sign of grace is this
From a broken earth flowers come up
Pushing through the dirt…
And the truest sign of grace was this
From wounded hands redemption fell down
Liberating man”
-David Crowder Band, “Wholly Yours”
(In fact, just go listen to the whole song; it says what I am trying to say better than I can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrj0PriR9Bs)
Everyone loves a good story about someone beating the odds and making something of themselves when the whole world is against them. There is power in doing the unthinkable, the unlikely, and the seemingly impossible. This is our God. He makes beauty out of pain. Love out of hate. Peace out of chaos. He really is that good. He made humans out of dust. He restored the world through a flood. He saved the Hebrew people from Egypt through Moses, a Hebrew that grew up in the pharaoh’s household after his mother sent him down the river to save him from death. David, frequently called “a man after God’s own heart”, was also an adulterer and murderer from whose line Jesus would eventually be born. He came into the world as a baby and died a brutal death in the greatest act of love ever known to save His people. Then He spread His gospel through Paul, arguably the most influential man in the early church, who used to be a persecutor of Christians. The list goes on and on.
It doesn’t end there. God still chooses unlikely people to do His work and show His glory to the world. He makes beautiful things out of brokenness, pain, and suffering. Our bad circumstances only grow us closer to Him and strengthen us. The things that hurt us and tempt us make us more aware of how tightly God’s grip on us really is. In Christ, we both die to ourselves and gain incredible life in Him. We see the depth of our sin more and more, but we gain an even greater understanding of how deeply we are loved. He makes good things out of unlikely circumstances. We are a part of a story much bigger than ourselves and it is being written perfectly and beautifully. God is pretty brilliant, I mean, we cannot understand how good God is without also seeing how bad things are. To see Him for who He is, we must have something to compare it to. We cannot understand how deeply His love is without knowing how unworthy we are. We cannot understand His power without hitting rock bottom and being completely powerless. We cannot understand His goodness without seeing how disgusting and vile we, as humans, truly are at our core. We cannot understand how incredible it is that He has rescued us until we see how badly we need to be rescued.
But these bad things only increase our joy on this day. How much more excited we are about the coming of the savior when we know how badly we need to be saved! How much more we want to celebrate! Who says my God is boring!? No way. He is incredible and glorious and powerful and beautiful and bold and creative. He takes unlikely, hopeless circumstances and surprises us by bringing us goodness and peace and love and joy through them. Today is not just a day to make us feel good, it is a day to remember how the world has been changed. A day to remember the reality that we live in—that we are so broken and helpless and He has come to save us with love and power. A day for worship of our King who came to bring hope in a world of darkness—to bring life to the dead. How incredible is our God!?
Merry Christmas my dear friends! May you see how radical His love really is and may He make beautiful things from your unlikely circumstances. Know that He loves you on this Christmas day, and all others, for He came down for you, to save you from the darkness and bring you life and great joy!
“All around, Hope is springing up from this old ground, Out of chaos life is being found in You, You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of the dust”
-Gungor, “Beautiful Things”
