John 1:16 “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” 

Our translation is a little interpretive here, but it gets the idea across. “One blessing after another” is literally “grace upon grace.” Grace is God’s gift-love. The picture is that grace just keeps piling up with one gift coming right after another in a stream of gifts that never ends.

What do these gifts look like? Let’s unpackage a few of them. The foundational gift is God’s love itself. Jesus preached it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” He lived it. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love” (John 15:9). He finally gave up his life for it. “No greater love has anyone than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

Isn’t this the one gift almost everyone wants most of all–to be loved? And isn’t this one of the hardest things for us to believe–that we are loved, just as we are, imperfections and all? How much sinful behavior doesn’t come from our insecurities about being loved and lovable?

Young people become promiscuous because they want to create an illusion that someone loves them. But sex isn’t love.

We pile up more possessions, more stuff, than anyone can reasonably use, and shop without control, because we are trying to fill some hole in our heart. But things aren’t love.

We smoke something, or drink something, or pop something, or inject something to numb our emotional pain and forget our emptiness. But being buzzed or wasted isn’t being loved.

We criticize others and pick at their faults to feel better about ourselves. But pride and self-righteousness may cut us off from love more than all the rest.

Jesus gives us more than substitutes and counterfeits and distractions. He gives us the genuine artifact. He gives us grace, the gift of love from God that we don’t have to deserve or earn. And from that gift, we receive so many more. I’m sure you’ve seen Russian nesting dolls before. They are made of hollowed wood, and they stack inside of each other, so that if you pull the two halves of a doll apart, inside is another just like it, only smaller so that it can fit inside. If you pull that one apart, you find the same thing, and so on. While a typical set has from three to twelve dolls, as many as twenty-five is not unusual.

Can’t we open up God’s gift of grace in a similar way, and keep finding new gifts contained within? Because God loves us he forgives all our sins, and Jesus paid the supreme price to make it so. Because God forgives us, our fear and doubt are replaced by faith. Because we trust God and know that our sins are forgiven, we have peace in our lives. Because our hearts are at peace and God loves us, we can experience real joy, even when our outward circumstances aren’t so positive. When God’s love leads us to faith, the Holy Spirit comes and lives in our hearts. In addition to love, peace, and joy, he starts producing “kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22). As a redeemed and forgiven child of God my life is filled with purpose now. Even when I die my soul will go to live with God until he brings my body back to life on the last day, perfected and glorified.

That’s more than death insurance. It’s part of a mighty river of gifts that never stop flowing over us from the spring of divine grace. And every one of them traces its origin back to Christ, who has come to give us such gifts in the first place.

Matthew 2:9-11 “After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him.”

            Before the Magi offered Jesus the three gifts that we know so well from this story, they gave him something worth at one and the same time far more and far less than the treasures that follow. They gave their hearts. Why else would they be so filled with joy when they saw the star again? In the Greek, Matthew actually piles up four terms to emphasize how happy they were: they rejoiced with an exceedingly great joy. This trip was not just a matter of duty or a way to satisfy their curiosity. Their hearts were fully invested in this quest.

            How else could they recognize this King when they found him? What did they see when they entered the house? A poor teenage girl holding a baby in an ordinary house in little town off the beaten trail. Nothing about the scene in front of them suggested royalty, much less divinity. Still, they bowed down and worshiped him. Why?

            People often say that “seeing is believing,” and often that’s true. But sometimes, it is the other way around. Sometimes, believing is seeing. Now, there are those who would criticize such an idea as people deceiving themselves. You see what you want to see, whether it is true or not–maybe especially when it is not true. A paper from Yale university reported that scientists make more mathematical errors when the correct math leads to conclusions that conflict with their political views. Like me, you have probably been sent some story by email about a political figure you didn’t particularly like. You were inclined to believe it, maybe even passed it on, because it demonstrated what was so bad about the person. Then you were embarrassed to learn that the story was “fact-free,” no truth to it at all. Believing is seeing.

            But in God’s kingdom, “believing is seeing” doesn’t mean we see what we want to see. It means we see what we otherwise can’t see. Faith allows us to see spiritual truths not visible to our physical eyes. Faith pulls back God’s curtain to let us see what is hiding behind it. Because the Magi trusted God, because he had their hearts, they could see their King, their Savior, and their God in the ordinary looking boy sitting on his mother’s lap.

            So what is this gift that God first desires, the gift of our hearts? On the one hand, can you imagine a gift less appealing? They are naturally so black with sin that there is no real love for God left in them. They don’t offer themselves to God. They are spiritually empty and powerless. Swedish writer Bo Giertz once described the heart as a rusty old tin can God finds on the trash heap–a fine birthday gift to offer the King!

            But a wonderful Lord passes by, has mercy on the tin can, thrusts his walking stick through it, rescues it from the junk pile, and takes it home with him. He works the change that makes our hearts his gift. His own love purifies that heart. His forgiveness shines it up. He knows that once he has the heart, he has our whole selves, and then our whole lives come along to worship the King.

1 Peter 1:23 “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

God illustrates some important truths for us when he describes coming to faith as being “born again.” It illustrates our helplessness. You know people whose pregnancies were filled with uncertainty. Think of how weak, how frail, and how dependent that little baby is before it is born. It didn’t produce its own life. It simply received life from its parents. No baby decides for itself when it will be born. When the time is right, the mother’s body gives birth.

There are many parallels with our spiritual life. Because of sin, we are helpless, totally dependent on God. We have no spiritual life until we receive it from our heavenly Father. Without Christ we are not just spiritually confused or weak. We have no spiritual life at all. This still applies to our sinful natures. Since we must be born again, we are utterly dependent on God. He alone gives us spiritual life.

Peter tells us that God has given this new life through the living and enduring word of God. This word of God is alive. It has a life of its own. Even though you cannot detect a heartbeat, even though you are not able hear it breathing, it lives and accomplishes great things.

The living heartbeat of God’s word is the overwhelming love he gave in the life Jesus lived for us and sacrificed to save us. Its breath is the breath of the Holy Spirit. Like a good germ, this message of love empowered by the Holy Spirit invades our souls and transforms our minds. It drives out doubt and despair. It creates a new life which says, “I trust God and I know he will take care of me.” It overpowers sin and creates a heart that wants to do what is good. It is more alive, more full of life, than anything else we will ever know in this life.

This word of God also endures. Peter illustrates this in the words of Isaiah: “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” We are all like grass and flowers. We are flimsy and frail. Our health doesn’t hold up. We don’t last very long. Seventy, eighty, even one hundred years aren’t that long compared to the great span of history.

Like grass and flowers, our shallow glory fades. The next generation will barely remember our accomplishments. How we looked and what we did just last year is already little more than a memory. The Apostle James sums it up this way: “What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

But the word of the Lord stands forever. Long before any of us existed, the word of God was there, the same word we know today. Long after we are all gone, the word will still stand. It will still be the same. It will be comforting, supporting, empowering, and giving life to a new generation, just as it has done for you and me.

Luke 2:21 “On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given to him before he had been conceived.”

We tend to name our children because we like the way the name sounds. Some celebrities give their children strange sounding names like “Football Helmet” or “Pilot Inspektor” or “Moon Unit,” I think because they are unique and they draw attention. I will resist the temptation to say anything more about the practice.

Some people get their names because they run in the family. There is history and tradition behind the name. Some parents name their children after best friends or heroes or people they respected.

The names God gives himself are all meaningful and descriptive. His names are ways that he reveals things about himself to us. The name “Jesus” is no exception.

It was traditional for Jewish families to make a son’s name official on the day he was circumcised. Circumcision officially recognized the boy’s identity as one of God’s chosen people. It made sense to give him the name which would identify him on that day as well.

Unlike other parents, Mary and Joseph didn’t get to pick the name of their first child. That had been chosen by God before he was born. Angels had visited both mother and stepfather to make sure they were both aware.

It wasn’t a strange name. Archeologists have discovered the tombs of at least 70 people named Jesus who lived in Israel about the same time. It is a shorter form of “Joshua,” which was shared by several prominent people in the Old Testament. We know it best from the man who led Israel after Moses.

The name means “The LORD saves,” (that’s LORD as in Jehovah or Yahweh). The angel told Joseph to name him this because “he will save his people from their sins.” Every time we hear or use the name “Jesus,” then, we have a little gospel sermon promising us the forgiveness of our sins.

As we begin another year, doesn’t Jesus’ name promise us new beginnings? When two people live with resentments, they are living in the past. I can’t tell you how much marriage counseling I have done, and it is all about what she did behind my back, and what he said about me in front of the family, and how he always fails to do his part, and she can never control her spending. Two such people are living in the past. It drives everything about their relationship in the present. In one way, marriage counseling is easy, because what we need to do is almost always the same. Someone has to say, “I’m sorry,” and mean it, and someone else has to say, “I forgive you,” and mean it. Unfortunately, those two phrases happen to be two of the hardest things for anyone to say.

The name Jesus received on this day promises us that our God is ready and waiting to say, “I forgive you.” He doesn’t want to live in our past. He wants to put it behind him and us. He wants a day of new beginnings for him and for us, a year of new beginnings, a lifetime of new beginnings. His forgiveness promises that we can start fresh, like it never even happened. Jesus’ name promises that his forgiveness is real, because he came and saved us from our sins.

As we start 2024 together, I can wish you a happy new year, but I certainly can’t promise you one. For all I know the year ahead may be filled with more anxiety and heartache than the year we leave behind. But I can promise you this: with the Lord, every day will be a day of new beginnings, cleansed of sin. God promises it is so, in Jesus’ name.

Luke 2:21 “On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise him, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he had been conceived.”

Circumcision was God’s way of saying to a Jewish boy, “You belong to me.” Other nations practiced circumcision for other reasons. But God had said to Abraham, “Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you” (Gen. 17). This covenant was God’s promise to have nations come from Abraham, to be his God and the God of his descendants, and to live in the land of Canaan.

To be truly circumcised, and to be part of God’s “deal” with Abraham and his family, required more than the outward procedure, the surgical removal of a little piece of skin. The Apostle Paul explained in his letter to the Romans, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, and not the written code” (Romans 2). The idea of “circumcision of the heart” is an idea Paul echoes from the prophet Jeremiah. What it says is that God gave the outward sign to help support faith, but without faith in the heart the outward sign did not make the God of Abraham your God all by itself. Circumcision could make a contribution to your faith. It could not serve as a substitute for faith.

The details God chose for this procedure were not arbitrary. They said something about the message he was trying to communicate. First, a piece of flesh had to be taken. Its removal was a reminder that there is something in our flesh that stands between us and a good relationship with God–namely our sin. It has to be removed for us to belong to God and for God to belong to us.

That piece of skin was taken where a man is involved in giving new life to a new generation. God was reminding them, and us, that sin is with us from the very first moments we exist. We may all commit sins of various sorts. But our real problem is with original sin, the sinful condition we have from our origins.

The second thing to note about circumcision was the timing. Jesus was circumcised “on the eighth day.” “Every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised,” God told Abraham 2000 years earlier. “Eight” is a meaningful number. There are seven days in a week. God created the world in seven days. The eighth day is the first day of a new week. Eight is the number God uses when he wants to say, “There is new life here, a new creation.” When Jesus rose from the dead, you remember what day of the week that was? It was Sunday, the eighth day of the old week, the first day of the new week, the first day of his new life after death.

Unless you were an adult convert to Judaism, God commanded that baby boys be circumcised on the eighth day. It was his way of saying, “There is new life here. When I become your God, and you become my child, then you are a new creation.” Jesus was circumcised on the eighth day, too, not because he had any sin, but God was saying to all of us, “There is new life here. I am his God, and he is my child, and Jesus is truly, in every way, a new creation.”

So what does this have to do with us? In his circumcision, Jesus began his life of law-keeping. On this day he was circumcised. Thirty-two days later he would be presented in the temple with sacrifices. Going forward he would keep the Sabbath, and attend the Passover, and honor his parents, and fulfill the whole law of Moses. This set us free from our need to keep the whole thing ourselves. We begin this year, we live every day, as free people. We aren’t driven by the old threats that say, “Do this, or else…”

On this day Jesus spilled his first blood as our Savior. His circumcision anticipates and foreshadows the complete payment for our sins by his blood shed on the cross. Our entire sinful past, our entire sinful future for that matter, is washed away and disappears under the flood of grace pouring from his sacrifice on Calvary. Spiritually, it is always a fresh start for us.

I suspect that you begin your day with a little time in the bathroom–a shower, a bath, a shave, brushed teeth, and new, clean clothes for the day. You start fresh without yesterday’s dirt coming along.

Spiritually, that’s how we start every day as well. It’s a new beginning, because the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins. That is all anticipated, promised if you will, in Jesus’ circumcision.

Luke 2:6-7 “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Everyday there are people who want to worm their way into my life. I receive junk emails from people in other countries who claim that they want to send me millions of dollars. As friendly as their offers sound, I won’t be seeking a relationship with any of them.

I receive telemarketing calls and texts on my cell phone. Often it’s a recorded message telling me I have won something or making a credit card offer. I don’t press the number to talk to a live person or return the call.

Sales people visit my office with various proposals. They would like to do janitorial work, or building maintenance, or design our audio-visual system. Those are all legitimate services, and I don’t fault them for asking. But I know they don’t ask because they are deeply concerned about me or my church. They are mostly concerned about drumming up some business for themselves.

At Christmas, someone came who wanted to work his way into our lives. The things he promised could sound as outlandish as the junk emails promising millions for nothing. But he didn’t come to take advantage of our gullibility, or merely to drum up business for himself. He isn’t running a scam. He doesn’t practice a trade. He genuinely came to give, and to serve. One way I know this is that, when he came, he embraced a manger as his first bed. That is an astounding truth not just because of the lowliness of it all, but the enormity of the one who squeezed himself into that little space.

In the final scenes of the final book of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, the children who are the heroes of the series take refuge from a battle in a little shed or barn. On the outside it is just a little building. But when they go through the door, they find a whole new world on the inside. This shed is, if you will, bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. One of the children observes, ““In our world too, a stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.”

That, of course, is the scene in front of us at Christmas. A stable, and a manger, contained the eternal God who is bigger than the whole universe.

It all sounds a little claustrophobic, doesn’t it–to go from filling and exceeding the entire universe to living in a cramped little body in a cramped little box in a cramped little building? But that’s what a loving Savior does when he comes down. He isn’t merely willing to spend time with little people. He makes himself small–smaller, and poorer than the average soul. He came to be our servant, you see. So he embraces the humility of a manger, and later on a little cross of wood, and after that a cold, stone tomb, where for three days they sealed the lifeless body of the eternal God who fills all things.

He did it so that we, too, could be bigger on the inside than we are on the outside. He did it so that saving faith, and the infinite God, and endless love could live in our little hearts. He did it so that one day we could come up to the vast expanse of his home above, where he lives, and his love rules, forever.

At Christmas I am thankful that he found his way into my world, and into my heart.

Luke 2:4-6 “So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.”

Neither Nazareth nor Bethlehem were the center of the world at the time. Rome was the center of power. Athens, Greece or Alexandria, Egypt were great centers of culture and learning. Even in Israel, Jerusalem was the beating heart of the nation.

Bethlehem was just a distant little suburb. Nazareth was an insignificant village in a disrespected province, a place where the people talked funny and did things backwards. You may remember when Jesus called a man named Philip to be his disciple, and Philip invited his friend Nathaniel to come and meet Jesus. “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote–Jesus of Nazareth…” “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”

And yet, when Christ came down from heaven, he was conceived in one and born in the other. These were the two little towns he visited and considered his home–not the capital of the empire or the capital of his own country. It was here where the simple, ordinary people lived–shepherds and carpenters, innkeepers and maidens–that he grew up and learned his trade. He did not consider himself too proud, or too important, to make these people his people. And until the day he died it was mostly people like this who followed him and called him Lord.

Where do you come from? Where do you call home? I live in Norman, Oklahoma. It has a university. It fancies itself as a cultured, open-minded, inclusive place. Not so long ago it wasn’t very cultured, open-minded, or inclusive at all. Fifty years ago it was still a “sundown” town. People of color had to leave before the sun set or expect trouble. I don’t point this out to minimize the progress that has been made since then. I am simply saying that coming from this mid-sized Midwestern city isn’t going to impress people the way that residence in New York, Los Angeles, London, or Paris might.

My family doesn’t come from anywhere prestigious. My parents grew up in little farming towns in Minnesota. I remember the sign along the highway saying the population of my dad’s hometown was 300 when I was a little boy. Places like these are in the middle of the country. People on the east or west coast call this “flyover territory.” It’s their way of saying, “Not much going on in that part of the world.”

Most of us are ordinary people who get up in the morning and try to make a living. History will not remember our names, not even in a footnote.

And yet, Jesus did not consider himself too proud or too important to make people like us his people. He still comes down to us. He visits our little towns, too, not dressed in human skin and human clothes, but clothed in the gospel message that speaks his forgiveness and makes his home in our hearts.

He came to us in the hands that baptized us and the mouths that taught us to know him–a parent, a pastor, a Sunday School teacher, a friend. He comes down to us today, to visit the humble little church while we hear his word. He still visits our little towns, wherever they are, like he visited two little towns called Nazareth and Bethlehem, when he came down to save us.

Luke 2:1-3 “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria). And everyone went to his own town to register.”

On the day that Jesus was born, Caesar Augustus was the most powerful man in the world. The Roman Empire was the world’s greatest superpower. The historians tell us that this census, which may also have included paying a tax (like you remember from the King James translation of these verses), was a huge innovation from the emperor. Nothing on this scale had ever been tried before. It continued to be done every fourteen years for the next two hundred years.

No doubt the emperor prided himself for his great new idea. It demonstrated his political genius, his competence to govern this vast collection of countries under his control. It reinforced the power and glory of Rome, the capital of the civilized world.

It wasn’t really the emperor’s idea. Seven hundred years earlier the God of Israel had made a promise through the prophet Micah. He announced that a new King, an eternal King, a universal King, a divine King, was going to come and deliver his people Israel and rule the world. He was going to be born in Bethlehem. God doesn’t take his promises lightly. Jesus could have been born anywhere, and he would still be the Savior, the King. But God said he would come from Bethlehem, and if that meant he had to move an empire to make it happen, so be it. In order for him to come down, God moved an emperor to issue the decree that moved an empire. The most powerful man in the most powerful nation had no choice but to submit to the will of God.

Sometimes I look at the world in which I live, and I doubt, or I forget. On the national and world scene, the people in power manage to make one mess of things after another. There may be a war on terrorism, but there certainly hasn’t been a victory. Injustices pile up. Social problems grow, too many to list here. Corruption infects everyone and everything.

Close to home, frustration is never far away. I can’t get ahead like I want. I can’t get work done like I want. I can’t control my own behavior like I want. And the question rises in my head, “Where is God in all of this?”

The answer is, “He is here, on Christmas day.” When Love came down that first Christmas, he didn’t magically repair all the suffering and dysfunction in the world. That’s not what he came for. He came as Love, not Control, not Judgment. But for his purposes, to redeem a lost world from sin, to rescue me from the death and hell I deserved, he came with all the power he needed.

People who are passionate about doing something for someone else sometimes say, “I would move heaven and earth to…” You fill in the blank: “to be with you,” “to get you back,” “to help you recover.” When God wanted to save you, he moved an entire empire to come down to you, so that Jesus could live and die as our Savior.

Philippians 4:6 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Worry is a joy-killer. Don’t do it, ever, about anything, Paul warns. Sometimes we are inclined to defend our worry. It seems legitimate to us when the stakes are high or the danger is real. We worry when our hopes and dreams are dying. My brother wanted to be a fighter pilot. His vision wasn’t quite good enough to become a candidate. Then he thought he wanted to be a doctor. His academics just weren’t impressive enough to get accepted into medical school. Surely you would understand if he felt a little anxious about his future at that point. But don’t do it, Paul says. Don’t be anxious about anything.

Almost twenty years ago I got called out of the middle of a church meeting and told to go home because one of my children had collapsed and was unconscious. As I drove up to my home, there was the ambulance parked outside. That’s about a parent’s worst nightmare. You probably wouldn’t fault me if I felt a little anxious getting out of the car and going inside. Indeed, I was. But Paul’s words still stand. “Don’t be anxious about anything.”

Anxiety and joy find it impossible to coexist. When one comes, the other goes. And Paul insists that it is always time for joy, so anxiety has to go. That’s where the invitation to prayer comes in. “In everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Imagine that you had a supernatural friend who was inseparable. Wherever you went, he went. He was besides you at all times. More than that, this supernatural friend could fix anything. He was more than handy. My dad is handy, and he can fix just about anything structural or mechanical. He showed me how to do car repairs and body work. Where I was a little tentative about doing something that might damage the car, he would grab the tools and jump right in. He can sweat pipes, wire electrical boxes, tape and bed drywall, build cabinets, shingle a roof. He’s handy.

But this supernatural friend can fix anything. Lou Gehrig’s disease is usually considered a death sentence, but this guy can make it go away. The U.S. government says that student loan debt cannot be forgiven, but this guy can make it happen. If World War III were to break out today between the U.S. and Russia and China and ISIS, your supernatural friend cannot only end it tomorrow, he can turn all the warring parties into instant allies.

You already know that this supernatural friend is not imaginary. He is your Savior. Time and time again he has shown that for him the laws of physics are not laws. They are only suggestions. He evens turns death backwards into life. He has already taken the debt of all our sins, even the sins we have not yet committed in time, far more than we could ever repay in a thousand lifetimes or with a thousand deaths, and he has wiped our record clean by his death on a cross.

It is this friend who now says to you, “Do you have a problem? Just ask. I am here to help. I can make anything go away. Better yet, I can transform anything that seems bad into a blessing. And I mean anything. In many, if not most, cases, that is how I prefer to work.”

Isn’t that what Paul is promising here? Isn’t that invitation to prayer a reason for us to kick out anxiety and be filled with joy at any time? My friend Lois used to have a sign on her refrigerator that read, “Good morning. This is God. I will be handling all of your problems today. I will not need your help. So, have a good day.” Maybe you have seen that before. Give him your problems in prayer, and live your life in joy.