Luke 1:26-27 “In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.”

On many levels, Mary’s personal resume was unimpressive. She was from Nazareth, a town in Galilee. You remember the words that Nathanael once said to Philip about this little town? “Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” It had a reputation a little like parts of Appalachia in our country–relatively poor, working class at best, not the most educated people in the world, certainly not the center of society, progress, or power.

Her station in life was a virgin engaged to be married. At least she had lived a respectable life so far. She was a young lady of solid morals and proper self-control. In our time, far too many people would consider that a strike against her. Like most brides-to-be, she probably had big plans for her wedding. Jewish weddings tended to be elaborate celebrations when they could afford it. It doesn’t seem that the wedding turned out quite the way she had been planning it.

Overall, she was an ordinary girl from an ordinary town. Most would expect her to live and die without anyone ever taking notice. No one ever expected her to get her name in a history book or carved on a monument.

But have you noticed that God likes ordinary people for his big plans? What did Paul tell the Corinthians? “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of this world to shame the strong.”

He chooses a shepherd, like David, to be a king. He chooses fishermen, the kind of guys you would see on the Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch, to found his religion. He makes them the leading educators, administrators, and promoters of Christianity. He chooses a teenage girl planning her wedding for the awesome task he is about to announce. God likes ordinary people for his big plans.

Do we become too concerned about being extraordinary to serve God’s plans for ordinary people like you and me? God doesn’t care about how high we rise in the eyes of the world. He doesn’t care about greatness in the public eye. Our designs for greatness get in the way for his real plans for us too often. They usually have more to do with our pride than God’s will, and God has no use for prideful people. That’s why hell is full of them.

Or do we fall into an opposite sin? We excuse ourselves from service because we feel we are nothing special. We say something like this (you fill in the blank): “I’m only a …” What was Mary? What was David? What were the disciples? Do you think people would have gotten tongue-tied while meeting them, like some nervous fan who meets a movie star? They were ordinary people who listened to what God told them. Our ordinary status is no excuse for shirking our responsibility when God comes calling and opting out of serving in his plans.

Doesn’t Mary’s very ordinariness underline the truth that God’s plans for her were based on his grace? What the angel was about to tell Mary was a gift, not a paycheck. She hadn’t earned it by distinguishing herself. She received it because God loved her, like he loves us all, without conditions, in spite of our flaws. God’s grace not only frees us from our sins. It qualifies us to serve him. If we understand ourselves properly, it is the only thing that does.

Luke 1:69-72 “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us…salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us–to show mercy to our fathers…”

Sin, Satan, and our old Self–these are the true enemies from which Jesus comes to bring us salvation. These are the true source of our miseries. We may think that much of it is just “natural.” Hurricanes are just part of the natural weather cycles and patterns. They cause a lot of misery, but they are just a random act of nature. Diseases, like the kinds that land us in the hospital, or obligate us to a life of taking pills, are just a natural part of being human, especially of getting older.

But this stuff isn’t purely “natural.” It is the result of sin. God subjected his whole creation to frustration as a result of sin. It doesn’t work right anymore. God uses these things as a reminder that our own hearts and souls aren’t right.

Much of our misery is self-inflicted, because sin leads us to ignore God’s commands. Disobeying our parents leads to spankings, or being grounded, or far worse things later if we don’t learn our lesson. If we fail to control our tongues, we may say something to a friend that ends a friendship, to an employer that ends our employment, to a spouse that ends a marriage, or at least lands us on the couch for a few nights. When we forget the Sabbath Day instead of remembering it, we carry our guilty burdens alone, and we live life less and less aware of God’s presence or promises. We could multiply examples for all the commandments. But the greater misery is that sin, and Satan, and our Old Self lead us down a path away from God that ends in the eternal miseries of hell.

So God looked down on our world from heaven above, and this is what he saw. Much of the world was unaware of the source of their miseries, or of the greater miseries awaiting them. They were like chickens in one of those huge operations you can sometimes see from the road. They live in a cage all day long, and eat the food they are fed, mostly unaware that life could be any different. And when the day comes that the cage door finally opens, they don’t even realize the fate that is waiting for them. They will land on someone’s dinner table in just a few short days.

If people do have some sense of their predicament, and how helpless we are, life is a frantic but futile attempt to avoid the eternal fires ahead. They get busy trying to do good, trying to pay for their sins themselves, unaware or unwilling to believe that this just can’t be a do-it-yourself project. Based on human attempts, human activity, “…the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough–that he should live on forever and not see decay,” the psalmist teaches in Psalm 49.

So God looked down, and what he saw moved him. It moved him to mercy. He came with more than relief for the irritations and annoyances that plague our body and life. Mercy led him to rescue our souls. “Salvation” Zechariah sings in his song from Luke 1. The guilt of our sins was crushing our souls to death, so Jesus came and lifted the burden. He relieved us of the heavy load and carried our guilt himself. He gave up his life so that we could be free from the consequences of our sins, and enjoy a new life infinitely better than the one we deserve.

The fear of our future was choking our faith. So Jesus changed that future from a hellish one to a heavenly one. The fate we feared has been replaced with God’s favor, and we have the confidence to approach God secure that our souls have a safe home with him forever.

Luke 1:69-72 “He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us– to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant.”

You know that not all the help we receive means we mean a lot to the helper. I once visited someone in the hospital who was struggling with great pain. One of the nurses in particular was gifted at helping this patient get relief. When my friend thanked the nurse for her compassion and for caring so much, the nurse made a rather startling confession. “I don’t care about you or your pain. I care about my job. That’s the reason why I work so hard at this.”

Don’t we have to make similar admissions? Sometimes we help because we care so deeply about someone, but not always. Sometimes our mercy, if you can call it that, comes because we have been made to feel guilty. Then it may come with a grudge.

If we can advertise the help we give a little, like the Pharisees Jesus accused of making a public spectacle of their charitable gifts, we might like what it does for our pride. Maybe, like the nurse I mentioned, it’s just our job. In other cases, it may be nothing more than a matter of necessity: the stalled car ahead is blocking the road, and you aren’t going to get through until someone pushes it off to the side, so you get out to help.

It would not be impossible to think of God’s help that way, at least in some of the time. Does he help me just because he has created these great cosmic principles by which everything is supposed to work, and he doesn’t want to break his own rules? Is the help I get today nothing more than a piece in a puzzle in some far grander scheme, and it is just my good fortune that my need fit into that plan? Many religions have gods who work mostly out of self-interest. Eastern religions don’t have personal gods at all, just an impersonal “force” of some sort. And how can an impersonal force care about me?

But “mercy” means more than God’s help. Mercy means that when God looks at our misery he is genuinely moved by what he sees. He is filled with compassion. Crying children stir something inside of us that makes us want to help, to relieve their suffering, even if the children are complete strangers. It’s a matter of the heart as much as it is the hands.

So we see God’s mercy so often in Jesus’ ministry. He came to preach to a people who were spiritually starving. These souls had been fed the spiritual equivalent of sawdust–no grace, just rules. Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds, “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” When Jesus goes to comfort his friends Mary and Martha at the death of their brother Lazarus, and he sees them crying, he is so moved by their grief that he starts to cry himself. Then, of course, he follows with the mercy of bringing Lazarus back to life.

Do you see what this means for you and me? Because Jesus is full of mercy, we have more than God’s help. We have a place in his heart. Our misery genuinely moves him, and it moves him to help. Even when help seems a long time in coming, and our prayers don’t seem to be answered, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care.

Sometimes God’s mercies to you and me involve things that pain him to see us suffer, but because it’s necessary to help and save us, he lets it continue until we are safe. At no time is his relationship with us a cold, impersonal, professional relationship. God has mercy because he genuinely cares, and that means we have a place in his heart.

John 1:29 “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’”

Travel and Christmas have gone together for hundreds of years. From “Over the River and Through the Woods to Grandmother’s House We Go” of the mid-1800’s to the Home Alone movies, families traveling at Christmas are something of a tradition. Many of you will be traveling this season. Commercials capitalize on the warm and sentimental feelings we feel about traveling to see family.

Our current season of Advent means coming. It celebrates the coming of the original Christmas guest. But who is he, really? John the Baptist urge us to take a closer look at who is coming for Christmas, for Jesus is the Lamb of God.

In our day, Jesus is well known, or at least his name is. But what people make of him varies widely, even inside Christian churches. One popular version of Jesus today is the therapeutic Jesus. This is the Jesus who has come to help you feel good about yourself. He would never judge you, confront you, or make a fuss about your sins. He has come to give you a shoulder to cry on. He helps you to reach your full potential. He tells you to believe in yourself. He is consistently leading you toward the great goal of life, which is to be happy.

Then there is advice-columnist Jesus. The practical hints he can distribute know no end. He can improve your relationships, move your career forward, or show you how to raise your children. Some days he will even delve into what kind of car to drive, what sort of investments to make, or what kinds of food to eat.

Whether you have been tempted to follow any of these versions of Jesus or another that I haven’t mentioned, they illustrate a problem. We want to mold and shape our Savior to fit our needs as we define them. The Jews of his day had their own version: National military hero Jesus. It’s why they couldn’t recognize the real thing when he came.

We want to mold and shape Jesus this way because we don’t want to accept God’s diagnosis of our problem, his evaluation of our need. If we did, we would see that our problem is not a matter of psychology, relationships, or ignorance. Our main problem is that we are sinners who have offended a holy God. We have not loved God nor our neighbor as we should. We have set ourselves on a path toward hell. The more we redefine Jesus, the more we are sinking into a subtle idolatry that takes us farther away from the help we truly need.

But who is coming for Christmas? “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” “Lamb of God” Jesus is coming. He is more than a cute, cuddly, gentle being. Jesus came to be a sacrifice, just like the Passover lambs offered every year. His mission was to give up his life for us.

By dying, he takes away the sin of the world. God’s solution for sin is not to try to overlook it or ignore it. Sin is far too serious for that. It creates one misery after another for God’s children. It is always fatal in those who have it. It condemns souls to hell. It cries out for God’s attention and practically begs him to do something about it.

Nor can God simply excuse it. If he were to do so, he would cease to be holy and just. There can be no truce, no acceptance, no peace between God and sin.

Instead, he sends the Lamb of God to take it away. He bears it as though every sin ever committed were his fault. His body absorbs all the guilt ever produced. He carries it to the cross where he gives up his life. In that sacrifice on the cross our sin is not only taken away, it is fully and finally disposed of. We have been completely freed of the burden.

Do you see who’s coming for Christmas? The Jesus we need is not just a great preacher, though every Christian likes good preaching. He is far more than a therapist, a love interest, or a self-help guru. What we need this Christmas is a Lamb, a sacrifice, who will take away our sins, make peace between us and God, and give us life that never ends. Jesus is that Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Mark 1:6 “John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.”

John the Baptist’s lifestyle underlined his message. First there was his clothing. His camel’s hair garment was simple, inexpensive, and likely not so comfortable. It may not have been the latest in fashion, but it was tough and functional. It seems this camel’s hair garment was his only clothing.

It was also the way in which Old Testament prophets dressed. This wasn’t intended to draw attention to these men, though it did serve as a recognizable sign of their office. More like the robes pastors wear today, it was intended to dress them down and draw attention away from the man, to his message. The sameness of wearing one thing all the time kept people from focusing on the messenger’s taste in fashion. It directed their attention to the word instead.

Next, consider John’s diet. Locusts and wild honey hardly qualify as a gourmet feast. It calls to mind the line about eating bugs from the movie The Lion King, “slimy, yet satisfying.” There is some truth to that statement here, at least the “satisfying” part. Maybe you and I wouldn’t choose to eat this way, but John the Baptist received his daily bread. His food was simple, but it was enough. Even with such a humble diet, we might even say because of it, John was able to devote his full time to serving the Lord.

Do you think that John felt like he had enough? We don’t know whether he might have complained about his support in weaker moments, but the gospels give us no indication he did. We do know that God does not require us to live such an austere life. No one receives extra credit for it if we do. Jesus also lived humbly, but not like John the Baptist.

The value John the Baptist’s life for us is the message it delivers. His example calls us away from the love of this world. So many of the things we enjoy become obsessions, even false gods. John’s life shows that we can resist materialism. There are many things we can live without. God took care of John. John could serve the Lord and be happy in that service, though he didn’t have an impressive income, wife and children, fancy food or fashionable clothes. None of these things are necessary to know God’s love. None of these things are necessary to serve Christ faithfully.

John’s life also teaches faith. God can be trusted, not because he gives us what we want, but because he takes care of our needs. John the Baptist simply served the way the Lord asked, and he trusted that God would provide something to eat. His faith was not misplaced.

We can be certain that, when the Lord has called us into life’s deserts, he will provide for us as well. If he gave us his Son, he will certainly give us something to eat and something to wear. With such faith in God’s care, setting aside our love for worldly things, we look to Jesus as our greatest treasure, and we wait patiently for him to appear.

Mark 1:4-5 “And so John came, baptizing in the desert region and preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

Does it sound strange to hear that John was preaching a “baptism?” Isn’t baptism an activity, a rite, a ceremony? It is those things, too, but it is one in which the Lord is delivering a very clear and very striking message.

The Baptism which John preached was, first of all, a “baptism of repentance.” It wasn’t just a nice little gesture. It marked these people as sinners undergoing a deep and all-encompassing spiritual change. This baptism was connected with their repentance, and repentance is never merely a slight change of course, a minor adjustment in the direction we were traveling. Repenting of our sins means a 180 degree turn away from our sins.

This repentance is a violent experience because it always involves a death inside. When we come to see our sinful past as God sees it, when we come to see the sins we’ve enjoyed as the horrible things they are, it kills us. We die. We begin to look at that part of ourselves as the old self, the dead self, the self we want nothing to do with. John’s preaching and his baptism led them to see things this way.

At the same time, John’s baptism meant life for these people. This was a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” Those who went out to John were not left to despair about the horror and ugliness of their sin. In baptism God promises to wash sins away. Baptism was not something they did to pay for their sins. It was not a good work to make up for their failures. That payment would be made in full when Jesus later gave his life for them on the cross.

Rather, this baptism was God’s tangible way of saying, “I forgive you.” In it he assured them his promises of forgiveness and love were not only for others. They belonged to them, too. Through the water pouring over their bodies, the Lord was saying, “All my promises are yours. You need never doubt my love. I have claimed you as one of my own dear children.”

The power of that promise connected with John’s Baptism inspired their faith. It moved them to take a hold of the promise and make it their very own. The message his baptism proclaimed–sins repented, and sins forgiven– was making them ready for Christ.

That message in Baptism still makes us ready for Christ. But weren’t we baptized years ago? What does it have to do with being ready today? Maybe the ceremony took place in your distant past, but the changes it began, and the promises it made, are still going on today. Even if you fall away and come back to the Lord, God’s baptismal promises to you don’t change. His promises can never change or fail. As Paul reminded Timothy, “if we are faithless, he is faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” How does this make us ready?

What makes us truly ready for Christ is faith. We trust he is coming not to be our Judge, but our Savior. And everything about Baptism leads us in exactly that direction. In every way God is saying to us in it, “Trust me! Trust me!” He is giving us that very trust, and that makes us ready for Christ.

Isaiah 7:14 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

In Hebrew, the name Immanuel means “God with us.” It fits Jesus perfectly. In one sense, “God with us” was nothing new. At creation he spent time with Adam and Eve in the evening. He appeared to Noah, Abraham and the patriarchs, Moses, and took an interest in their lives. He delivered them from trouble at appropriate times. He traveled with his people Israel in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire on their way through the desert to the promised land.

Yet, if this was all we knew of his being with his people, we might get the idea he remained a little distant. He kept himself above it all. He was interested in the lives of his people. He cared for them. But the things that happened in their lives didn’t affect him directly, or so we might think.

But then we look at this birth. In Jesus we see just how intimately God is with us. In Jesus, God himself was on earth, living like we live, experiencing what we experience, suffering what we suffer. Do you know that for every temptation which we have faced, Jesus can say, “I’ve been there before. I know what you are going through, and I can help you”? For every grief, every heartache we experience Jesus can say with all honesty, “I know just how you feel. I felt that way once, too. You can lean on me to get you through it.”

It’s not just that Jesus was with us when he walked the streets of Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Capernaum. Some of his last words before he ascended into heaven were, “Surely I am with you always.” By his Spirit, and by faith, he even lives in us. He makes our own hearts his earthly home. How could he be any closer than that: living inside of us in every situation, every moment of every day?

That is a comfort. Isn’t that the kind of God you want–one who is not just there for you, but there with you no matter what you have to face? For those who have come to know who Jesus is and where he comes from–the Son of God from heaven, born of the virgin Mary–this is what Christmas celebrates. There is no need for us to “save” Christmas, as so many holiday specials suggest. Through Christmas, God is saving us. This faith, this confidence, gives us comfort, as God comes to live with us and sets in motion the events by which he redeems us from sin. 

December offers much to celebrate: gifts, families, bonuses, and the beauty of the season. My family adds a half dozen birthdays. These are all blessings to enjoy, but none so worthy of our attention or celebration as God coming to live with his people—as one of them.

Isaiah 7:14 “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son…”

It’s no secret that a virgin birth is not an ordinary one. The very idea has been an object of ridicule. Some feminists have ridiculed the idea as the product of men suffering from deep-seated sexual hang-ups. Some liberal church-men have felt so embarrassed by it that they felt it necessary to interpret it away. “It is nothing more than a symbol, a myth, intended to give Jesus special honor,” they say. That way they can’t be accused of believing in some “freakish intervention in the course of nature.”

Early Christians, on the other hand, recognized the virgin birth of Jesus as a truth so precious, so dear, so important, that when they summarized his life in the Apostle’s and Nicene Creeds, they felt it necessary to include this. It rose far above so many truths which could have been stated about Jesus.

Why is it so important?  Think of what it promises us! What kind of a Savior do you need? One who is sinless, perfectly loving, and whose life has infinite value. This means he is qualified to serve as a substitute and sacrifice for all people. At the same time, he has to be mortal and subject to the law of God. More than merely human, he must be a part of this family of mankind God placed on this earth. Only such a man can serve in our place to satisfy God’s demands of us.

Where could such a Savior be found? How could the chain of original sin, passed from every parent to every child through history, be broken? Where could such a perfect person be located? How could a human life ever have such infinite value that it could stand in the place, not just of some people, but all of them? How could God do all of this without some kind of miracle?

In the virgin birth our Lord pulls back the curtain to let us see his saving plans and fulfillments more clearly. He lets us see the miracle. Perhaps there is some other way that he could have done it. But here he shows us how he actually did. With God as his only Father, and a virgin woman of our own human family as his real mother, Jesus is just the kind of Savior that we need: in every way human, one of us; yet in every way God, and able to what is impossible for us. In his virgin birth we discover that Jesus is uniquely qualified to serve as our Savior from sin.

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

Jesus’ birth is a sign. That means that there is more to it than meets the eye. As true as it is that a baby was born, and born into humility and poverty, there is something more beneath the surface. Jesus’ birth means something.

Interestingly, God sent Isaiah to give this sign to an unbeliever! Ahaz was the king of God’s chosen people, a king in David’s royal family. But King Ahaz didn’t want God to give him any signs. That may seem hard for us to understand. People are begging for a spectacular sign. They want spectacular proof that God exists, and that he cares. But Ahaz was firm–he didn’t want any signs.

You see, Ahaz had already made up his mind that he didn’t want to follow the God of his fathers. He enjoyed worshiping the gods he had chosen instead. Maybe there really was only one God who exists, but Ahaz didn’t want to be confused by the facts. He didn’t want a sign.

Even when Ahaz was in deep trouble, he didn’t want a sign. Ahaz was afraid for his life, because two neighboring kings named Pekah and Rezin had made an alliance and decided to remove him from the throne in Jerusalem. They were going to put an end to the dynasty of David, and install their own man as king of Judah instead.

Though Ahaz was an unbeliever, the Lord could not let the family line of David be destroyed. That would be the end to the promise of a Savior. So the Lord sent Isaiah to Ahaz with a promise that the Lord would take care of Ahaz and his kingdom. As proof that his word was good, the Lord even offered to let Ahaz ask for a sign, any miraculous sign he wanted. But Ahaz realized that if he asked for a sign and got it, he would have to admit the power and truth of the Lord and his word. Ahaz refused to ask for a sign.

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign,” Isaiah insisted. God is faithful. His promises can be trusted. He wants this to be known. If Ahaz wouldn’t ask for a sign, the Lord would provide one of his own making. Then, at least, others could be certain of his promises. That sign is contained in the birth of our Savior and the events surrounding Christmas.

Do you see a warning for us in Ahaz’s refusal? Perhaps we aren’t tempted to worship other gods–at least not the kind that are made of wood and stone and sit in pagan temples. But we daily set our hearts on things God forbids in his word. We daily desire to do things our own way rather than trust God and his ways. That desire is strong. We simply want what we want. Like Ahaz, we don’t want to be confused by the facts!

But God’s word hasn’t changed. He is faithful to his word and promises. Jesus’ birth is a sign which has proven this. So we must conclude that we ignore or defy God’s word at our peril.

But “everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.” As God’s believing children, we find the greatest assurances in the sign of Jesus’ birth. God has sent a Savior to redeem us from our sin! God has fulfilled his greatest, most difficult, most painful, and most needed promises in Jesus’ life and death.

If he has done this, can’t we be sure that his angels camp all around us–as he has promised? Can’t we be sure that he will give us our food at the proper time, that he will satisfy the desires of every living thing–as he has promised? Can’t we be certain that he will come again, and take us to be with him–just as he has promised? Our Savior has no ordinary birth. It is a sign that we can trust all of his other promises, too.