Well good morning Crossing Church.
How are you doing today? Doing all right.
Awesome. It's good to see you.
I don't know about your house but my house is a mess this time
of year. It just kind of goes crazy.
All the Amazon boxes. I mean you know what do we do
with all the cardboard? It's just it's just nuts and and
and we get try to get prepared for it and it's just clean up on
aisle 7 all the time. But that's kind of what the
Christmas season is all about. It's all kind of a about this
whole messy thing that that we experience together and church
is a messy place. Have you ever noticed that?
I mean, we're a bunch of messy people and we're and we're in a
messy place, but God is is an incredible God when it comes to
messes. And Speaking of messes, I want
to welcome all of our locations joining us from all over this
region in three States and how God has been cleaning up messes
in our lives for all these years and he continues to do that.
And that's awesome. If you're inside or online, we
are thankful for each and every one of you and all the messes
that you bring, because God is bigger than all of our messes.
And that's the series we are in, in the middle of the mess and
we're looking at these different characters in the story of the
birth of Jesus Christ and what a mess it was and how God was
glorified incredibly in the midst of it.
So when we get into the Christmas season, we start
singing Christmas songs, right? We sang Joy to the World this
morning at all of our locations. You know, that song was written
in 1719. I mean it's all like a like a
300 year old song. And a lot of the songs of the
Christmas season are are very old songs and a lot of them, you
know, we originally sang them out of a hymn book, right,
Because they just go back and and they're not as easy to use
as worship songs than conventional worship songs.
You kind of, you kind of have to work them a little bit
different, different genre. And not only that, you know, the
shelf life of a worship song today is pretty short, right?
I mean, if we've been singing a song that's 10 years old, it's
like why are we still singing that song?
But it isn't that way with Christmas songs.
I mean they go back, don't they can go way, way back.
And so to become a a great Christmas song, you've you've
got to be put up against some pretty heavy hitters, not just
these more, you know, hundreds of year old songs like we read
in the hymnal. But even some of the more
contemporary songs, and I'll say they're contemporary Christian
songs, we call them contemporary and they're like almost 100
years old. And we still, we still like to
hear them. We still like to sing them.
Like Walking in a Winter Wonderland 1934.
What? Yeah, Little Drummer Boy 1941,
White Christmas 1942. The Christmas song Chestnuts
Roasting on an Open Fire, Right? 1946 Rudolph the Red Nosed
Reindeer 1949. A lot of those songs are a
little more secular in nature, and it's really rare that you'll
actually have a new song that sticks with people and at the
same time it communicates the actual meaning of Christmas.
That actually happened in 1991 with a new song that came out
that did. Both of those things captured
the essence of not just like the season of Christmas, but the
story of Christmas and the birth of Christ.
So the words were written by Mark Lowery in 1984.
Actually, he was putting together a musical, the musical
part of a living Christmas tree. And while he was doing that, he
had a conversation with his mother about one of the
characters in the Christmas story.
And it started all of this, you know, creativity inside him.
And he wrote poetry about it. He wrote that poetry in the form
of 18 questions. And he tried him.
He's a musician, so he tried to put music with the words and he
just wasn't able to capture the right music to connect with the
words that he'd written and and that went that way for seven
years. He wrote it in 1984, but it
wasn't until 1991 that he shared it with a friend of his who was
really good on the harmonica of all things.
And his name's Buddy Green. And Buddy Green looked at it and
he said, I I've come up with something called Mark Lowry on
the phone and said, let me just hum this to you.
Let, let me, let's let you hear it.
And Mark said, that's it, that's it.
In 1991, the words and the music came together.
Now, this song is so popular, it's been covered by Kenny
Rogers and Wynona Judd and Clay Aiken, Cee Lo Green, Pentatonix,
Jordan Smith, Carrie Underwood, Dolly Parton and most recently
by Maverick City Music. I know a bunch of you know what
song I'm talking about. What is it?
Just say it. Mary, did you know?
I want you to think about the words in these 18 questions that
Mark Lowery came up with in the discussion he had with his
mother? Mary, did you know that your
baby boy would one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and
daughters? Did you know that your baby boy
has come to make? You knew the child that you
delivered would soon deliver you?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a
blind man? Did you know that your baby boy
will calm the storm with his hand?
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
And when you kiss your little baby, you kiss the face of God?
The bridge of that song says, the blind will see, the death
will hear, the dead will live again, the lame will leap, the
dumb will speak the praises of the lamb.
And then back to those questions.
Mary, did you know your baby boy is the Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the
nation's? Did you know that your baby boy
is heaven's perfect lamb? At the sleeping child you're
holding is the great I am. It's a haunting and beautiful
song. It's written in a minor key with
these magnificent rhetorical questions and what they do.
Even though I know that people, since it's a popular song,
they've used it for memes and all kinds of other things, it
leaves you to contemplate just how awesome the Christmas story,
the true Christmas story really is.
Each concept that these questions evoke from us, they're
so uplifting and they're so powerful and there's so much a
part of the story. But my question is, is that the
whole story we're in, the series called In the Middle of the
Mess, and Clayton shared last week about Joseph.
And when when this came down in Joseph's world and in his life,
it made an incredible mess of his life.
I would encourage you to listen to that if you haven't heard
that. It was incredible.
And that mess was down in Joseph's lower story.
And I started thinking about what I was assigned the topic of
Mary. And immediately this song came
into my mind. And the questions that are posed
in that song made me wonder, how much did Mary actually know when
this story began to unfold in her life?
And I think that's an honest question and it and you can get
an honest answer from it just by reading.
So if we are going to Luke, chapter one and we start in
verse 26, we can read the beginning of the story.
It says in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy.
Now Elizabeth is Mary's cousin, and she's six months pregnant
with John the Baptist. God sent an Angel, 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. The Angel went to her and said
greetings. You are highly favored.
The Lord is with you. Mary was greatly troubled at his
words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.
But the Angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary.
You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth
to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.
He'll be great and he'll be called the Son of the Most High
and the Lord God will give him the throne of his Father David
and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever.
His Kingdom will never end. How can this be?
Mary asked the Angel. Since I'm a virgin, the Angel
answered. The Holy Spirit will come on
you, and the power of the Most High will over shadow you.
So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.
Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her
old age, and she was said to be unable to conceive as in her six
months. For no word from God will ever
fail. I am the Lord's servant, Mary
answered. May your word to me be
fulfilled. Then the Angel left her.
So what did she know? That's the question, right?
That we're looking to God's word for an answer.
She knew that God favored her. She knew that God was with her.
She knew that she was going to have a child, a son, and that
God was going to 'cause it, even with her being a virgin.
That his name would be Jesus, that he would be great, that he
would be called the Son of God, that he would reign on David,
the ancient King's throne, forever.
And she knew that the Holy Spirit would over shadow her to
conceive. She knew all of that.
We get all of that from Gabriel's words.
But my question is, what didn't she know?
She didn't know what Joseph's response would be.
She didn't know what her parents response would be.
She didn't know what her community's response would be.
She didn't know what all of that would cost her.
She didn't know that she would have to travel 90 miles on foot
in her 9th month of pregnancy. She didn't know that she would
deliver her first child without any help from her family save
Joseph, that there would be no one there to really help her.
She didn't know that she would have to run for her life and the
baby's life to Africa soon after he was born.
There was a lot that she didn't know, but I don't think for a
minute that that meant she was naive in the sense that she
didn't know that there would be hardships, there would be
trouble, there'd be challenges, and there would be pain.
A lot that she didn't know, but maybe an overarching
understanding that those things would be coming, as well as all
the good things she heard. And what was her response?
Well, it's recorded and it's recorded.
Her response is recorded a little bit of time afterward,
and I really appreciate that because she goes to visit her
cousin Elizabeth. Now, there's a number of
reasons. I believe she visited her cousin
Elizabeth because I believe that Mary was the type of a woman, if
she was highly favored by God, she was the type of a woman that
would be honest with Joseph and she would be honest with her
parents and imagine her having to say that to her parents.
I was visited by an Angel who told me this and how her parents
would respond to that. I think it's pretty obvious
because even though her parents also had to register in
Bethlehem, when she had to register in Bethlehem, they
weren't together, were they? Mary and Joseph were alone in
that stable in Bethlehem. No family there to support her,
So I don't think they took it very well.
We obviously know from last week's sermon that Joseph didn't
take it very well and he needed for an Angel to speak to him, to
get his head turned around, right?
It was a mess. It was a horrible mess.
And so when she goes to visit Elizabeth, we know that it's
somewhere in that first trimester of her pregnancy,
right? Because we know that John the
Baptist hasn't been born yet to Elizabeth.
And we know that when Gabriel came, she, Elizabeth was in her
6th month. So it was somewhere in that
first trimester and it would take you a little while to get
down all the way into Judea, that 90 mile trip.
So how did she feel about it? Because by that time she had had
some reflection time, and she'd already endured some of those
things that she probably didn't know just how deep they would go
with her parents and with Joseph and even with the community.
But we read about it in the 46th verse of Luke One, it says, And
Mary said, My soul glorifies the Lord, and my Spirit rejoices in
God my Savior. For he has been mindful of the
humble state of His servant. And from now on all generations
will call me blessed. For the Mighty One, listen, has
done great things for me. In the middle of the mess she
said those words. The Mighty One has done great
things for me. Holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him from generation to
generation. He has performed mighty deeds
with his arm. He has scattered those who are
proud in their inmost thoughts. He's brought down rulers from
their Thrones, lifted up the humble.
He's filled the hungry with good things.
He sent the rich away empty. And he has helped his servant
Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his
descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.
Mary's song is called the Magnificat, and the reason it
is, it's taken from the first line.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and it's pretty obvious.
Here she is, full, absolutely full of joy, overflowing with
joy, overwhelmed by joy. Think about that.
She tells you God's chosen me. He understands my humble
circumstance and he's exalted me.
She sees herself from an eternal upper story perspective, she
said. All generations will call me
blessed. All generations.
She's not just looking at her moment, she's looking at all
moments. She views her circumstance as a
great thing, and not just a great thing, but a great thing
for her. And then she presents this
flurry of praise for God, as evidenced by all the good things
that he's done that is amazing. Just amazing.
And then my first question for me and I, I would pose it to you
as well as how do we, you and I, interpret the circumstances of
our lives. So a lot of us, you know, when
we're asked the question, how are you doing or what's going
on, a lot of us will begin with three words.
I've heard it many, many times in my life.
And these are the three words. Under the circumstances, how
many of you heard that before? Well, under the circumstances,
right. Think about what those words
mean. It means that we're OK Where are
you in relationship to the circumstances?
The circumstances are over you, Right?
Because I'm under them. And a lot of times we feel the
circumstances pushing us down, weighing us down.
Right. I don't think you'd heard that
from Mary. I think that Mary was living in
a different place. I think Mary was living over her
circumstances. And that is the essence of the
difference between the lower story and the upper story.
Mary refused to live in the lower story.
Sure, there was a mess in her life, right?
She was in the middle of a mess. Those were the circumstances of
her life. But she chose to get above those
circumstances. She interpreted that in a
different way than many of us do now.
Unlike Mary, many of the hardships and challenges and
pain that we have in our lives are of our own doing.
And this was not of Mary's doing.
This is something that came to her.
This is not something that was her.
And a lot of times the pain that maybe either we've done or maybe
it was other people around us that hurt us.
Well, there were plenty of people around Mary during that
time that were hurting her. Obviously plenty of
circumstances with regards to people that she had loved and
trusted that were causing her pain.
But she kept kept her focus on God and kept her focus on how
God viewed her. And I I have to ask myself this
question. I want you to ask yourself this
question. How much of your attitude, How
much of my attitude comes from how other people around me view
me or other people around you view you?
How much of your attitude comes from how you view yourself?
And how much of your attitude comes from how God views you?
Because I think that is the essence of what we see in Mary
here. Because Mary is looking at how
God views her. Her song makes that really
clear. She knows that people are going
to view her in a completely different way.
But she chooses to focus on how God views her.
And her response to that interpretation of circumstance
can be understood in two ways. Thankfulness and gratitude.
She's thankful and she's grateful.
And you know what? She made that choice.
She didn't have to make that choice.
How many of us make that choice when the circumstances of our
lives make a mess of our lives? Are we making a choice to be
thankful and to have gratitude? Mary has so much strength in
that choice. You think about her, she's
probably, what, 1415 years old when this all happens, when this
all goes down in her life, just a young teenager, not even
halfway through her teenage years.
And this is how she responds. Maybe that helps us to
understand a little bit why Gabriel would say you are highly
favored among women. And on Thursday night, I was
preaching this. And I said, you know, ladies,
there's a lot of great ladies that I'm talking to, but none of
none of you are as great as this one.
This is the greatest lady of all time.
And then I took it back because I thought it was sexist.
She's not just the greatest lady.
She's one of the greatest people of all time.
I mean, she puts me to shame. Did she put you to shame in how
she interprets the circumstances of her life?
With thankfulness and with gratitude had to be one of the
reasons God favoured her. She is truly a person who keeps
her eyes on the upper story instead of being dragged down
into the lower one. And you know what?
Thankfulness and gratitude. That's your choice as well, just
like it was hers. Now, I'm I'm sure in your life
there are plenty of reasons that you could give on why it's OK
for you to be bitter or discouraged or disillusioned.
But is it possible that you're choosing not to concentrate on
all the good things that God has done and all the things that God
continues to do for you? Mary kind of puts us in our
place, doesn't she? And you know what?
It's not just true then, but as you watch Mary's life unfold in
the pages of the New Testament, she is consistent in her choice.
I want you to think about when the wise men came, OK?
Jesus was not the wise men didn't come to the to the
Manger. It was a little later.
They were in a house at the time.
He was a toddler's under the age of two.
And the wise men came, but they they didn't come to her house
first. They actually went to Herod.
First King Herod. King Herod.
And they said, where is he was born King of the Jews.
Now, if you're King Herod, and you hear these people from a
distant land go, where is he was born.
King of the Jews. You're going.
Hey, hold on a minute. I'm the king of the Jews.
Well, Herod was an appointed king by the Roman government.
He was a puppet king. But they're saying who was born
king. Well, that got Herod's
attention. The Bible says that all
Jerusalem had their attention. When they said that, they didn't
realize it, but they were making a mess for Mary and Joseph
because this guy's nuts. Herod the Great killed 46
members of his own family. That's how important it was for
him to retain control and power. And so he puts on this show for
these wise men saying, you know, I want to go worship him too.
So let's figure this out. And at the time, all of the
genealogies of the nation of Israel were housed in the
temple. And I'm sure he took the priests
and the scribes and they went to find out who would this person
be. Now, two of the most boring
passages in your New Testament are Luke chapter one, Excuse me,
Luke chapter 3 and Matthew chapter one.
Because those two chapters say this and so and so begat so and
so. Who begat so and so?
Who begat so and so?
Who begat so and so. And you can't pronounce half the
names and they're like 5 syllables long and way too many
consonants, right? Actually, those are incredibly
important scriptures. Matthew chapter one is the
genealogy of Joseph. And you're going, wait a minute,
Joseph was not the natural father of Jesus, but he was.
But he was the legal father. He was the legal father of
Jesus. And Matthew one shows that
Joseph's lineage goes back through all the Judean kings,
all the way to David's throne and then back to Abraham, which
meant that from birth, Jesus had a legal right to the throne.
There was a curse to that line. I'm not going to get into that
right now. Hence Luke chapter 3.
Luke chapter 3 has a different set of names than Matthew
chapter one. What you find out is that Luke
chapter 3 isn't a genealogy of Jesus through Joseph, it's the
genealogy of Jesus through Mary. They didn't even use those
genealogies. They use the males for
genealogy. And yet that's her genealogy,
because her line was not cursed. And it shows that her line goes
all the way back to David as well.
So here is this confluence of the legal right to the throne
and the blood right to the throne.
By the way, Jesus didn't have one drop of Joseph's blood in
his veins. They were all merry.
It's all merry, no curse. And in 70 AD, every genealogical
record of the Jewish nation was destroyed when the Temple was
destroyed. And there is only one genealogy
that stands up 2000 years later to prove once and for all
there's only one king. There's only one king who could
be king with the legal right, with the blood right and the Son
of God, and that's Jesus Christ and Christ alone.
He can prove it. Well, Herod figured that out,
and he decided to have every baby that was two years old or
younger murdered in Bethlehem. How did Mary feel about that?
Did that mess up her life? Well, it sure did.
But do you know what the Bible says about her when she thought
of these things? Uses this word.
She treasured them in her heart. Does that sound like a negative
word? Does that sound like a bitter
word? Does that sound like a
disillusioned word? Does that sound like a
discouraged word? What is that?
She treasured these things in her heart.
When the wise men left Mary and Joseph and the young Jesus, they
left gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
What do you think funded their escape to Egypt?
I'm sure that Mary looked at that as God's provision.
When Jesus was presented in the temple on his eighth day, he had
to be redeemed. That's where we find out how
poor they were. And he was circumcised that day.
And there was an old man named Simeon that came up to Mary and
he prophesied. And he said, now God can close
my eyes in death, for I have seen the salvation of the Lord
when he looked at this little baby.
That's not all he said. He looks at Mary and he goes, A
sword is going to Pierce your soul as well.
Well, that's so uplifting. So glad to hear that.
I wonder if they have a Hallmark card that says something about a
sword piercing your soul. She was under no illusions that
her life had been and would continue to be very difficult.
But there is a consistency in Mary, even though tough times
were ahead, even though she didn't know how tough they would
be. Throughout her life we see this
consistency, whether it was becoming a widow, which she did
because you read about Joseph being there when Jesus was 12,
but not when he's 30 being widowed.
She's a single parent, and not just to Jesus, but to his
brothers and sisters as well. A whole house full.
Not easy to take care of that family.
Easy to get bitter, discouraged or disillusioned.
You don't hear it. And if nothing else, witnessing
the brutality and the torture that happens to her son when
he's 33. And then to have to be there and
witness and see with your own eyes this horrible death of her
son, only to be replaced with the euphoria of his resurrection
from the dead. To receive him back from death
and then to lose him again 40 days later when he ascends into
heaven. Talk about an emotional
rollercoaster. And then later on with John, the
Apostle having to leave her country for a foreign land,
Ephesus in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey, You know what she
does. She stays locked in on that
upper story and the faithfulness of God, as she said, who will
always keep his word. And I doubt if any of us has
ever had to endure difficulties like Mary did.
I'm sure that we can connect on some level with some things, but
nothing to the level that she endured.
She was truly in the middle of a mess, but only from a certain
point of view. And my question to you today is
what is your point of view? There's an old poem has two
lines to it. It says two men look through
prison bars. One sees the mud and the other
sees stars. It all depends on the direction
you're looking. And Mary chose to look up
instead of the look down. She chose to live over her
circumstances instead of under them, and the way that she
managed that was through gratitude and thankfulness.
I want you to think today about what God has done for you.
I want you to think about what He has given you.
Who He considers you to be is children and the purpose that
He's called you to. There is no doubt that there
will be messes, but you can choose to lift up your eyes
above the mess. And like Mary, you can see that
God has something better for you.
We're moving to a time of decision.
Look pretty nice. Don't I put a jacket on, you
know, And you look really great too.
Just want to say, isn't it a good thing that you can't really
see past my being cleaned up? And isn't it great that I can't
see past yours? Because the truth is, I'm a mess
and so are you. And some of you might be going
why? Why would God ever put up with
me in the mess that I am? Oh, that's nothing.
Just take the whole crossing, all of our locations and
everybody's watching about 12,000 people and pile all of
our messes up together. That's a pretty big hill, isn't
it? That's like a big old hill.
Mess. Yeah, stinky mess.
What if you were to take all of our communities, Not just the
ones that go to church, but the ones who don't?
Oh my goodness. Get some Febreze out here.
What a mess. What about the whole world?
How you are you feeling good about the condition of the world
right now? Don't you just feel like, well,
we've got it together, don't we? It's so good.
No, you know better. I do too.
What a mess. Couple that, not just in the
moment, but in all of human history.
And that was the mess that Jesus died for on the cross.
Some of you are here and you are so arrogant, You are so
egotistical that you actually believe, which is the dumbest
thing I think I could. It's in my head that you can
actually fix your mess. You can't do it.
You never have. You can't fix it.
And the sad thing about people who don't have a relationship
that's intimate and personal with Jesus Christ is you don't
have anybody to help you. You're on your own.
You got to figure it out yourself, and and you're not.
I can tell you ahead of time, you're not going to figure it
out. You're going to fail at this.
You have been failing. You'll continue to fail.
And the pathway to your help is a door that is locked to you.
It is locked to you. But I'm here to tell you good
news today because Jesus came to this world because of what he
did when he died on the cross. And when he rose from the dead,
he opened a door that you could never open.
The Book of Revelation. He said I was dead and I'm alive
again, and I hold the keys to death and hell.
The door that was locked to you is now open through Jesus
Christ. He uses a lot of metaphors to
describe himself, and one of the metaphors he uses is I'm the
door of the sheep. He says the things that I open
no one can shut, and the things that I shut nobody can open.
And he has opened a door to you. But you have to come through
Christ. You have to come through Jesus,
because he's the one holding the keys and he's the door.
There is nothing in your way at this moment in time and
eternity, nothing in your way except for you.
And if you want to walk through that door and to have the help
you need, someone who can come and clean up the mess.
You can do that today. There'll be somebody right over
there by that baptistery love. Nothing more than to show you
the way. Many of you.
You're here today and you're like, well, I accepted Jesus as
my savior, Jerry. So there, I'm going to let you
in on a little secret. I didn't need a savior just
once. I have to have a savior in three
tenses. I have to have a savior that
saves all the stuff I've done. I have to have a savior that
saves all the stuff I'm doing. And I have to have a savior that
saves all the stuff that I'm going to do.
And if you're even the least been honest with yourself,
you're in the same boat that I'm in.
I need a savior in all three tenses.
And he is so you can bring all of the mess that you have today
up here to these steps, lay it down, and let him have lordship
over it right now. Jesus taught us that.
He said Bring all your burdens and your cares to me because I
care for you. Bring your burdens to Jesus.
Let him have him. Let him have the mess.
My God is a God who cleans up messes.
My God is a God who takes broken and ruined things and he makes
them better than new. And he can do that with your
life because he loves you. And for all the mess that is in
this whole world, all of the power of that mess, it is
nothing compared to the incomparable love that Jesus has
for you. Just you.
Would you stand with me, Heavenly Father in Jesus name,
would you please take this moment Quiet all the white noise
around us. Help us just to to hear you.
I've sung this next song in the two previous services.
At the end of last service, the song that we're about to sing,
Heavenly Father. It was like I was hearing Mary
sing it, and I want to be like her.
I want to be the person you want me to be.
Oh God, help me just to hold on tight to your son Jesus, because
he fills all the gaps, puts broken things together,
including me, all my brothers and sisters.
Here we go to him and to you now.
In Jesus name, Amen.