I love that his name shall be Jesus.
Isn't that so cool? Like, I think it's amazing that
somebody has interpreted the Christmas story kind of as it
would perhaps look like today. I don't know.
I found that really moving when I saw it.
I think. I imagine most of us, if not all
of us here are familiar with the with the story of the birth of
Christ. And I love that.
Like, I love that our kids still get to do nativities in their
schools in most of them still get to dress up as sheep and
shepherds and all the other characters from a young age.
This story, this Christmas story, it's ingrained in US,
isn't it? You know, we all know the
characters. I'm sure a lot of us can recall
the exact words from the Bible. However, I also think it's
really important that sometimes because of that we can become
overly familiar with the story. And I think sometimes we can
think, oh, we know all there is to know about the Christmas
story. What else is there that you can
that we can learn from it? But, you know, God still speaks
through this story today, And I believe this morning that as we
stop and as we consider this first Christmas again together,
that God is going to speak. He's going to reveal more of his
character to us. And he's going to remind us
again that he is relevant and present in our lives today just
as much as he was relevant and present in their lives that we
read about in the Bible. You know, if we were to
summarize what Christmas is really about, I think it is.
It's about celebrating the gift of Jesus, isn't it?
As Christians, that's what we believe.
You know, the greatest gift the world has ever seen arrived at
Christmas or the first Christmas, and we celebrate that
fact. We celebrate that God Almighty,
the God Most High, chose to come as a baby called Jesus, who
would grow and become the perfect man without sin.
Fully man, fully God, who would then become the perfect
sacrifice in our place. Jesus Christ.
Light in the darkness, He came as light into a dark, Dark
World. God with us and Christmas is
when we celebrate his entrance into the world.
But as we celebrate this today with all the all the things that
we come to love and associate Christmas with the sparkles and
the food and the presents and everything else, let's remember
that the first Christmas wasn't quite like that.
It didn't look like it does today.
You know, the first Christmas as we've just seen portrayed in
that video wasn't quite as beautiful.
I'm not sure Mary and Joseph experienced all the warm, fuzzy
feelings of Christmas that we do at this time of year.
Sure, maybe they did at the end. Course they did at the end when
this beautiful baby was born. But what about in the lead up to
it? You would.
You would have thought that they would have had joy in that, too.
But more often than not, with the gifts that God gives us, we
have joy in retrospect, don't we?
Like hindsight is a wonderful thing.
How many times do we look back over our life and consider the
things that have happened? And we can be joyful and we can
celebrate, because we can see now how God was working and how
much better his plans were than our plans.
But in the moment, we don't always see it as good.
When God gives us a gift, at times it doesn't initially fill
us with joy or fill us with excitement.
Instead, it can fill us with a whole range of emotions.
Fear, dread, disbelief, anxiety, confusion.
And we can actually question God on whether actually this is a
gift from Him. And so this morning, as we
consider this gift that was given to us on that first
Christmas, I want to look at what can we learn from it about
the gifts that God has placed in our lives today.
And so bearing that in mind, I want us to look at 4 specific
things. And the first thing is this.
Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid.
We're going to turn to our first passage.
So if you have a Bible with you, or if you've got it on your
phone, and if you could get that out and we're going to turn to
Luke, 128 to 38. If you haven't got one, don't
worry. If you need one and you haven't
got a Bible, let us know because we'd love to give you one.
But if you don't, then don't worry because the the scripture
is going to come up on the screen.
So Luke 128 to 38. So we've read just a little bit
before this that God has sent an Angel to Mary who is engaged to
Joseph, and it says this we pick it up at 28.
The Angel went to her and said greetings.
You who are highly favoured, 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 favour with God.
You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call
him Jesus. He will be great and he will be
called the Son of the Most High. 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 will this be? Mary asked the Angel.
Since I'm a virgin and 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.
And then just skip to 38 it says I am the Lord's servant.
Mary answered, May your words to me be fulfilled.
And then the Angel left her. So here we have Mary.
She is engaged to to be married to Joseph and she's about 14 to
16 years of age, which it's young, but in in those days it's
kind of the typical, the usual age to get married.
And here she is being visited by an Angel being told that she's
going to have a baby. And if that's not enough of a
surprise, then, then she's told that it's going to be God.
It's going to be the Holy Spirit who's going to make her
pregnant. I mean, we've read this a lot,
right? But let's just pause for a
moment and think of the reality of this situation.
There Mary was one day just minding her own business, doing
some wedding prep wedding admin, and suddenly this Angel appears.
And first he tells her she's highly favoured, guessing she
was delighted at that bit. Then God was like, I'm with you,
amazing. God is with me.
But then you're going to have a baby.
Mary, can you just picture Mary having to go to her mum and dad
having to go to her parents and say hey Mum, hey Dad.
Like I've got something to tell you.
I'm pregnant, but it's OK. It's by God.
I haven't slept with anyone else.
I haven't slept with Joseph. God made me pregnant.
I mean, that's a new one, isn't it?
Imagine that. Poor Mary.
Like I I mean, I think poor Mary, although God certainly
doesn't see it that way. He says that she's highly fated.
Sometimes we get a gift from God.
That doesn't look like a gift. In fact, it can look anything
but inconvenient, embarrassing. It's going to make you
unpopular. People are going to doubt what
you say. They're going to make you doubt
whether you heard God. You might even be looked down on
or shunned. People are going to judge you,
and people are going to make up their own mind.
But Mary knew she had heard from God, and she knew she was
gifted. After the Angel went, You can
just imagine, can't you? That fear that would have come
over her, The worry that she was going to have to to go to
Joseph, the man that she's going to marry, the man that she
utterly adores, and tell him that she was pregnant but she
hadn't done anything wrong. Joseph, you've got to believe
me. I mean, what a conversation she
would have been desperate for him to understand.
And so how did Joseph react? Let's have a look at our second
scripture, which is in Matthew 119 to 29 we read about Joseph's
reaction. So from 19 it says and her
husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to
shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
Now when I read this, I was like, how could he divorce her?
Because they were only engaged, they weren't actually married
yet. But the Jewish wedding ceremony
has two parts. So the first bit was the
engagement bit, which was the legally binding bit.
And then a little while later, a few months in fact, Then the
bride would move in with the husband.
So they had done the legally binding bit.
So to break off the engagement, he was going to have to divorce
her, and then we pick it up from verse 20, it says.
But as he considered these things, behold, an Angel of the
Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do
not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is
conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, but
he shall save his people from their sins.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the
Prophet. Behold, the Virgin shall
conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name
Emmanuel, which means God with us.
Before God told Joseph otherwise, he had come up with
the only logical explanation, which was that Mary must have
cheated on him, she must have had an affair, and he could have
easily walked away. In fact, his friends probably
were encouraging him to do so. He would have felt humiliated.
He would have felt embarrassed, angry, heartbroken.
And then an Angel came to him and God spoke.
Do not fear, don't be afraid, Joseph.
When God gives us a gift, so often, instead of feeling
excited, we feel scared. Here we have Mary and Joseph who
would have been terrified, but they heard the voice of the
Lord. Do not be afraid.
I am with you. God is saying that you don't
understand. Though it doesn't make sense.
Take me at my word and do not fear.
Maybe you're here this morning and you know that you have been
given a gift by God, that he has put a gift inside you.
But you're scared. You're scared of people's
reactions. You're scared of people's
opinion of you. In fact, you're scared so much
that you want to keep it hidden. You want to keep it a secret out
of fear of what others might think or say.
But the Lord is saying this morning, Do not be afraid.
I am with you. What is it that you're fearful
of for 2024? What is it that is paralyzing
you with fear this morning? What is God asking you to do?
But you are so full of anxiety that you don't even know which
way to turn. God is saying do not be afraid.
Joseph had a choice, didn't he? He could have chosen to say no
and he could have walked away from the gift.
And that is what fear can do. Fear can make you turn away from
what it is that God is giving you, just like Joseph nearly
did. You know we have a choice to
walk towards the gift that God is laying before us, despite
what others may think, despite the seed of doubt that you have
in your head, despite not being able to understand everything,
but knowing that God has spoken and knowing that God is true to
His word and He is with us, be careful you don't allow the fear
to rob you of the gift that God is giving.
The message of God to Mary and Joseph remains true for you
today. Do not be afraid.
Perfect love casts out all fear. So #1 do not be afraid.
What else can we learn from this story about God's gifts to us?
Secondly, God's timing is perfect.
God's timing is perfect. You know, after Joseph heard
from God that Mary was telling the truth after all, they later
found out that they had to travel to Bethlehem.
So they were in Nazareth and they had to travel to Bethlehem.
Now let's remember that this wasn't planned for Mary and
Joseph. They didn't plan this.
They didn't plan to travel to Bethlehem to have their baby.
They had to go. Joseph had to go back to his
hometown, which was Bethlehem to register for the census.
That's what everyone had to do at the time.
And so to put this in perspective, Mary was in her
third trimester. She was heavily pregnant, and
Bethlehem was a long way away. In fact, Bible scholars think
that it would have taken them about a week to get from
Nazareth to Bethlehem. I mean, I've been pregnant a few
times and let me tell you in my third trimester, I did not want
to travel anywhere unless it was to my bed.
You are exhausted. Don't know if any other women
can relate. Grateful, but exhausted.
And there was Mary, having to travel for a whole week in the
hot sun on a donkey about to give birth.
Imagine not only how worried she would have been leaving her
friends and family, and the comfort of everything that she
knew at home, knowing that the baby could potentially come at
any point, like her waters could go while she's riding, sitting
on that donkey riding to Bethlehem.
How uncomfortable and how exhausting.
Sometimes we know that God has spoken and we know we are
carrying a gift. But things don't seem to make
sense. The journey is uncomfortable.
The journey is exhausted. If we had our way, we would have
birthed this gift a while ago when things made sense.
But we walk by faith and not by sight.
And we know that God is never early, is he?
He's never late. He is always on time.
His timing is perfect, even when it doesn't make sense.
Back in the summer of this year, I applied for a job that it was
a part time job in a secondary school that I really wanted.
And I prayed a lot about it and I felt, God, say yes, apply for
it, go for it. And I really prayed that I'd be
successful when I'd get the job because I really wanted it.
But I was also like, God, do you know what?
I trust you, whatever your way is, you know, that's fine.
But I really would have a Tom. And Long story short, I didn't
get the job and I was praying on my way home.
I remember praying and I was like, that's OK, God, because I
did pray. And I did say that your ways are
better than my ways. And you know, I trust your plan
and and everything, but wow, like, I actually did really want
that job. God, like, what is going on?
I'm a little bit annoyed. Can I say that?
I was a little bit cross and I was confused.
Maybe they made a mistake. Maybe they were going to call me
and say, actually we've changed our minds.
You have got the job. I kind of gave up and let it be,
you know, trusted God. And that evening or it might
have been the next. The next day I got an e-mail and
it said that they would like me to come back for an informal
interview for another role that they had because they felt that
would be more suited to me. And I did end up getting the job
and I and I work there now and I'm so grateful.
But my the point is, sometimes doors are shut and it can feel
like a slap in the face. But what we see as rejection,
God sees us something better. When Mary and Joseph finally
arrived after that long exhausting journey in Bethlehem,
they were like surely God's going to provide a like 5 star
hotel for us after that journey. But what happened?
Every single door was shut. Every door they tried was shut
in their face, and they must have been questioning God.
Where are you in this? But God has something better.
And maybe some of you are here this morning and you know God
has placed a gift inside you, and you're frustrated because
you think that now is the time for that idea that he gave you
to be birthed. Or maybe it's the opposite.
Maybe God's asking you to birth something now and you're
feeling, no, this is not the right timing.
If you'd have asked me a week or a year ago, that's fine.
If you'd ask me next year, that would be OK.
Things don't make sense. Doors seem to be closing, and
God is reminding you again this morning that his plan might not
look the same as your plan. In fact, my experience is it
often doesn't look anything like our plan.
But his timing is perfect. We have to trust in him #3.
God specializes in the small, you know, I think if I was God
and I was going to come to Earth, you know, just saying
that if I was going to come and save the world, I would want to
make a bold statement. I'd want it to be big.
I'd want everyone to take notice.
And yet what does God choose to do?
He chooses to come as a small baby, helpless, vulnerable baby.
So many of us, and I include myself in this.
We don't always appreciate or value the small things, do we?
Sometimes you want to jump straight to the big things.
But what does God say in Zechariah 4 verse 10?
Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord
rejoices to see the work begin. Do not despise these small
beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin.
God specializes in the small, as I mentioned earlier, in April
this year we started meeting as a Hatfield site.
There was about a team of 12 of us at the beginning and quite a
few kids and so probably about 20 of us that decided to sort of
set this up over in in Hatfield. And can I just say these guys
who serve with us are amazing. They're incredible.
We see week after week after week, our team turn up, putting
chairs out, setting up banners, setting up flags, laying the
refreshments out, preparing to lead us in worship, sacrificing
their time for only sometimes one person to turn up or a
handful of people to turn up. I'm the same.
Sometimes I spend time preparing what we're going to talk about
as AJ, and there's like one person there, like, God, what's
going on? Like I'm being honest here.
I can be honest, right? Sometimes I get home and I'm
like, what's the point? God, when are we going to see
you bring these people in that we know are there and needing to
hear the good news of Jesus? Like, when are we going to see
this? But God says time and time again
to us, Do not despise the small things God is working.
Even if we don't see it in the way that we would expect.
There's a beautiful gift that he has entrusted us with.
And it's small right now. But we are learning in this
season to nurture what he's given us To lay solid
foundations, to build relationships, to trust him, to
keep giving him our yes. To keep sacrificing what He's
asking us to, even when it feels like nothing is happening.
Because when God builds it, and He will in His timing, we will
know where we have come from and we will remember it, and we will
then say that God has built this Church, not us.
Do not do not despise the small beginnings, for the Lord
rejoices to see the work begin. Typically when God gives us a
gift, He gives us something which we can hold in our hand so
we can handle the gift as it grows.
It takes He takes the small things that we offer Him and
turns it into something big. And I know Mark spoke on this
last week as one of the hallmarks.
If you missed that, you can look back at it.
It was I loved it, the way that he posed that question.
What is it in your hands? Like each of us has been placed
in His Kingdom with gifts in our hands.
And it might not seem like much, it might not seem enough, but
that's the point. God specializes in the small He
takes the small seed, the seemingly insufficient things,
and He turns them into something greater than we could have ever
dreamed of or ever imagined. We see it all the way through
the Bible, don't we? What seed has God placed in your
hand as you enter 2024? What gift has he given you?
God specialises in the small things, and finally, appearance
isn't everything anyone else's. Kids, like, start judging their
presence when they see them, though it might be just mine,
but like, some of them are like, whoa, look at that present.
It's so shiny and it's massive and Oh my goodness, I'm going to
open that one first. Or that one's clearly a book.
I'll open that one at the end or they start opening presents and
like we've got a one year old and he doesn't really have a
clue what's going on when he sees his siblings opening
presents for birthdays or Christmas or whatever.
Well, he hasn't. Last year was very little, but
you know, he is more interested in the wrapping paper and more
interested in the packaging than actually the gift that is
inside. But some of these presents today
as well, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but really hard to
get into. Does anyone else have that
difficulty? Like some of the presents that
you get, like the kids come to me and they're like, can you
open this even once they've unwrapped it?
And the twisty things are fine because you can just twist and
the toy comes out. But sometimes I feel like you
need a whole toolbox like pliers to open these gifts.
And I have to be honest, sometimes I'm like, let's just
leave that one, let's just put it on to side, let's open
another one. Sometimes God gives us a gift
that doesn't look much on the outside.
We have an expectation of what it's going to be based on what
it looks like, and we start to unwrap it.
And sometimes we have to wrestle with it and we have to persevere
and we have to not give up if we're not sure what to do with
it. We have to keep persevering.
We have to look past the wrapping and the packaging to
the gift that's inside. When Jesus came, he was wrapped,
wasn't he? But not how we would have
expected. Not in a gold blanket or a gold
robe. He was in stable sheets.
He wasn't in a shiny palace, but in a smelly Manger.
And he wasn't clothed with robes and riches.
But he was naked in a makeshift crib, with the animals around
him amongst the poo and the feed.
Some of us have gifts in our hands which don't look or feel
or smell how we expected they would.
They haven't come wrapped as we thought, or dare we say it as we
would have liked. Maybe you've just lost your job.
Maybe you're struggling in your marriage and it's not thriving
how you would have hoped. Maybe you're frustrated that you
didn't get that promotion or that you're still single despite
years of praying for the for the partner that you really want.
And I want to encourage you this morning to look past the
exterior and the struggles and to persevere, to see the gift
that God has blessed you with. Because appearance isn't
everything. And so this morning we have
hopefully looked at the Christmas story, and we have
taken from it some things to consider when we look at the
gifts that God has given us today.
So just to recap #1 do not be afraid.
Do not be afraid of the gift that God has given you. #2 God's
timing is perfect, even if it doesn't make sense. #3 God
specializes in the small do not despise these small beginnings.
And #4 appearance isn't everything.
Let's trust God with what He's given us, even though it might
not look how we would have thought it would.
And so as the band come up, please, if they if you guys
could make your way up. I just want us to We're going to
finish and I think that we need to respond in some way.
I believe that God has spoken this morning and I feel like I
want to give an opportunity for a response.
So if you guys could stand.