How are you? You good.
I just want to highlight that crossover service that's coming
up on New Year's Eve because it's going to be great and you
should all be there. It's the first time that we are
doing something like this at Verso.
And so if you are available, if you're like me, you haven't made
plans yet, then come along. It would be so good to see you
there. But first Christmas, we have 4
sleeps to go, 4 sleeps. Are you guys ready?
You ready? I don't know about you, but I've
been asked that question so much this week.
Are you ready? Are you ready for Christmas?
And I feel like the fact that you're asking me that means that
I really should be ready. And I guess I'm halfway there in
the sense that the kids are broken up from school.
Great, no more clubs in the evening.
Even better Christmas presents we're kind of mostly there with.
But there's still a few things we have to do in our household.
Our house needs to be tidied and then we are actually going to
Devon for Christmas this year. And so it means packing up this
afternoon and getting ready to drive down to Devon tomorrow.
And so I guess for me, it's when I pull up at my parents house, I
walk through the front door, breathe a big sigh of relief.
That is when I can say I am ready.
I can finally be in the moment and enjoy Christmas.
But you know what? I think there's something a
little bit wrong with that because this year God has been
teaching me a different way, a better way, I think.
You know, I don't think that we have to have it all together,
have everything in place and just so before we can embrace
the season, because that's not why Jesus came, is it?
He came so that he can be present with us in all of it.
In the stress, in the endless lists and the feeling of being
completely overwhelmed in the late nights and the long days,
in the school events, the Christmas parties, in the
excitement and the challenges that this time of year brings.
He wants to be invited into it all.
And this Christmas series that we've been in, it's been
reminding me once again of this truth.
You know, the moment in history where everything changed, where
the glory of heaven broke through into our world and into
our lives. Not when everything was good and
people were ready, but when the world was dark.
And over the last two weeks we've been unpacking this
together across our sites. In the first week we read of the
announcement of the birth of Jesus.
You know how it didn't come to the people that we would have
expected the powerful or the prestigious, but it came to the
shepherds, The Dirty, smelly outsiders, the the guys that
were overlooked. God brings his extraordinary
message to and through very ordinary people.
And last week we spent time in John's Gospel and this beautiful
mystery of the incarnation, the Word himself, Jesus Christ, who
was there at the very beginning of time with God and who was God
and the incredible truth that he chose to give up the riches of
heaven and become a man. He chose to step into our world
to walk the the walk that we walk, to experience all that we
experience. God chose to come near to you
and me, and this week we're going to look at how the world
responds when he arrives. That moment when Jesus was born,
when heaven touched earth, when everything changed.
What was the response? And so I'm going to pray.
Father, I want to thank you for this morning.
I thank you for the joy it is that we can come together to
worship you and to remember the reason for this season.
Mother, I thank you for all that you've been doing in us up until
this point through this series. And God, I pray for open hearts
this morning. God that you would speak through
my words, through what I've prepared, and you would reveal
yourself in a fresh way to us this morning in Jesus name.
OK, so we are going to turn to Matthew 2 verses one to six.
We're going to read kind of a bit more of that, but for now
we're going to read verses 1:00 to 6:00.
So if you've got a Bible, you can turn there, otherwise it
will come up on the screen behind me.
So Matthew 2 verses one to six. And Jesus was born in Bethlehem
in Judea during the time of King Herod.
Magi from the East came to Jerusalem and asked, Where is
the one who has been born king of the Jews?
We saw his star when it rose, and we've come to worship him.
When King Herod heard this, he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem
with him. When he had called together all
the peoples, chief priests and teachers of the Law, he asked
them where the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem, in Judea.
They replied, for this is what the prophet has written.
But you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah are by no means least
among the rulers of Judah. For out of you will come a ruler
who will shepherd my people, Israel.
And so here we read about about the Magi.
You know, these are guys from the east who have heard about
Jesus birth and they've come to find him.
They are Gentiles, not Jews, and so they are not part of Israel.
So again, another type of outsider Magi were likely to be
astrologers and they were probably from Persia or Babylon.
So this wouldn't have been a short journey for them.
This would have would have taken them months actually to travel
to Jerusalem. And so this isn't happening on
the night of Jesus birth like the nativity story at school.
Maybe you would have you believe Jesus would have actually been
about 6 to 18 months old here when they were coming to find
him. And they're following a star.
We read that in this passage, verse 2, it says where is the
one who has been born king of the Jews?
We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.
And you know, the star is symbolic because in the ancient
Eastern world, stars symbolized the birth or the rise of rulers.
And so when the magi see this star, they're saying we know
that a king has been born. And in fact, we read here it
says they recognize him as the King of Jews.
They knew the significance of his birth so much that they were
prepared to travel all that way, not just to say congratulations,
Mary and Jesus, but to worship him.
And I love this that God uses something so familiar to the
Magi. They were astrologers.
He used to * to use something that would they would understand
to draw them to Jesus, to the one person that deserves all of
their worship. You know Jesus is born exactly
as the scriptures say he would be.
There are over 300 prophecies given about Jesus birth and he
fulfilled every single one and one of them is referenced here
in verse 6. They're actually quoting Micah
52 which is a prophecy that was given 700 years before that
Jesus would be born in Bethlehem 700 years before.
Now none of this is random or coincidental.
Jesus is born exactly as it was promised.
A king who was promised to the Jews that would one day come to
restore Israel, to save them from their sins, to save them
from death. Jesus Christ, this is good news.
It's good news for us today, and it was good news for the people
of the time as well, especially because things were particularly
difficult and dark during this time when Jesus was born in
Isaiah 9. So Isaiah is a prophet who
speaks about Jesus birth way before it happened.
In Isaiah 9 verse 2, it says this.
It says the people walking in darkness have seen a great light
on those living in the land of deep darkness.
A light has dawned. There was deep darkness in the
land at the time. There was political oppression,
national humiliation, injustice, corruption.
People were living in fear and despair.
God seemed silent and there was this sense that he had abandoned
his people, until on that night, the glory of heaven, the light
of heaven, pierced the darkness. Light broke through Jesus
Christ, light of the world and there is joy.
We see that from the magi in their response, how they how
they come to worship him. The angels even announce I bring
good news that will cause great joy for all people.
But when the light arrives, it doesn't just bring joy because
there's someone else in this passage who wasn't quite so
thrilled at the news of Jesus. We read it in verse 3.
It says when King Herod heard this, he was disturbed and all
Jerusalem with him. That word disturbed in Group in
Greek means shaken or agitated like this King was not happy.
King Herod or Herod the Great, at the time he ruled Judea,
Galilee and all the surrounding regions, and he was known to be
particularly violent and to rule with fear.
Now Herod wasn't born into royalty.
He was appointed king by the Romans.
And so because of that, he was highly sensitive to any
potential rivals. You could say he had a bit of
impostor syndrome, like, he was highly insecure and paranoid.
That's the kind of king he was. You know, he even executed his
wife because he was convinced that she was conspiring against
him. And he killed three of his own
sons for a similar reason. Like this guy was ruthless,
especially when he thought there was a threat to his throne.
And so he hears this news of this new king, king of the Jews.
And not only that, these magi want to go and worship him.
King Herod, who was a king that ruled with darkness, was
threatened by the light that had arrived.
It's interesting that we're told that not just Herod was
disturbed by this news. It says all Jerusalem with him.
So why would all of Jerusalem be troubled?
And this is because they knew Herod's brutality.
And so for them, this wasn't a joyful anticipation.
It was fear because they knew that Herod's insecurity about
potential threats was going to lead to violence.
And we read, don't we, later, how Herod reacted.
We're going to pick it up from verse 7.
It says Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from
them the exact time the star had appeared, sent them to
Bethlehem, and said, Go and search carefully for the Child.
As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I may go and
worship him. After they heard the King, they
went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went
ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child
was when the star. 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
worshipped him. Then they opened their treasures
and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and bear.
And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod,
they returned to their country by another route.
When they'd gone, an Angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a
dream. Get up, he said, take the child
and his mother, and escape to Egypt.
Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the
child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and
his mother during the night, and left for Egypt, where he stayed
until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the
Lord had said through the prophet out of Egypt I called my
son. When Herod realised that he had
been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders
to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its and its
vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with
the time that he had learned from the Magi.
The light had disturbed the darkness.
When light disturbs the darkness, it exposes.
It exposes hatred, it exposes injustice, it exposes sin and
hypocrisy. It exposes people's hearts.
On hearing this news, Herod starts plotting how he can get
rid of Jesus, this new baby on the block that people are
calling king. He makes a plan that involves
deception and murder. When light shines, it exposes
things that were once hidden, and we see things for what they
really are. And when light disturbs the
darkness, it also confronts. You know, Jesus came to comfort,
but he also came to confront, to push back darkness by bringing
truth. And it's the truth that brings
freedom. But darkness doesn't like that.
And so there's always a reaction.
You see, See, this is the raw and real truth of the Nativity,
that the birth of Jesus. It wasn't some cute, fluffy
moment in history, but it was a cosmic confrontation of light
clashing with darkness, the arrival of the one true King
interrupting piercing darkness. Of course there's going to be a
reaction. Herod is disturbed, political
powers are threatened. There is a resistance and
nothing has changed. Like we still see this today.
Where Jesus is, there is light, and when the light breaks Into
Darkness, things are exposed and He confronts sin with His truth.
And so I have a question for you this morning.
Where is Jesus confronting something in your life that
you've resisted? If you were to allow Him again
this morning to shine His light, to expose your heart, what is
there that He wants to deal with?
Not because He wants to humiliate you or to shame you.
In fact, the opposite. His love is purifying.
And when you allow Him to reveal any sin that is there, when you
bring it into the light, you receive freedom.
You know, I was, I remember when I was about 2223, not that long
ago, and I was at this worship event.
It was like a kind of weekend thing.
And I was there one evening and I remember just like completely
unexpectedly, out of nowhere, this thing that I was carrying
came to the surface. And it was sin.
It was something that when I thought about it, I felt
disappointment. I felt like I disappointed
myself. I disappointed God.
And I just felt this kind of shame.
And I was like, do you know what?
I just don't really want to think about that.
And in this moment, I just as I say, out of nowhere, it felt
like God just shone a light on what it was.
And I had a choice in that moment, you know, I could have,
I could have shut the door and I could have continued to bury it,
or I could have brought it to God and brought it out to him
and spoken at, spoken it out, acknowledged it, said sorry to
him. And I chose to do that, to
repent in that moment. It was difficult decision to do,
but I knew that I had to do it, that he was inviting me to.
And as I did that it wasn't some huge thing.
It was just a quiet recognition and acknowledgement of what what
I'd done. And as I did that, the tears
came. I felt this overwhelming
likeness and freedom. And you know, I had a revelation
of God in that moment that has stayed with me ever since
because I know now that I can take anything to Jesus.
When He exposes something in me, a sin in me, or something that I
have done, it's an invitation from Him to walk in freedom.
It's not so He can pile shame on me.
Shame is heavy, you know, and sometimes things are buried so
deep we don't even know it's there.
But I know now that because of that moment, I can bring that
stuff to Him. And there's only freedom waiting
on the other side of it. And So what it is, what is it
this morning maybe, that God is exposing in you?
What do you need to bring before Him so that you can leave this
place feeling lighter? You see when the light comes it
requires a response and we see the different responses in this
passage in Matthew 2 that we've read and I wonder this morning
maybe which one you can relate to. 1st we have the Magi.
You know when they heard the news of Jesus birth they were
moved into action. They packed up their things,
they chose a special gift, and they travelled for months to
search for this king, desperate to find him.
And they were not going to stop until they found him.
People far from Israel, yet drawn by divine light, recognise
that he was special and that he was worthy of their worship.
And then we have Herod. You know, he feels threatened
and he reacts with hatred. He is not going to give up
control. He will do anything to keep the
power that he has over the people and the situation.
But do you know what? Hostility doesn't always have to
be loud, doesn't have to always be plotting to kill someone, and
deception. It sometimes and often shows up
as defensiveness, control, or resistance to transformation.
When Jesus light threatens something that we want to hold
onto, we want to keep because it can make us feel uncomfortable
if we feel like that's being threatened in some way.
We also have the religious leaders, verse 4, it says that
Herod called together and consulted with the chief priests
and the teachers of the law to see what they thought about it
all. And they said, yes, this is
true. They quote Scripture in fact,
which prophesises that a ruler of Israel will be born in
Bethlehem. And you can imagine, can't you,
in that moment, almost like the penny dropping, like surely this
can't be a coincidence, like this is actually happening.
These guys knew the Scripture. They could see the prophecy was
fulfilled, and yet they chose to stay.
They chose not to speak up. They were indifferent.
They knew the truth, but it never moved them.
You see, indifference doesn't always look like rejection.
It can look like preoccupation. It can look like disengagement.
It can look like you know the story, you enjoy the season, not
going to continue to live life unchanged, never moving towards
worship and obedience. And so how are you going to
respond to Jesus this Christmas? We are invited to not only
acknowledge the baby in the Manger, or even just to adore
the baby in the Manger, we're actually invited to crown him as
king, the one true king and. That is who Isaiah is describing
in Chapter 9. The light reveals the true king.
Isaiah 9 verse 6 says for us, for to us a child is born, to us
a son is given, and the government will be on his
shoulders and he will be called wonderful counsellor, mighty
God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
I love how we sung that this morning.
Of the greatness of His government and peace, there will
be no end. He will reign on David's throne
and over His Kingdom, establishing and upholding it
with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever,
the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
Verse 6. The government shall be on His
shoulders. The ultimate responsibility will
rest on him through this child that has been born to us.
All authority, the weight of responsibility will be on him.
And it goes on to say what kind of ruler he will be.
He will be called wonderful counsellor.
You know that word wonderful in Hebrew?
It doesn't just mean nice, it means extraordinary beyond human
explanation. So it's saying here that he is
going to reveal truth. He is going to guide people into
life beyond human explanation. Everlasting Father.
Now this is not saying that the Messiah is God the Father, but
it's saying that he's going to rule with fatherly care,
protecting, nurturing, providing, offering security
that is everlasting. 1 He is going to be the Prince of Peace.
He will establish true peace by bringing healing and
restoration. He is going to establish a
different kind of government, one that is no longer ruled by
fear or dominance and violence, but one of justice and
righteousness and peace, light instead of darkness.
Verse 7, it says of the greatness of his government and
peace, there will be no end. Isaiah is saying here that this
is not going to be a temporary regime.
This is it guys. This is eternal, which means
that it's still true for us today when we come under His
Kingdom and under His rule. This is available for each of
us. So I wonder, do you need to
receive him as your wonderful counsellor again this morning?
Or your everlasting father? Or maybe you need his peace?
I think it's so easy at this time of year to lack peace.
I know that's true for me. And you know what?
I thought I'd do a bit of an experiment because you guys have
heard of ChatGPT, right? I mean, I'm new to it, but I'm
pushing 40. And so basically it's like the
next Google, right? It's the new Google, So I've
heard. And so I thought I'd ask it a
question. And I was surprised at how
profound the answer was. I asked ChatGPT, if you were the
devil, how would you destroy my peace this Christmas?
And this is what it said, said if I were the devil trying to
ruin your Christmas, I wouldn't bring chaos.
I'd bring subtlety. I'd weaponize expectations by
whispering that this Christmas must feel magical, meaningful,
perfect. And then I'd make sure reality
can't keep up so you feel disappointed even when things
are fine. I'd resurrect old comparisons by
reminding you of how Christmas used to feel, of how other
people's holidays look online, of who's happier, richer, more
loved, because nothing kills joy faster than measuring it.
I'd bring ghosts to dinner, old arguments, old regrets, old
versions of yourself. I'd make sure they sit quietly
in your head while everyone else is laughing.
I'd rush you. Too many plans, too many
obligations, no space to rest or to feel just performance.
I'd convince you that rest is laziness, that if you slow down,
you're failing someone, that peace must be earned.
Instead of aloud, I'd focus you on what's missing, the person
who isn't there, the thing you can't afford, the life you
thought you'd have by now. I'd make silence uncomfortable
so you'd never actually hear what you need, only noise, guilt
and distraction. Wow.
Like I think, I don't know about you, but I think many of us, if
not all of us here, can relate to this.
I know I can. And so I want to remind you
again this morning of the promise we have in Isaiah of the
greatness of his government and peace.
There will be no end. Jesus.
Perfect peace is promised to us. Not the world's peace, not
circumstantial peace, not holiday peace that comes through
performing, but the very Prince of Peace himself.
The peace that exists even when the table is messy, even when
our hearts are crushed and are heavy, even when the story is
unfinished. Because peace is a person that
we receive and his name is Jesus.
And so we can declare that again this morning.
Because what was true then, what we read in Isaiah as a
declaration of who Jesus is, He is still that today.
And so we can declare that again this morning for us, that he is
the Prince of Peace, that his peace extends into every
situation. And it brings me on to my final
point that the light calls for surrender.
Name Jesus literally means the one who saves and then the name
Messiah or Christ. They both mean the same thing.
They both mean the anointed 1. And so Jesus Christ, when we say
his name, we are saying that He is the anointed 1 to save us.
He is given a name that declares His identity and his mission
before he ever speaks a word, a name that points to why He came.
There is no one else who can save us but Jesus.
No one else can pay the penalty of sin and death.
No one else can bring us back into that right relationship
with God. God himself became a man,
humbling himself to be born in a Manger.
And it was this humility at birth that mirrors his obedience
to death. We read about that in
Philippians 2. Did you know that the Manger was
traditionally used to put perfect, unblemished newborn
lambs in? They were wrapped in swaddling
in swaddling cloth, and they were placed in a stone Manger
for protection, ready to be used for temple sacrifice.
That's where they used to keep the perfect lambs.
So then the people of God would take these perfect, unblemished
lambs and they would take them to the temple, and they would
sacrifice them for the forgiveness of their sins.
Except we know, don't we, that it was never enough.
It was never enough to pay our debt in full.
We needed a perfect sacrifice as a man, and his name was Jesus.
You see, the crib is inseparable from the cross.
Jesus died on the cross to deal with sin once and for all.
And not only that, three days later he rose from the grave.
Death couldn't hold him. The grave couldn't hold him.
And so if we believe in our hearts and confess with our
mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, then we get 2 to be resurrected
into new life with Him, the crib, the cross and the crown.
We know. We may know Jesus as the baby in
the Manger. We may we may even know him as
our Saviour. But have we made him King?
Is he Lord over our life? Because this is something we
need to do. We need to surrender to Him
daily, not just as a one off, but every single day.
We need to surrender back to Him.
And so where is it this morning that you need to surrender again
to Him? What areas of your life do you
need to make him king over? Where has the crown been
misplaced and it's been put on other things?
And you need to this morning remove that crown and put it
back on to Jesus. Acknowledge him again as your
Lord, because from the very beginning, the outcome was never
in doubt. Jesus, light of the world, who
was there at the very beginning before time, who came as a baby
to disturb the darkness of this world, and who is reigning today
on the throne, pushing back darkness, extending His Kingdom.
John 15. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Amen. Amen.
Would you guys stand?