Is Jesus

If you’ve been journeying with us the past four weeks, you know that we’ve been celebrating and observing Advent, and now here we are on Christmas Eve, on the verge of the celebration of the arrival of Jesus, our Savior, the light of the world, Immanuel, God with Us.

The Christmas story is a powerful story, filled with wonder and miracles and very real life. It is the story of God with Us, Jesus come to earth as the most wonderful gift of all eternity. As we have walked through various parts of the Christmas story these past four weeks, we have explored the intersection of God with Us in the lives of real people who played a role in His arrival. And we have seen that as He brought hope, love, joy, and peace into their lives in very real ways, He will do the same for us today.

In our time together now, let’s briefly trace our way through portions of this Christmas story again, highlighting all that it means that God is with us.

God with Us Brings Hope

Luke began his story of Jesus’s life with Zechariah and Elizabeth, a priest and his wife, an old childless couple, who receive an angelic message that they will have a son who will be the promised prophet to prepare the way for the coming Messiah. We know him as John the Baptist.

This message to Zechariah was a bright spark of hope—to the couple who had longed for a child for most of their lives but even more to the people of Israel. You see, the promise of the Messiah had given the Jews their deepest hope throughout their entire history. Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, God had been caring for His people and making a way to restore them—and us—to Himself. He had formed a covenant with Abraham, promising the blessing of Christ to all people through Abraham’s family. He had affirmed the same covenant through the leaders of ancient Israel, and He had foretold the arrival of the Messiah through many prophets, perhaps none more so than Isaiah.

Isaiah fanned the flames of hope with his messages of the coming king, such as these in Isaiah 9: “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 Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 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” (Isaiah 9:6–7).

How is your hope today? Whether your heart is light or your spirit is deep in despair, let me encourage you that God with Us brings us hope that sparks like a fire. It flows like water. It grows like a seed. Hope grows and spreads like a living thing. It can dwindle and wane and, yes, even die. But with nurture and care, it can revive and flourish and multiply.

Focusing on gratitude can renew and grow our hope. Recognizing and appreciating the good that God has shown us in the past can increase our hope for all He will do in the future. Collectively we can all be thankful for the gift of God’s Son, and individually we can remember and pay attention to ways and times that God has shown up in our lives—from the many daily gifts and blessings to the bigger acts of guidance or provision or protection in whatever ways He knew exactly what we needed.

This is my prayer for us all in this season: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

God with Us Brings Love

When we talked about love, we talked about Mary and Joseph. In many ways, theirs was a typical love story for its day: a young couple of humble means enters into the multistep process of marriage in ancient Israel. They think they know where their lives are headed—and then an angel shows up, announcing a miraculous pregnancy of the Son of God. Their world is rocked. Their once quiet lives will never be the same. Will their relationship survive the perceived betrayal?

Mary and Joseph’s was a love story and a life story being written by God Himself, and He is love itself. He knew just how to deliver tangible love to Mary and Joseph in exactly the ways they both needed. For Mary, this was the support of someone who could fully understand what she was going through. Elizabeth was just the person as she was experiencing her own miracle pregnancy. And her reception of Mary was like the biggest, warmest hug she could receive. Elizabeth’s understanding and acceptance served as the tangible arms of God to confirm and reassure Mary that she was not alone.

For Joseph, a supernatural expression of love was needed. In his pain, he had decided to divorce Mary, but God lovingly met his needs by sending an angel to assure Joseph that miraculous events were indeed taking place.

In just the right ways, God lovingly provided what Mary and Joseph needed—and God does the same for us. God is love. God gives His love to us freely. And when we open ourselves to it, God’s love flows through us to others.

And it is the love that entered the world as a helpless human baby—to identify with and be one of us and to willingly lay down His life and be killed under the unimaginable burden of the sins of the world—so that we can be restored in love and relationship with God for eternity.

God with Us is love for and within and through us. The love of God is a miraculous, transformative force that changes us and sweeps us into a miraculous story. As we respond to God’s love, we find our own capacity to love expanding. It’s a little like that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! when the Grinch’s heart keeps growing bigger and bigger—“three sizes that day”—until it bursts the measuring frame.

Perhaps like that transformed Grinch, we too can be bringers and bearers of love in this Christmas season and beyond. Let’s start with those closest to us—our spouses, our kids, our relatives, the ones we’ve been impatient with in the busyness of the season. Let’s continue with our friends in this room, in our neighborhoods, at our jobs. And, yes, let’s include the strangers, the people who seem different from us, the enemies, and even the ones who are just plain hard to love.

Love has come into our world in the person of Immanuel, God with Us. Let’s live and spread His love in every way we can.

God with Us Brings Joy

Elizabeth personifies Christmas joy. Mary’s aunt, the mother of John the Baptist, was the first, after all, to receive and experience joy in the arrival of Jesus on earth. But first there was joy in the miraculous gift of her own son, John the Baptist. And it was all the more joyous because of the pain and shame she had endured.

You remember that Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, had never been able to have children, and now they were old, too old. Their dreams of having kids, or even a single kid, were dead. This was a great loss they would have grieved deeply, especially Elizabeth. In her culture, she would have borne the blame for this.

And then an angel appeared to her husband, telling him the couple would have a son—not just any son, but one who had been prophesied to prepare the way for the Messiah. Zechariah was in disbelief of the news initially. Elizabeth must have felt joy when she heard—or certainly when she became pregnant soon after.

When Mary came to visit shortly after Mary’s own encounter with an angel, joy erupted from Elizabeth. She proclaimed to Mary, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy...” (Luke 1:44–45).

Elizabeth’s joy was contagious, filling Mary and setting her free to overflow with gratitude and praise with her own song.

Joy is like that. It spreads, and it often is present in circumstances that don’t seem all that joyous—especially when its source is Jesus, God with Us. Peter described that kind of joy as inexpressible and glorious. “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8–9).

Christmas is a season characterized by joy—because Jesus has come. Let’s look for and choose joy no matter what troubles may be swirling around us or what pains may be troubling us inside. Let’s rejoice together for the arrival of our Lord and in the knowledge that He is with us, always working to provide and heal in our hearts and lives.

God with Us Brings Peace

We like to think of it as a peaceful night in Bethlehem on that first Christmas. But it wasn’t for Mary and Joseph. Mary was giving birth . . . in a stable . . . after a frantic search for lodging of any sort in a city that was so crowded there wasn’t a place for a pregnant woman to stay.

It might not have been peaceful for the shepherds either. We tend to picture a calm, still night and a pastoral scene with shepherds resting around a campfire and sheep nestled in for the night beneath clear skies and twinkling stars. But those sheep might have been restless and trying to wander off. There might have been coyotes howling menacingly nearby—or leopards prowling. Storms might have threatened overhead, and the men who wandered the hills might have been grumbling about eating the same bland food for the sixth night in a row.

What we do know for sure is that those shepherds were not feeling peace when the angel first showed up. They were terrified. They probably thought they were seeing some kind of ghost—or losing their minds. It was a common reaction from everyone who ever came face-to-face with an angel in the Bible. But these guys weren’t even necessarily particularly religious. They undoubtedly believed in God and did their best to follow the laws, but in the social and spiritual order of the day, these guys were at or near the bottom—and they knew it. They were nowhere near the holiness of those Pharisees. They probably either felt a lot of guilt about not measuring up to what they perceived as God’s standards or they just quit trying. So when a heavenly being appeared in the sky, they probably thought they were in for it at last.

But you and I know the story. The angel was a messenger of joy and peace. “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people,” the angel said (Luke 2:10). “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests,” the chorus of angels sang (Luke 2:14).

God had purposely chosen to let these lowly sheep herders in on the first news of celebration because His Son had come for them. God with Us was here—and He was here for shepherds and outcasts and the downtrodden and those who didn’t measure up. And to all of them He brought a message of peace.

Because God is with us, this is the peace that is available for us. And it is the peace we celebrate today. It is also the peace in Advent that keeps us looking forward—when Jesus returns one day, He will heal all that’s been broken and restore God’s complete kingdom of peace.

This is the peace that holds us even when the circumstances swirling around us are not those of a silent night. The apostle Paul taught us, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7).

My friends, this is the kind of peace we have access to because God is with us—the peace that transcends understanding because it defies our circumstances and problems and pain. Even in our darkest nights and fiercest storms, we can draw near to God and find the settling presence of His Spirit.

Here on this Christmas Eve together, let us rest in that peace in this moment together. And let us carry it within us even as we return to our celebrations and our tribulations. The Prince of Peace is come, and He can rule in our hearts.

God with Us Is Jesus

And that brings us to the center of it all.

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

Jesus.

Luke’s description is so understated, yet so definitive. The Messiah came into the world in the most humble of ways: human, infant, poor, vulnerable, physically dependent—God with Us as one of us. A miracle, the greatest of all miracles, yet a quiet miracle. And the miraculous announcements and events surrounding His birth were at first quiet, personal, even controversial in appearance for Mary and Joseph. Then they were unexpected and localized to lowly outcasts and foreign sages who were on the lookout for such an unexpected disruption of eternity.

And still in the middle of it all is Jesus. Our Immanuel. Our God with Us.

Jesus is the fulfillment of all hope.

Jesus is the embodiment of love.

Jesus is the source of joy.

Jesus is our peace.

Jesus is life.

And because He has come, we can be with God—authentically, honestly, wholly, eternally.

Jesus is the giver of life to the full, as He described in John 10:10. He is the way, the truth, and the life, as He described in John 14:6. He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. Jesus is who we have figuratively waited and prepared for through Advent, and Jesus is who we continue to look forward to in His eventual return. In the meantime, He is with us, filling us with His life and Spirit.

Now as we arrive at Christmas, let’s open our hearts to Him in worship. Let’s receive His hope, love, joy, and peace—and ultimately His life.

Paul captured a snapshot of this life we now have in Christ—as well as a complete summary of Advent and the gifts brought to us by God with Us: “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have PEACE with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and JOYFULLY look forward to sharing God’s glory. We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident HOPE of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his LOVE” (Romans 5:1–5, nlt).

What a beautiful description of the life brought to us by Christ! Tonight on the eve of Christmas, let’s be like those shepherds of long ago. Let’s eagerly go to our Savior and worship—and let us return glorifying and praising God when we find and know and experience that all is as He promised.

Benediction

“‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’ Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’” —Luke 2:10–14

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