It's A Boy!

“It’s a Boy!”

Many-a-father has walked out of a delivery room and made that grand announcement, “It’s a Boy!” Personally, I’ve been equally elated to announce twice—with the delight that only a new father can display—“It’s a girl!” There’s nothing quite like that announcement of a newborn baby.

And listen, there’s an unmistakable message in those few words, “It’s a Boy!” No one thinks, “Oh, he must have lost his job”…or “They must have bought a new car”…or “The stock market must be up today.” No! Everyone knows what those words mean—a baby’s been born! It’s clearly identifiable…it’s obvious…it’s unmistakable!

This time of year, you’ll hear people throwing around lots of phrases: Merry Christmas, Merry X-mas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Season’s Greetings…and some folk argue endlessly about what the right words are. Personally, I’m not that offended when somebody says, “Happy Holidays” to me…I can still wish them whatever I want to. (And by the way, don’t ruin your witness as a believer by being rude to a sales clerk who’s just trying to do her job…and trying to keep her job by obeying her employer’s rules.)

We get all tangled up in terminology, sometimes so passionately that we lose sight of what it’s really all about. That’s why I’ll give you a good way to stay on task today and every Christmas season. Try this on for size…the next time someone wishes you “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” or even “Merry Christmas,” respond with “It’s a Boy!” and see what happens…it forces us to remember the heart of the Christmas message!

The angel told Mary, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus” (Luke 1:31).That name, by the way, is significant because it literally means, “Jehovah saves.”

We so easily and nonchalantly wish one another “Merry Christmas”—and that’s fine—but are we really grasping the excitement and enthusiasm of Christ’s birth when we do? “It’s a Boy!” reminds us that a baby’s been born in Bethlehem, and He is the Savior for the whole world. That's what this day should be all about!

What Does "LOVE" Mean?

A group of children was asked, “What does ‘love’ mean?” Here are some of their answers:

• Rebekah, 8, said, “When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time—even when his hands got arthritis, too. That's love.”
• Billy, 4, said, “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
• Bobby, 7, says, “Love is what's in the room at Christmas, if you stop opening presents and listen.”
• Nikka, 6, says, “If you want to learn to love better, you should start with someone you hate.”
• Tommy, 6, says, “Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.”
• Cindy, 8, says, “During my piano recital, I was on a stage, and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me, and I saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. And I wasn't scared anymore.”
• Jessica, 8, says, “You really shouldn't say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot.”

I got to thinking about asking God that same question, “What does ‘love’ mean?” and I was reminded of John 3:16—“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” What a perfect verse to sum up the message of Christmas!

In all our celebrations this month, let’s not forget that the birth of Christ—the Incarnation, which is God clothing Himself in the garments of humanity—answers that question, “What does ‘love’ mean?”

There’s a poem that’s been set to music and sung by many…it’s called “Love Came Down at Christmas.” I couldn’t agree more!

World War 1 Is Finally Over!

Well, I guess you’re glad that, as of a couple of months ago, World War 1 is finally over. I know I am!

Of course…I, like you, learned in school that it ended in 1918 or 1919…but that’s not technically true. When Germany surrendered, as part of the peace treaty, they were forced to sign a “war guilt” clause that included a pledge to pay billions of Reichsmarks in reparations. They made their final payment in October.

In the Bible—Romans 8:7—we’re told that our sin nature is at war against God. It says, “The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.” But God initiated a peace treaty that paid the debt of our “war guilt,” a debt that we could never pay on our own if we had a million lifetimes to live.

And at the center of this peace treaty is Jesus, born in Bethlehem, and called “the Prince of Peace.” I love Isaiah 9:6 that says, “For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”

Now, it wasn’t just his birth that brings peace to our lives…Jesus was born, lived a sinless life, died upon the Cross as full payment for our sin, and rose from the dead to give us eternal life! But His birth set into motion His earthly life that would climax upon Calvary’s Cross…and fulfill that angelic prophecy that said, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

As Jesus hung on the Cross, He made a statement that was heard throughout all time and space. He said, “It is finished!” That’s literally an accounting term that means “Paid in full.” He made the final payment for our sin then and there.

Another thought along this line: We’ve always heard about some soldier stranded on a deserted island unaware the war has ended, still fighting the battles even though he no longer has to. That’s the way many people are living their lives today. If that's you, stop fighting. Realize that Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has signed the Peace Treaty in His own blood, providing peace to all who will receive it.

A Baby to the Rescue!

Did you hear about what happened to a 2-year old little girl in Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago? She and her mother were at a mall (in the food court)…and her mother says that she took her eyes off the child for just a few seconds. When she turned around, the child was gone…but then the mother saw her daughter…inside one of those toy claw machines where you pay money to operate the claw (like a crane) and try to pick up stuffed animals.

The little girl had crawled up through the chute of the toy machine. She could get in, but she couldn’t get out. And as you might guess, the mother was frantic that she could help her little girl…but the fire department soon came and, in about 15 minutes, had rescued the little girl from the predicament she had gotten herself into.

That true story makes me think of Christmas and I’ll tell you why. It’s not because they were in a mall. It’s not that the little girl wanted something that she did not have. That story reminds me of Christmas because in the much bigger picture, we (you and I) are that little girl.

The Bible says in Isaiah 59:2, “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God.” In other words, sin has a dividing effect…separating us from God. And at the end of the day—even with all our debating about the origins of sin—sin is a choice. We choose to sin. We chose to crawl up a chute chasing cute and fuzzy fun…and entered a cage—the cage of sin—from which we could not rescue ourselves.

This is why the story of this Pennsylvania 2-year old makes me think of Christmas. What the fire department did for that little girl in rescuing her, God did for us in a manger in Bethlehem more than 20 centuries ago.

Matthew 1:21—one of my favorite verses at Christmas and all year long—“She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins”

What “2001: A Space Odyssey" Can Teach Us About Christmas

In the year after I was born, 1968, a movie came out that fascinated the world. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick co-wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I don’t really have time to discuss the details of the film, but suffice it to say that it was a futuristic look at the world…a prediction, of sorts.

Then, in 1984, a “2001: A Space Odyssey” sequel was released and it was about—among other things—humans making contact with alien life. And the year Clarke chose for this breakthrough? 2010. And here we are in December of 2010 and the closest we’ve come to making contact with alien life is the recent NASA announcement about some arsenic-based bacteria found in a California lake!

It’s actually quite humorous to read predictions made decades ago about what life would look like today. I know, based on all the hype from the mid-80s—I thought we’d all be driving flying cars by now. Futurists were predicting back then that we’d be living in floating space communities and underwater habitats by now. Japanese experts said in 1983 that by 2010 major diseases like cancer and heart disease would be conquered.

It’s easy to make such predictions…much more difficult to make them materialize.

That’s what makes the prophecies of Christ’s birth all the more amazing to me. The first one—Genesis 3:15—was given more than a thousand years before Jesus was born! Isaiah and Micah and Hosea prophesied explicit details of Jesus’ birth more than 700 years before the fact; Jeremiah 600 years. Daniel more than 500 years before Christ was born. And every single prediction—every prophecy—was fulfilled perfectly and completely…down to when and where and from what family Messiah would come!

Most of the predictions that people make today are just wishful thinking…and they would hardly qualify as “prophecy.” Prophecy is history written ahead of time…and only God can do that. I hope you'll give thought to the prophecies of Christ this Christmas and let them shape your understanding and reception of the coming of Christ!

Can You “Imagine” There’s No Christmas?

30 years ago this month, Mark Chapman fired two gun shots into the back of John Lennon outside of his apartment building in Upper West Manhattan. There’s been a good bit of talk and remembrance lately as the world reflected on his death.

Lennon, of course, was one of the Beatles…and in his early days he wrote songs like “Love, love me do” and “I want to hold your hand.” As he got older, though, his songs became a bit more serious. One such song that he wrote comes to my mind…with lyrics like these:

“Imagine there’s no Heaven. It’s easy if you try

No hell below us, Above us only sky

Imagine all the people, Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries, It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for, And no religion too….”

His lyrics were certainly popular (still are, in fact), but not terribly profound. Lennon believed that the world could become better and better and better until it was perfect. He believed in Utopia. So it’s kind of ironic, I suppose, that someone in the world that’s actually getting worse and worse and worse shot and killed him.

Lennon’s lyrics might have been catchy, but Jesus has never been wowed and wooed by them. Jesus spoke of heaven as a real place that He was preparing for his followers. Jesus warned of a real hell for those who choose to live and die without him.

But Jesus was born as a Babe in Bethlehem…He was called “Immanuel” which means “God with us.” God came down to us at Christmas to offer a relationship, not a religion. And whether we know it or not, we need God desperately!

Can you “imagine” there’s no Christmas?

God can’t! I can’t! And I don’t want to.

He has changed my life in dramatic ways and I don’t ever want to go back to that person that I used to be. I may not be who I ought to be (yet), but thank God I’m not who I used to be either! And I owe everything to Jesus!

*Special thanks to my friend Ron Hale for the essence of this blog post...

A Real Solution for Real People with Real Problems

Last month, Bill Nye (y’know “The Science Guy”) was giving a lecture at the University of Southern California when he passed out mid-sentence…just collapsed right there on stage. At first, no one did anything…events like that have a way of shocking people into paralysis. But when the audience did react to Bill Nye, it wasn’t the kind of response that you might expect…and it wasn’t the kind of response that could offer “The Science Guy” any help.

Members of the audience, when they finally did respond, whipped out their phones and began to update statuses and Tweet about what just happened. Now, some of the students disputed portions of what got reported in the news stories…but it still raises a disturbing question: Are we so media-absorbed that we can't respond to real people right in front of us?

I’m so grateful that God, by way of a Baby born in Bethlehem, responded with a real solution for real people with real problems. The Bible doesn’t just tell us that we’ve stumbled…or that we’ve fallen…it doesn’t even say that we’re in really bad shape. You know what the Bible says about us apart from Christ? Paul wrote to the Ephesians about their lives in the B.C. days (y’know, “before Christ”) and he said, “You were dead in your transgressions and sins.”

But Jesus’ birth is God’s response to our very serious condition. And Colossians 2:13 explains what happens when we surrender our lives to Christ, “You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins.”

So, how does that happen? Actually, it’s as easy as A-B-C:

A - Admit to God that you are a sinner

B – Believe in Jesus as God’s Son and that He died for your sins and rose from the dead

C – Confess Jesus as Lord of your life

Let me know how I can help you make that decision for Christ.

Human Beings Can't Walk Straight, and NPR Says So!

NPR had the most interesting story recently about why human beings cannot walk straight. They said, “Try this: Put a blindfold on someone, take them to a park or a beach or a meadow and ask them to walk for as long as they can in a straight line. Then watch what happens.”

According to this story (because I haven’t yet field-tested this theory personally, but I will), people cannot walk in a straight line if they’re blindfolded. Oftentimes they’ll walk in circles and not even realize it. Now, if you ask these people, they believe they’re walking straight…but obviously they aren’t!

Now the story said that there’s no real answer as to why we can’t walk straight, but one theory is that human beings need a focal point out in the distance in order to walk straight. Without it, our internal guidance system kicks in…but there’s something inside us that won't stay straight.

That, my friend, is a sermon illustration just waiting to be told!

A great verse that prophesied the birth of Jesus 700 years before the fact is Isaiah 9:2. It says, “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.”

In John 8:12, Jesus said about Himself, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” But sadly, as John 3:19 puts it, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, God became a man in the Person of Jesus Christ in order to remove the blindfold of darkness and to provide a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood example—focal point, if you will—to follow. Our internal guidance system is broken—“…for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” So, one of the clearest, most compelling Christmas messages I could give you today would be to keep your eyes on Jesus…and follow Him!

Christmas Makes No Sense...

Did you hear about the new vacation package that the Pan Pacific Hotel in Seattle is promoting this fall? It’s called “Snuggle Up and Shop,” where you pay $255 a night to shop online from your hotel room.

So, let’s get this straight—you leave the comfort of your own home, pay hundreds of dollars for airline tickets to Seattle, pay $255 a night…so you can do something there that most of us can do from our own homes?!?

Now, in all fairness, for every night that you stay, you get a $50 Amazon gift card and a $50 In-Room dining credit (and, of course, free wi-fi Internet)…so the idea is that you get all the fun of taking a shopping vacation…without having to actually leave your hotel room to shop.

And surprisingly, at least it’s surprising to me, the hotel says that people are taking advantage of this offer! People are spending (potentially) thousands of dollars just to shop online from a hotel room!

That doesn’t make sense to me on so many levels. And while I know I’m talking about apples and oranges here and I hesitate to use that story to illustrate my point here today, that God would become a man in order to save us from ourselves and our sin makes no sense to the unbelieving heart.

And I’ll give you one big reason why—God is self-sufficient. In other words, we don’t add anything to God…His fullness is independent of us. So His willingness to create us in His own image…and to love us despite our flaws and failures… and to pursue us in order to redeem us…is hard for us to understand.

So why did He do it? The short answer to that question is “for His pleasure.” Revelation 4:11 and Colossians 1:16 both speak to creation existing for God's glory and pleasure. God is a sovereign Being, so He can do whatever He wants (like the Incarnation). God is a relational Being, so it is “for His pleasure” that He created us for fellowship. God is a merciful Being, so it gives Him pleasure to restore His image in us that has been marred by sin.

We might not understand it, but God's plan is perfect...always!

What You Can Learn from a Bunch of Begats

The first 17 verses of the New Testament, found in the Gospel of Matthew, are some of the most overlooked and unread verses in the entire Bible. And that’s unfortunate because we can learn a lot about God and His ways from them.

But if you’ve never read Matthew 1:1-17, it might help to know why many people don’t make the effort to read those verses. Here’s how the Gospel of Matthew and the New Testament of the Bible begins: “The record of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the Son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.” The KJV of the Bible, by the way, uses the word “begat”…we don’t see that word much, do we? “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judah and his brethren.”

And for 15 verses, we read this long list of names—hard to pronounce names—one person begattin’ another who begat another…and so on…all the way down to Jesus. “Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.”

Now, quite honestly, there’s a lot that could be said about those verses being in the Bible…but here’s what I want to tell you this morning. Those verses—all the begats and everything—teach us one of the most valuable lessons about Jesus that we could ever learn.

You know what that lesson is?...that Jesus is not ashamed of sinners. He loves sinners. His family tree is full of them! If we had time, we could go through and explore the stories of each of these names… and we’d discover some pretty dark and depraved stuff about some of these folk.

Now that’s not to say that God doesn’t take sin seriously. He does…so much so that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in order to die on Calvary for our sins. He takes sin seriously! But this genealogical list teaches us that Jesus is willing to stand among and love sinners (a group to which we all belong)…even though He was/is without sin.

Do you know Him? Don't miss the Christ of Christmas this year!

Well, It Seemed Like a Good Idea in the Beginning

A few years ago, I decided that my daughters needed a trampoline for Christmas…so I set out on a quest to find the perfect one. I thought it would be a great idea to set it up on Christmas Eve after my girls had gone to sleep so they could wake up the next morning and find it outside. My plans were perfect…at least until I opened up the box containing 176,423 parts (that’s hyperbole for those of you who care about details).

I had a friend come help me, and I’m grateful he was there to hold pieces in place while I tried to piece them together. There were instructions in the box, but you’ve got to wonder who writes that stuff! Man, the technical jargon mixed with bad English…what a combination. And the fact that it was like 20-something degrees outside while I was trying to put the trampoline together…that didn’t help. I couldn’t handle all the screws and bolts and nuts and springs with my gloves, so I was having to do it bare-handed. Do you get the picture?!? I was handling metal parts bare-handed in 20-something degree weather on a night that I couldn’t just give up and do it another day.

Finally, with the help of my more mechanically-inclined friend, we finished the trampoline. I don’t remember exactly how long it took to put that thing together, but I remember it took much longer than I thought it would. I have to confess to you…before I finished, I was rethinking my decision to give my girls that trampoline! Man, it just turned out to be so much more than I had planned. I had lost my Christmas spirit by the end of the evening!

That whole experience makes me think about God’s gift at Christmas. God is infinitely more complex and inexplicable than anything in the universe (let alone a trampoline); and yet, God's Christmas “presence” isn’t reserved for some privileged group of mechanically-inclined geniuses. At Christmas God became simple; the mysterious one became visible, small, and even vulnerable. Through Jesus’ birth, God revealed himself to ordinary people. As the Gospel of John says, “No one has ever seen God … (but) Jesus has made him known.” God didn't send thousands of pieces; he sent one piece—a Person, God-in-the-flesh, Jesus Christ. And he also sent clear instructions—believe in and follow Jesus.