“the perfect christmas” - north point...

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© 2010 North Point Ministries, Inc. The Perfect Christmas

“The Perfect Christmas” Andy Stanley

Jenna was right, it is perfect but it’s almost suspiciously perfect, it’s almost like too perfect to be true. It’s almost like a story that somebody would make up in order to convince people to do things because life isn’t really all that perfect. You know, actually the Christmas story doesn’t begin with the angel appearing to Mary. The Christmas story begins with an angel appearing to a couple who is too old to have children to tell them they were going to finally have a child—which was kind of perfect, because in those days people thought if you didn’t have children God had cursed you and God was mad at you. And you had either done something bad in a former life or you had done something bad and were just out of favor with God. And so this angel appears and says to Elizabeth and to Zechariah that you’re going to have a son. You’re going to name him John and he’s actually going to announce the coming of the Messiah that the Jews have waited for forever. And so it’s kind of perfect because it was foreshadowed by the fact that when Jesus grew up and was a man, part of his ministry would be to people who thought they were out of favor with God for something they had done or their parents had done and they would never ever find favor with God. So, that part of it was perfect. Then finally the angel appears to Mary and she’s a teenager, maybe fourteen years old—you probably knew that—and the angel says, Mary, you have found favor with God. To which Mary must have thought I’m fourteen, how could I have found favor with God? I haven’t even lived long enough to find favor with God. And the angel says it doesn’t matter because God has just chosen you. He has just shown favor on you. Which again is perfect because throughout Jesus’ ministry he would go around showing favor to people who had not done anything in order to earn his favor. In fact, he would show favor to people who had done things to create a sense of displeasure between them and God. So it was like this cool foreshadowing thing. It’s such a perfect story. And then maybe the best part of all is that the first group of people that find out about Jesus being born are shepherds. And we don’t understand this because we don’t have shepherds, but shepherds were outsiders. They were kind of outcasts in terms of the whole religious system. In their religious system you couldn’t touch dead things—you couldn’t handle dead things—and shepherds were always handling dead things and dealing with dead things. So they would raise the sheep and give the sheep to the good people and the good people would go have a sacrifice and get close to God. Meanwhile the shepherds were kind of the outsiders. It would be easy to be a cynical shepherd—a skeptical shepherd—but they were certainly outside the religious system, and yet in this perfect story that’s so perfect it seems like somebody just made it up, the angel appears to the shepherds—the outsiders—and says we want you to be the first to know, you outsiders, that God has done something in the world and God is doing something incredible. And we want you to see it even though you have never been invited to anything religious because you are always ceremonially unclean because sometimes you walk in front of the sheep but sometimes you walk behind the sheep…And, we know that puts you on the outside. But we want you to be the first to know. We want to invite you into this thing that God has done. It’s just perfect because when Jesus would grow up and be a man in his ministry, he would spend so much time going to people who were

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outsiders, people outside the religious system, people outside a relationship with God and say God loves you and you’re invited as well. So the whole story is almost suspiciously perfect. And then there is like this broader narrative that we just get a little glimpse of that you have to know a little bit about history. Because 1,500 miles away from Jesus being born—about 1,500 miles—is Caesar Augustus. Now you learned about Caesar Augustus in school and maybe you remember he was like the emperor, really the first emperor of Rome. He created the “Peace of Rome.” He reigned for like over forty years. And the interesting thing about Caesar Augustus that makes it such an interesting part of the story is that his adopted father was Julius Caesar. And Julius Caesar was called “The Divine Julius.” He was given the status of deity, which meant that Caesar Augustus was considered the son of a god, the son of a god. So you have like the son of a god in Rome who’s ruling the world, and then you have the Son of God being born in Bethlehem at the same time. And there is all this tension and there is all this drama and eventually—it’s such a perfect story—eventually the only time the world will ever hear about Caesar Augustus—other than a paragraph in a book or a lecture in college—the only time we ever hear about Caesar Augustus is when we tell the story of Jesus. That the first emperor of Rome becomes a footnote in a story of a Jewish carpenter, I mean, it’s just absolutely perfect. It’s a perfect story but it’s so perfect that it kind of makes you suspicious because life isn’t that perfect. There is not subplots and foreshadowing and everything works out. And when we’re children, it’s easy to accept it as true. But as we grow older, we begin to slide this into the category of myth and fable and fairytale and this certainly doesn’t help, does it? [References picture of the nativity.] Everywhere we look there is like—it’s almost like a cartoon. We almost make the whole scene look like a fairytale. Everybody is so perfect. I mean, they have perfect skin, and they have perfect smiles, and they have perfect hair, and Jesus is blonde. And you know how many little Middle Eastern children are born blonde…And even look at the animals are perfect, everything is perfect. And every woman here or watching or listening who has ever had a baby knows that if you had had a baby in that building without an epidural you would not look like that and you would not be happy. And we like the song, but it would not have been a “silent night” would it? And so, what do we do? We take this story that’s so perfect who can believe it, that’s so mystical and magical who could believe it, and then we create this kind of thing [referencing nativity picture]. So, no wonder as we get older we take the story that meant so much to us in childhood and we kind of shove it into a category of myth and legend and folklore and fable. But you know it’s not even really good myth. See, in a myth or a fable or folklore there’s like a moral to the story. Remember growing up you heard the story of George Washington—cut down the cherry tree and then they asked him did you cut down the cherry tree? And he told the truth. And nobody believes that really happened, but it’s a good lesson about telling the truth. What do we learn from this [the nativity]? Make reservations, call ahead. I mean there’s really no application; there’s no moral to this story. It’s not even good myth. And yet for many of us, that’s what it becomes. And of course it does because it’s too perfect. It really is too good to be true. And then we take off the

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rough edges and take off all the dirt and take out the sound and the smell and we set it on a mantel or on a table somewhere or out in a front yard and we drive by it and it becomes a fairytale. It becomes a cartoon. And it really becomes a fairytale and a cartoon really with no meaning. Maybe a little momentary inspiration that takes us back to childhood, but certainly nothing to take us into adulthood. But to the rescue, to the rescue come the two guys that actually bring us the Christmas story, Matthew and Luke. Matthew is a follower of Jesus. Matthew knew Jesus. Matthew knew Mary. Matthew knew John who took care of Mary until Mary eventually died. Matthew, who had access to the information when he sat down to write his story, he did not begin “once upon a time.” He begins this way, Abraham had a son who had a son, who had a son and he meticulously goes through this genealogy—that most of us find boring—because he wanted everyone to know Jesus was an actual person who really lived, who was connected to all the right people. And that the story he was about to tell—as difficult as it would be to believe—actually took place. And then he begins the story this way, he says the birth of Jesus happened as follows and he dives right into the icky details. It was a man named Joseph who was betrothed to a woman named Mary and he finds out she’s pregnant and then he has a dilemma on his hands. And the story begins. And it’s so realistic and those kinds of things happened all the time. But Luke is even better. Luke, who wasn’t one of Jesus’ disciples, Luke was a doctor. But Luke knew Peter and Luke knew John and Luke even knew James, the brother of Jesus. And so Luke sits down and he realizes there are so many stories and there are so many different accounts and there are even some conflicting details. So Luke decides, you know what, I want to get this right. So here’s how Luke begins his story of the birth of Jesus. Look at this, he says, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us” (Luke 1:1 NIV). In other words, there are a lot of people who were trying to get this on paper because it’s so amazing. Now this isn’t 20, 50, 70, 100, 200 years later, this is during the time that these events actually took place. He said there’s so many people trying to get this right. He says this, “…Just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word” (Luke 1:2). He said there are so many accounts and so many stories floating around from people who were actually there. And then he says this, “With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning” (Luke 1:3). He says so I decided I wanted an orderly account. I wanted an account that reflected what actually happened—and since I had access to Peter and since I had access to John and since I had access to Matthew and since I had access to Mary, since I had access to the eyewitnesses—I decided to put together an account that would accurately reflect what actually happened because nobody is going to believe it. He says this, “I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught” (Luke 1:4). So that you may know the certainty of the things that you have been taught. Theophilus, you’ve heard these stories. Theophilus, you’ve been taught these things, but I want you to know this isn’t myth, this isn’t legend, this isn’t fairytale, this isn’t oral tradition that was passed down generation after generation after generation and then it began to be exaggerated and embellished. This happened among us and the eyewitnesses of these things are still with us, so I

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have thoroughly investigated them and I’m about to tell you the story of how it actually in history happened. And then he does something extraordinary, something that doesn’t happen in myth and fable. He anchors the birth of Jesus to a very specific period in time. He says this, chapter 2 says, “In those days Caesar Augustus,” in other words he says I’m going to anchor this to history because this actually happened. “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world” (Luke 2:1). And then he gives us even a greater parenthetical detail so that people would know this was a period of history they could track down and know with certainty that these events took place. He says this, “(This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria)” (Luke 2:2). And, extra Biblical material tells us that Syria actually had a governor named Quirinius. And that while he was governor there were actually two censuses taken. So this isn’t once upon a time, this isn’t long, long ago in a land far, far away. This isn’t once upon a time there was a king. This was during the reign of Caesar, while Quirinius was the governor of Syria, there was a census that had to be taken—that every historian would be able to track down and pinpoint the time in history when this actually happened. And then he said a man named Joseph was visited by an angel—Mary visited by an angel—took her to be his wife, went to Bethlehem to register—because every male had to go to their hometown—and while he was there, she gave birth to a son and they named him Jesus. And it turns out he would become the Savior of the entire world. So here’s my question for you, what if it’s true? What if it’s true? What if the faith that you had as a child and the faith that I had as a child was the right faith? What if these events actually took place in history? What if you knew the certainty that Luke wants you to have that these were events that took place in such a way that everyone knew God had done something unique in the world? If it’s true then what the angel said is so significant—and what the angel said is so significant for every single person on the planet—when the angel said this, remember? “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for ALL the people” (Luke 2:10). The people like Elizabeth and like Zechariah who thought I must be out of favor with God because look what happened in my life. Things never go right for me. God never answers my prayer. If there is a God, God must not love me. To which the angel would say no, no, no this is a message for you as well, because God does know you and God does hear your prayer and God does love you. In fact, God chose someone just like you to be a part of the story. It’s good news to all people even those people who think, what in the world could I do to ever gain God’s favor? How can I ever gain God’s favor? How could I ever be good enough to gain God’s favor? And the angel would say, no this is for you as well because like Mary, God just loves you. God just favors you. God just likes you—not because of anything you’ve done but just because He loves you. It’s to all the people, even the people who are like the shepherds. For those of you who would say I’m not even a religious person, I can totally identify with the shepherds. I’m an outsider. I don’t even like religious people. Religious people don’t like me and I don’t like them. We have an agreement. I visit my parents during Christmas and Easter and we just don’t talk about it because I’m not one of them. And the angel would say you are part of that “ALL.” That there is great joy for all people because Jesus would demonstrate in an unmistakable,

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remarkable way that he came for those who were nothing like him. “…To all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior, a Savior…” (Luke 2:11). See? What makes this story perfect and what makes this a story that we long to be real and what makes this so perfect for you, is that God didn’t simply send you a second chance. And God didn’t send you another list. God sent you exactly what you needed. And He sent me exactly what I needed, a Savior. Because we are not mistakers who need a second chance; we are sinners who need a Savior. And, do you know how I that you know you’re a sinner? You don’t even keep your own rules. You don’t even keep your own rules. And if there is a God in heaven who has any rules at all, you know if you fall short of your own rules, chances are from time to time you’re going to fall short of his. And the reason this was great news is because God didn’t send another list of commandments; God sent exactly what you need. He sent the perfect gift, which makes this the perfect story. He sent you and He sent me a Savior, Jesus Christ. “…A Savior has been born to you, he is Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). So it’s perfect, it’s perfect—but it’s better than perfect, it’s true. It’s better than perfect, it actually happened. It’s better than perfect, because it’s not a standalone story that we can look at from time to time this time of year. It’s a story that encompasses your story because you are part of that “ALL.” And you, as Mark said, are part of that “you” that he came for—you and you and you and you and you and you and you and every “you” that you will ever be eyeball-to-eyeball with for the rest of your life. It’s better than perfect; it’s true. And he did it for me and he did it for you. Let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, thank you for preserving this story for two-thousand years. Thank you for preserving the words of Matthew and of Luke for two-thousand years. Thank you, Father, that it isn’t a fairytale. Thank you that you didn’t just leave us a story for inspiration. I don’t know what this would inspire us to do, but thank you for documenting the birth of your son in such a way that it is un-missable—it is almost irresistible. And Father, I pray for those here who are always trying to win your favor; I pray that today that they would relax in the fact that you favor them because you love them, you created them. Father, for those who would say I’m an outsider, I’m not really a church person, I don’t know that I believe any of this or understand any of this, that Father, maybe in this moment in time, they would catch a glimpse of the fact that Jesus came specifically for the outsiders. And Father, for those of us who grew up hearing this story, I pray that it would come alive in a new and meaningful way this season as we celebrate not simply the birth of a baby but the birth of our Savior, the Savior of the world. Thank you that it’s perfect. Thank you that it’s true. And thank you that it’s for ALL of us. In Jesus’ name.

“the perfect christmas” - north point...

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