Old Louisville Christmas 2023
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Well, raise your hand if here on December the 10th, 14 days before Christmas Eve, all your Christmas shopping is done. Anybody? There's like a bunch of you. Well done. A round of applause for those of you who are on top of it. For the rest of you, you're a bunch of losers. Here's another question for you, a little bit different. How many of you have finished making and distributing your own lists for what you want from Christmas from others?
Why are you laughing? I'll tell you why you're laughing. You're laughing because it strikes you as slightly absurd if you're an adult to make a list to give to your friends and family members about here are the 15 things that I want for Christmas. I mean, it's one thing to do that when you're a kid. It's one thing if somebody asks you what you'd like for Christmas. But it would be another thing for you to just sort of send out random emails to people. My Christmas wish list. Very strange thing, right? Because we know, even from the teachings of Jesus, that it is better to give than to receive.
And as the years go by, and as we get older, and as we have families and kids and grandkids, as we host the parties and all the rest, we get really good, but especially around the Christmas season, at giving. But what about receiving? Are we able at Christmas to receive? That's what I want to talk to you about for just a few minutes. I want to take you, actually, I want to rewind a little bit in the story that our readings for the evening have been telling us to a time just a few months before the birth of Jesus.
Let me invite you to take a Bible, if you have one, and turn over to Luke chapter 1. We're going to be looking at a song that Mary, the mother of Jesus, sang after she was told of his birth by the angel. This song is traditionally called the Magnificat because that's the first word in the Latin translation of it. And essentially, these 11 verses or so are a testimony from Mary's own mouth of God's goodness to her. But also, and here's what I want you to see in this, they're also a testimony of Mary's amazement at what God has done for her.
And that shows us, I think, the kind of spirit that ought to mark us on a day like Christmas or in a season like the Christmas season. When we think about the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It's a kind of astonishment that fills up the heart and fills up the mind about not what we have given to God, but what we have received from Him. Let's look at Mary's song. Luke chapter 1, beginning in verse 46. Mary said, Savior. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good This song that Mary sings here is made up, I think, of three parts.
I think you can break it down really nicely into three parts. And those three parts of her song teach us something. Each one of them teaches us something different about what it means to be a person who receives the grace of God, especially at a time like Christmas. So let me tell you the three parts of it. Number one, God shows his grace to people who are just astonished by his goodness. He shows his grace to people who are astonished by his goodness. Number two, God shows grace to people who know that they need him. And then number three, God shows grace to people who don't try to pay for his gift.
That's what I want to talk to you about tonight. And I think at a time like this, thinking about this idea of receiving the grace of God, receiving the mercy of God might be the most important thing we can possibly think about as we embark on this Christmas season. The reason for that is that over the next couple of weeks, there are going to be a ton of things that are pressing on our time and attention. There are going to be demands made of you. There are going to be things that are required of you and things that are requested of you and things that are expected from you. And a lot of times in this season, we can get into a mindset that is just a matter really of giving, giving, giving.
But here's what I want you to think about as we study this song tonight. I want you to think about the fact that nobody in the history of the world ever found salvation from God's hand by giving him anything. Nobody ever found salvation from God's hand by giving him anything. Which is really maybe the deepest irony of Christmas. And we know the impulse to just receive, receive, receive is not a good one. And so what we tend to do as human beings is turn that impulse of receive, receive, receive into something more like just give, give, give until we're exhausted.
And yet when all is said and done, Christmas really is finally about the fact that we have received something. It's about simply and humbly receiving God's grace in Jesus Christ. So let's think about this song in a little bit more detail. First of all, I just want you to see in, say, verses 46 to 49, that's sort of the first section, where Mary makes it clear that God shows grace to people who are astonished by God's goodness. He shows grace to people who are astonished by his goodness.
And Mary certainly was. There's no doubt, as you read the words of her song, she is astonished by what God has done for her. Just let your eyes look at verses 46 to 49 there. Those verses are just full of language that capture Mary's kind of wide-eyed astonishment at what God has done for her. So she says there in verse 46, my soul magnifies the Lord. My spirit rejoices in God my Savior. 48, she says all generations are going to call me blessed. And what she means by that is all generations are going to call me happy. And why?
Because, she says, God has looked on her humble estate. She's just a servant. She's just a nobody, and yet the Mighty One has chosen to do great things for her. I think it's important and interesting to see how Mary sees her own status next to God. How she sees herself compared to the one who has done good for her. And of herself, she says she is of humble estate. She says she's a servant, which literally is a slave. And on the other hand, God is neither of humble estate nor a servant.
God, she says, is Lord. He is Savior. He is mighty one. He is holy. And what fills up her mind and astonishes her soul is that this great holy Lord would stoop to do this amazing thing for her. She's astonished by that. That's not all her astonishment is coming from. It's also that Mary realizes all of a sudden when Gabriel comes to her and says all of those things that we read about just a few minutes ago, She realizes with astonishment that she has become the focal point of God's entire plan of redemption.
I mean, Mary had grown up reading the Old Testament. She knew these passages of prophecy better than you and I know them. She knew her Old Testament better than you and I know it. Those were her stories. Those were her promises. Those were prophecies to her nation. She was one of millions looking forward to the day when God would keep those promises and send a king to set everything right. for hundreds and thousands of years those millions of people had waited generation after generation century after century they had waited while the whole history of their nation became more complex more exquisite in its detail more glorious in its promises they waited and on that night when Gabriel came to her and said that the most high is going to overshadow you and you will have a son and his name will be Jesus and he will sit on the throne of his father David and he will be great she finds out that that whole glorious exquisite story has come to rest on her and her child and imagine that the hopes and dreams of all the years are met in thee tonight
that baby that she was carrying was going to be the fulfillment of god's promises to her nation the fulfillment of god's promises to king david the fulfillment of god's promises even further back to Abraham, the fulfillment of God's promise to Eve, that from her would come a son who would crush the serpent. All that had come to fulfillment right here in her womb, and it left her wide-eyed with astonishment. My friend, do you respond to the truths of Christmas, to the reality of God's grace in that same way?
Do you react to what God has done for you in Christ with any sense of astonishment? Or is your attitude now something more like, well, I had it coming to me anyway. This is kind of old hat to me. I'm familiar with all these songs. I'm familiar with all these readings. I'm familiar with all these theological categories and creeds that we read around Christmas time. Friends, we are an incredibly cynical generation. In a lot of ways, we've trained ourselves through the years to expect the worst.
But then, in a strange way, when something good happens to us, we too often shrug that good thing off as if it's no big deal to us. As if it was coming to us anyway. You know what we need to do this Christmas season? You know what needs to happen in our hearts, in our cynical, wrapped up hearts? We need to capture some of Mary's astonishment at God's goodness. We need to recapture some of the just staggering magnificence of what God has done to save us from our sin.
Friend, have you felt yet any wonder this Christmas season? That's a good question, isn't it? Have you yet felt any wonder this Christmas season? We got two weeks until it gets here. Pray that the Lord would give you a sense of wonder. And if you haven't felt any, take some time tonight. Take some time tomorrow and just think about, meditate on what God has done. Read some Christmas carols and really think about what they say.
Take that bulletin home that you have tonight and really look at the words of what they say. O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant. O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem. Come and behold him. Born the king of angels, O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord. Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord. Late in time behold him come, offspring of the virgin's womb. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the incarnate deity. Pleased as man with men to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.
Am I saying that what you need to do is go home and just, you know, squeeze your face really hard. And squeeze your fist and try to gin up some astonishment at what God has done. You can't do that. You can't create wonder in your own heart. But what I am saying is that it's hard to be astonished at something if you don't pay it any attention. It's very hard to be astonished at something if you ignore it. Friends, you don't have to gin up astonishment.
You don't have to gin up wonder at God's work of redemption and salvation. It is astonishing. You just have to commit yourself to spending a little time getting your heart around it so that it can bloom in amazement at God's love and mercy and grace. That's the kind of heart, that's the kind of heart that God's grace comes to, a heart that is astonished at what he has done. Why is that? Well, it's because astonishment is fundamentally a humble frame of mind, isn't it?
Astonishment says that God has outdone your expectations. That you weren't sitting around thinking that you deserved what he's done for you. It's not old hat to you. You didn't have it coming. Astonishment says that you understand that the goodness God has shown you is in spite of yourself and not because of yourself. Friends, don't have a heart this Christmas. Don't have a heart in this season that ignores what God has done. Because what that would say, if you managed to make it through this whole season, ignoring what God has done, what it would say is that you have a heart that sees no value in what God has done.
Let your soul, like Mary's, magnify the Lord this Christmas. Let your spirit rejoice in God your Savior. Here's the second thing. God shows grace to people who know that they need him. God shows grace to people who know that they need him. If you look at verse 50, Mary takes her own experience of being shown God's grace and she expands it now, not just to herself, but really to the ends of the earth. And verse 50 forms a kind of topic sentence for the next three verses.
Look at verse 50. His mercy, she says, is for those who fear him from generation to generation. Not just me. His mercy is not just for me, she says. It's for generation after generation of those who fear him. And then over the next few verses, she really describes five different kinds of people and how God responds to them. Do you see that? So in 51, she says that God scatters the proud. In 52, she says he brings down the mighty but exalts the humble.
In 53, she says that he fills the hungry but sends away the rich, five different kinds of people. But I don't think that she's actually talking about five different kinds of people. I think she's talking about two different kinds of people. She's talking about those who fear the Lord and those who do not. So on the one hand, you've got those who are humble and hungry. On the other hand, you've got those who are proud and mighty and rich. Those who fear the Lord and those who don't. Now, don't confuse it.
I mean, don't make it more complicated than it is. She's not making the point that literally anybody who holds political power or has money is necessarily an enemy of God. And anybody who hasn't had a good meal in a couple of days is automatically a friend of God. That's not what she's talking about. She's talking in spiritual terms. What's in view is the heart. Do you fear God or do you not? Are you secure in the things that you have or are you not secure in them? Do you need God or do you not? You may be here thinking tonight and hearing all of these carols and considering it all.
I'm thinking, you know what, I don't need religion. I'm happy to celebrate Christmas. I'm happy to sing some carols. I'm happy to think about the scriptures with a bunch of Christians. That's fine, but I don't need religion. I don't need what you have to offer. You know, there are a lot of things in life that can give you that kind of certainty. A whole lot of things in life that can make you feel that way. Power is one. Whether it's in a society or in a business or in a church or whatever it is. It can give you a sense that you don't really need God.
Money is another one. Mary mentions both of those. But there are other things, too. There are other things that you can plant your feet on, and over time it can lead you to believe that you don't really need God, that you're not really as helpless as the Bible says you are. Dignity. Friendships. Success. I mean, even in a certain ironic way, suffering. You ever thought about that? Even in an ironic way, suffering can become something that you take pride in.
I've been through all of this. I can handle anything. I don't need God. But friend, you do need him. You do need him. Because even if, yes, you may be able to handle everything this world throws at you, even if there's no problem imaginable that you think you can't handle, the one thing that I promise you you cannot handle on your own is your own sin and the penalty of death and hell that comes with it.
You can't exhaust that on your own. You can't deal with that on your own. You can't handle that on your own. You need somebody else to handle that for you. And that's exactly what Jesus offers to do, to take your sin, to take your rebellion, and to take the sentence of death that comes along with it and exhaust it in his own body through his death and resurrection. He dies in the place of his people. He dies as a substitute and a champion in the place of, in the stead of his people so that we don't have to die.
He handles it for us, that thing that we could never handle for ourselves. That's what it means to have faith. I mean, at the very bottom, at the most fundamental level, faith is dependence. There's nothing virtuous in faith itself. Faith only springs up from a realization, actually, that you and yourself have no virtue. You've got nothing in yourself to lean on, nothing in yourself to stand on. You need to depend on somebody else, and faith is that act of depending. It's that act of leaning and relying where you say, there's nothing in me to lean on.
I have to lean, Jesus, on you. See, what happens too often is that we start to think that faith in itself has some kind of virtue. That we're to be congratulated for having faith in the first place. But you don't get congratulated for having faith. The goodness or badness of your faith depends entirely on what that faith is in. If you say to me that you have faith, but your faith is in Satan, I'm not going to congratulate you for having faith in the first place.
I'm going to say your faith is wicked because it's in the wrong thing. Now, faith takes on the character of what it leans on. And what we do as Christians is that we lean on Jesus. We lean on him in humility. So how about that? Are you humble in that way? Do you recognize that there's nothing in you that you can lean on? There's nothing in you that you can hold up to God and say, God, because of this, declare me to be righteous?
Do you know deep down in your heart that you do, in fact, need Jesus? My friend, if that's you, if you're not a Christian, but you kind of have that sense in you, that is exactly the kind of soil that faith in Jesus springs up from. If you have a deep understanding that I can't handle this sin, I can't handle being at enmity with God by myself, I need somebody else to handle it, that's exactly the kind of heart you ought to have. And what you need to do now is take that sense of need, take that sense of dependence, and put it on Jesus.
Trust him to save you. It's not a hard thing to do. You know how to trust people. You do it all the time. You know what it's like for your heart to size a situation up and then sort of topple over into trust. You let people work on your home. You let people work on your car. You let your heart topple over in trust of your mechanic that he's not going to like saw the wheels off your car. You know how to trust people. Friend, if you feel that dependence, if you feel that need for a Savior in your heart, let it topple over into trust in Jesus.
You just say, Jesus, I can't do it. I can't handle this on my own, but I believe that you can. And so I'm going all in, Jesus, with you. I got no other plea. I got nothing else to show God. All I've got, Lord, is you. And then you turn to somebody who brought you. You turn to a friend and you say, I think I've become a Christian because I'm trusting in Jesus to save me now. That's all it takes. Here's the third thing. God shows grace to people who don't try to pay for a gift.
God shows grace to people who don't try to pay for a gift. I think that's the point of verses 54 and 55, those last ones there. Mary sings about what kind of grounds God's showing of grace. Like, why does God show grace? If it's not earned by virtue or by good works or by anything else, if it's given to people who realize that they have nothing that deserves it, then what does God base it on? How does he decide that he's going to give grace in the first place if it's not based on your works?
How does he decide that? Well, Mary says the whole thing is based on God's remembrance of mercy. And then it's based on the fact that he spoke to our fathers. In other words, he made promises to our fathers, which is to say, if you put those two things together, God says, I'm going to show grace because I promised to show grace. Okay, great. But why did he promise that? You start asking that question, why did he promise grace? He shows grace because he promised to show grace.
Why did he make the promise to show grace in the first place? Even the promise was made of grace. And that's when the bottom drops out and you realize that this thing goes all the way back to eternity. Why does God love you? He loves you because he loved you. And why did he love you? He loves you because he loves you, because he loves you, because he loves you, because he loves you. All the way back to eternity. There's no bottom to that well. God's grace is inexhaustible. You can't pay for it. You can't look at God and say, God, because you're showing me this grace, all right, I'm going to pay for it.
I mean, imagine if you were sitting around with your family on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day sharing gifts, right? And somebody that you love hands a gift to you, and you open it up, and it's whatever it is. You know, the thing that you've been wanting for all year long, and there it is. It's right in your hands, and someone is giving it to you as a gift. How absurd would it be? How absurd would it be for you to take out your wallet and say, thank you so much, how much do I owe you? How often do we try to pull our wallets out for God? How much do I owe you?
What do I have to do now? Friend, he didn't love you because of anything that you are or anything that you did. If you're a Christian, he loved you because he loved you because he loved you because he loved you. All the way to eternity past. It's bottomless. So, is it more blessed to give than to receive yet? Yeah, of course it is. Jesus said it is. It's more blessed to give than to receive. So give. Give to people this Christmas.
Give, give, give. Give out of the abundance of your heart. But as you give, stand in awe. Take some minutes to stand in awe of the glorious fact that above all, You have received grace upon grace. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we thank you and we praise you. That you have given your all to us. That even when we were sinners, you didn't withhold your only son, but you gave your son so that we might live.
Our God, we pray that you would let these truths explode in our hearts in gratitude and in wonder this Christmas season. Help us to stand in awe of the eternal Son of God made flesh. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.