God with Us
Romans 1:1-7
18 December 2016
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— 2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 5 Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. 6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
We are one week away. Are you ready for Christmas? It’s a big deal. I found some statistics related to Christmas that I’d like to share with you. This year the average shopper surveyed planned to spend over $800 on Christmas presents. The average U.S. consumer expects to receive about 14 presents.It’s been estimated that Christmas purchases account for 1/6 of all retail sales in the United States. There are at least two cities in the Unites States called Santa Claus; Santa Claus, IN is about an hour west of Louisville. There are over 20,000 Christmas tree farms in the United States and over 30 million trees sold each year.About 95% of Americans celebrate Christmas each year. Its impact is huge. It corresponds to a big break in the academic year. Many businesses are closed; I worked at a restaurant that was open every day of the year except Christmas. Christmas services at churches are universally the highest or second highest attended services all year; for some it’s the only time they go. Christmas changed history forever because every time we say A.D. 2016 or even C.E., that’s the short way of saying 2016 years after the year in which the very first Christmas happened. So why is Christmas such a big deal? Because God is with us. His presence among us inevitably has an effect on people everywhere.
Consider the effect of God’s presence on the apostle Paul. He was a big, bad Pharisee with no intention of ever following Jesus… until he met Him. The presence of Jesus made all the difference in Paul’s life. Instead of continuing to persecute Christians, his life became about bringing the Gospel to all. Part of that job description, it turned out, was writing God’s own words as letters to various individuals and congregations, including the church in Rome, which letter he started thus: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.” The presence of Jesus made a difference. It doesn’t say he decided to be an apostle or set himself apart for the gospel of God. But he was called; someone called him. And he was set apart; someone set him apart. Who? Jesus. Because His presence makes a difference. The result was a change from a rebel against Christ Jesus to a servant of Christ Jesus. But before we speak too much about why we remember Jesus, let’s consider why He was anticipated.
Verse 2 says “the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.” One of those prophets was Isaiah. All four Sundays of Advent the first lesson at Crown of Life has been from Isaiah. They’ve all been prophecies fulfilled in Jesus. So why was Jesus anticipated? Isaiah 2: “In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains…. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.” Isaiah 11: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding…. With righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth…. His place of rest will be glorious.” Isaiah 35: “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped…. And a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness…. Only the redeemed will walk there, and the ransomed of the Lord will return. Isaiah 7: “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” – God with us.
There’s plenty more in Isaiah and there are plenty of other prophets that speak about the Messiah, so it’s no wonder He was anticipated. But there are also prophecies that don’t make Him sound so great. In fact, the same prophet who wrote all those other things in our first lessons the last four weeks also wrote Isaiah 53: “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…. He was pierced…. He was crushed…. He was oppressed and afflicted…. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.” But even that was Immanuel – God with us, God as one of us. Verse 3 of Romans 1 says “as to his human nature [He] was a descendant of David.”Now David was a great king, perhaps the greatest king Israel ever knew. But as a human, he had certain limitations, namely, he was a sinner. It doesn’t matter who Jesus was descended from. You can stack up all the heroes of the Bible who were ancestors of Jesus: David, Boaz and Ruth, Judah, Abraham, Noah. But all of them have one thing in common that defines them: sin. That’s the race that Jesus became a part of: the race whose defining quality is rebellion against God. That means we’re all in the same boat. People tend to have a lot of pride in their heritage – their German heritage or Polish heritage or Scandinavian heritage or African heritage or Native American heritage, but whatever the Aryan race is in your mind, it doesn’t exempt anyone from being a sinner. When Isaiah 35 mentions the deaf and the blind, that’s not just people who physically can’t see and can’t hear. We’ve all been spiritually blind and deaf and dead. Unless we look to Jesus, we’re in trouble. So ImmanuKnowledge, ImmanuAlchohol, Immanu Money, ImmanuPolitics– none of those things being with us will help, because sin is with us, so we’re going to need God with us: Immanuel.
“Through the Spirit of holiness [He] was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.”That’s why we remember Jesus. He was truly one of a kind. We may be a church named after Martin Luther, but most of us probably cannot name a single one of his children or even the years he lived. We may be proud of the United States, but how many of us can list all of the presidents in order? Can you name all the members, past and present of your favorite musical group or all the starting left tackles in Browns or Bengals or Steelers history? But someone who lived 2000 years ago still means everything to us because He’s God, and He’s still alive. He’s still with us. So that’s why we celebrate Christmas. And that’s why most of the world celebrates Christmas. Even though some want nothing to do with Jesus and just want to celebrate family and eat a lot of food and exchange gifts, God being with us is still a history-altering event.
“Through him and for his name’s sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.”Again, Paul and the other apostles were recipients of grace and faith. That faith leads to obedience. Obedience to what? Everything Jesus commanded. Right before Immanuel became no longer with us, He said to go make disciples of all nations and baptize them and teach them to obey everything He had commanded. But even though Jesus went up to heaven and has not appeared in the flesh like He did for those 33 years, God is still with us. The last thing He said was “Surely I am with you always to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). So God is with us and His presence among us makes a difference, a big difference in our futures. I remember one Christmas that made a big difference for my future. In the year 2000, my grandparents got me the first two Harry Potter books. I was more of a video gamer than a reader or fad follower so those books sat on the shelf until my friend Calvin mentioned wanting to read these books during silent reading time at school. He really enjoyed Harry Potter, and so my obsession was born. Well, Harry was an unloved almost orphan who eventually went away to boarding school and found his purpose. I was a misfit preteen with an attitude who wanted nothing more than to go away to boarding school. That opportunity presented itself in a place called Luther Preparatory School. It was my Hogwarts. It is also without a doubt the beginning of the path without which I never would become a pastor. So Christmas 2000 made a difference for my future. Christmas can do that. But the original Christmas was much more impactful. It prevents our future dormitory from being in hell and reserves a place for you and me in the dwelling place of the living God, where God with us will truly be understood and fully appreciated. Paul says “and you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.”The apostles did what Jesus commanded them to do. They spread the message of Christmas, that God took on flesh and was with us. They spread the message of Lent, that Immanuel’s life was one of rejection and torture and being forsaken, even by God. They spread the message of Easter, that the same Immanuel who actually died as a human being was still God and did not stay dead. He rose and empowered them to be His witnesses to the ends of the earth.
So because our future is so dramatically altered by what began at Christmas, our present is also altered. God is with us, and that affects the way we act, the way we talk, the way we think. It changes our Christmas spirit from receiving to giving, from being served to serving. We seek to be more like Jesus and less like the world. And when we fail at that, God is with us. Christmas was because of our failures, so instead of tallying up our shortcoming in order to beat ourselves up and despair, we see that God is with us, and He was already beaten up for our sins. So I can end the way Paul began:“To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.”