A Great Savior
I love this time of year for so many reasons but perhaps my favorite reason is this… It’s at this time of year that so many people around the world hear about the great love of God revealed in Jesus.
Some people, for the very first time, hear this story about our God who became a man, who stepped down from Heaven to Earth to be the Hope of the World.
We know that this Hope is unlike any other hope you could have because this Hope, Our Hope, has a name. He is the Prince of Peace, Jesus Messiah, The Word who Dwells, and… today we want to lean into this Name: His Name is,
“Savior of the World.”
John Newton, the man who famously penned the lyrics to the song, “Amazing Grace,” once said in his old age…
“Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.”
And I don’t know about you, but I’m so glad we have a Savior. I’m so glad we don’t have to find a way to save ourselves.
Home Alone!
Which was exactly what happened to a little boy named Kevin McCallister.
Anybody remember his story? If your family is anything like my family, you’ve probably already watched the movie Home Alone in these weeks leading up to Christmas.
If you somehow haven’t seen this movie, here’s the basic story line…
Kevin is an 8 year old boy who is a part of a big family. Through a series of unfortunate events, he gets left home alone on the morning his family is leaving their hometown of Chicago for a big trip over Christmas break to Paris.
No one in his family realizes he’s missing until… until they arrive in Paris!
Now, as a parent, this is pretty much your worst nightmare. Maybe you’ve had that moment at the grocery store or at the park when you looked away for a moment and you didn’t know where your kid was. That’s one thing.
But to leave the country and not know you left one of your kids behind! Wow! But the plot thickens.
There’s a couple of crooks who are casing the McCallister’s neighborhood. They know that people who live in this area will be traveling for Christmas and they think this will be their chance to rob a few houses and score big while these people are away.
What they didn’t know was that 8 year old Kevin McCallister was NOT your ordinary little boy. He was going to put up the fight of his life to save himself from these common criminals. And its fun to watch all the things Kevin comes up with to keep the bad guys at bay.
Trying to Save Ourselves
This is what we do, isn’t it?
Just like Kevin, we find ourselves in difficult situations. Sometimes it’s through no fault of our own. Other times, maybe we’re in a tight spot precisely because of the decisions we’ve made and the things we’ve done.
Either way, we feel like it’s all up to us to get ourselves out of whatever we’ve gotten ourselves into.
We feel like we have to save ourselves, solve our own problems, and what’s more… it seems like a sign of weakness if we have to ask for help.
So we end up exhausting ourselves trying to save ourselves. Except, it’s no laughing matter. It’s one thing to watch the movie and laugh at all the ways Kevin tries to save himself, but our situation isn’t a comedy. If it’s anything, it’s a tragedy.
How many of us are always trying to save ourselves?
We use every tactic possible, we become masters of self-reliance. Asking someone else for help is the last resort.
We set up complicated ways to protect ourselves, to fight our own battles, and to try and take care of ourselves. We lie, we try to control everything and everyone, but we end up worse off than we were before.
No matter how hard we try to save ourselves, no matter how hard we fight, we can’t win. Our enemy, our adversary, keeps coming. He is relentless. He is after us. He doesn’t give up. He doesn’t back down.
On our own, whether we realize it or not, we don’t stand a chance.
We need a Savior. We need SomeONE other than us, stronger than us, more able than us, to come along side us and save us.
When you take a look at our real enemy, no matter who we are, how old we are, how strong we think we are, how wise we think we are, how spiritually mature we think we are, we might as well be an 8 year old boy left home alone trying to fend off Chicago’s criminals.
Ultimately, we don’t stand a chance.
The Story Before the Story
The Good News today is that we have do have a chance to stand against our enemy, to defeat our enemy, because we have a GREAT SAVIOR!
Can I tell you about Him?
Perhaps one of the most famous stories ever told about him is found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2. But to really understand this story, I have to back up to the 6th century and give you a little context for what’s about to happen. You have to understand the story before the Story!
Somewhere between the years 592-586 B.C, something significant changed. The people of Israel had turned away from God. At this time, a man by the name of Ezekiel had been called by God to be a prophet for His people. And Ezekiel witnessed something NO one ever thought would happen. He saw the glory of God depart from the Temple of God.
The very light of God’s presence, the very manifestation of God’s presence, what the Jews called the Shekinah glory of God, left the Temple because of the sin and idolatry of the people.
God withdrew His presence, His protection, as a sign of His judgement. The Babylonians invaded. King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the Temple.
After this, the people were carried off into Babylonian exile. Their Temple had been destroyed, the presence of God was gone, and now they are no longer in their own land.
Could things get any worse? Actually, yes.
The Babylonians were then defeated by the Persian Empire. Now they had new oppressors. The good news is that some of them were able to return home. With Nehemiah’s help they rebuilt the walls around Jerusalem.
The bad news was that as a people they were more fractured than ever before, they had to somehow pay Persian taxes, and even though they had rebuilt the Temple, it wasn’t anywhere near what it was before and it was still missing the Presence of God.
And then Alexander the Great came along.
He defeats the Persian empire and now Israel has another superpower to answer to. Now they are once again being persecuted, their Temple is being desecrated, their religious practices are being outlawed, and in 167 BC, they had had enough.
Judas Maccabeus and his family, known as the Maccabees led a rebellion that successfully liberated Jerusalem in 164 BC! They rededicated the Temple and even today, this day is remembered and celebrated with the festival of Hanukkah, also known as… the Festival of Lights!
As the story goes, after the Jews reclaimed the Temple they wanted to light the Temple’s Menorah. The Menorah was a lamp stand that held SEVEN candles and reminded Israel that they were to be a light to the nations. So one of the first things they want to do when they reclaimed the Temple was to relight the Menorah. After hundreds of years of oppression, they want to demonstrate that they were ready to return to God and be who God had called them to be in this world for Him.
But they had a problem. They only had enough oil to last one day. However, the oil miraculously lasted for eight days, which gave them time to prepare more oil. So Hanukkah, this festival of light, symbolizes hope, faith, and the triumph of light over darkness.
For about a 100 years, the Jews enjoyed a sense of independence. But all that changed in 63 BC when Pompey the Great of Rome came and captured Jerusalem. Now there’s a new superpower in town. Israel is now under the reign and rule of the Roman Empire. And now the Romans have done the unthinkable. They have appointed Herod the Great to be Israel’s king.
Herod the Great was considered by most of the people to be a foreigner. He wasn’t Jewish. He was from Edom. And what’s worse, he was a Roman puppet. A yes man for the Romans who was more concerned about power and money than about the Jewish people.
It’s been 400 years since there has been a prophet from God bringing the people the Word of God. It’s been about 600 years since the Shikinah glory of God, the light of God, the manifest presence of God left the Temple.
To say the people were desperate for help, desperate for hope, is putting it mildly. This present day Roman oppression, with heavy taxes, Roman roads lined with Roman crosses, a king not chosen by God but by their political oppressors, the people of God were home alone with no help in sight.
That’s the context for this story found in Luke 2.
Now, the Story…
Luke 2.1-20
1 At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. 2 (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. 4 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. 5 He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.
Assuming that Joseph and Mary were good Jews and traveled around Samaria on their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the distance they would travel would be about 90 miles. Typically, this would be about a 3 day trip.
Given Mary was great with child, who knows how long it took them. Suffice it to say, this was not an easy time. That was not an easy trip. It’s a dark and desperate time for everyone in Israel.
This impossible situation that Joseph and Mary are dealing with has just gotten infinitely more complicated in that they have to travel 90 miles to Bethlehem. I can just hear Mary saying to Joseph, “You had to be from Bethlehem, didn’t you!? Why couldn’t you have been born in Nazareth!” 🙂
A lot of times, we’ll see this moment imagined in pictures or in movies as Mary riding on a donkey, but there’s no mention of a donkey in the story. Did Mary walk, ride in a wagon, on a donkey? We don’t don’t know. But no matter what, it could not have been an easy trip.
They get to Bethlehem. And Luke writes…
6 And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. 7 She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
You’ve probably heard that Jesus was born in a barn, and that’s not altogether wrong. But instead of imagining a shed out back, they were probably in a cave that was used to shelter animals.
And this manger was likely carved out of the side of the cave, a simple trough to hold hay for the animals. So it might have looked something more like this on that night. This is where Jesus is born.
8 That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. 9 Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them.
Notice that. Luke tells us that something has appeared in Israel that hasn’t been here in about 600 years! The Shikinah glory of God! The Light of God. The radiance of His glory has returned!
They were terrified, 10 but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. 11 The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! 12 And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”
How will they recognize him? How will they find Him?
Two signs.
First, He’s going to be wrapped in strips of cloth.
This would not have been that unusual. It was a fairly common practice to wrap new born babies in strips of cloth.
Some scholars, however, point out that new born lambs that were destined for sacrifice were commonly wrapped in strips of cloth to protect them from blemish. So here, the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world, is pictured wrapped in strips of cloth.
Other scholars also point out that these strips of cloth could have been similar to the strips of cloth that were typically used for burial. These could have been the same kinds of cloth used to wrap Jesus after His crucifixion.
What did Luke have in mind when he noted this detail? I’ll let you decide! 🙂 Either way, there’s probably more than one baby in Bethlehem and if the shepherd’s are going to find the Savior they are going to have to find the baby wrapped in strips of cloth.
The second sign… Look for the baby in the manger. In other words, there’s no need to go door to door to all the houses and homes in Bethlehem. You won’t find Him there. Look for him in a humble manger, in a cave used to shelter animals.
And then, this happens…
13 Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
15 When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
What did they want to see? Who did they want to see?
“The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!”
What does it mean to call Jesus Savior?
In the end, Kevin had to have a little help to beat the bad guys. At first, Old Man Marley seemed like someone else Kevin needed to avoid at all cost. He was scared of the old man. But as it turns out, there was nothing to be scared of.
Old Man Marley was a kind hearted man who had often been misunderstood. And when Kevin needed him most, he showed up at just the right time to SAVE HIM!
So it is with God. He is kind. He is ready to help. He’s often been misunderstood. But here’s what I want you to know about Him today. He sent His Son to be Your Savior.
You may feel like it’s been 400 years since you’ve heard a word from God. You may feel like it’s been 600 years since you felt the light of His presence.
But if you’re tired of trying to be your own Savior, if you’re ready to hear the announcement of the Good News that brings great joy, here it is…
You have a Savior. His name is Jesus.
Whatever you’re going through, whatever you’re up against, will you turn to Him?
I know, it feels like it’s easier to just rely on your own strength, but I’m here today to tell you there is a Savior and you are not Him!
Some of you are trying to be your own Savior.
Some of you are trying to be everyone else’s Savior.
But that’s not who you are. Or who you’re called to be.
So today, would you turn to the Savior and put your hope, your trust, in Him?
And if you know someone who needs a Savior, would you tell them the Good News about Jesus?
We can try and rely on ourselves and our own power and ability to save ourselves like we always have. The temptation towards self reliance is real.
We can try to control people and circumstances and manipulate things to our own personal advantage like we always have. We can keep trying to fight our own battles all on our own.
OR…
We could do what the shepherds did that day. We could go looking for Jesus, the Savior of the World.
It’s easy to look for Him in all the wrong places. If we want to find Him, remember, He’s likely among the humble. He’s probably closer than we think. But if we look for Him here’s the promise, we will find Him.
And when we do, He will save us.
