“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the groom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they didn’t take oil with them; but the wise ones took oil in their flasks with their lamps.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Jesus loved to tell stories. He did it all throughout His ministry. He told stories prompted by the situations He was in. He told stories that connected with people because they could easily locate themselves in the stories. One of the His stories was about a bridal party getting ready for the arrival of the groom. It is a story that has everything to do with Advent. Let’s talk about why.
“So the Lord God said to the serpent: Because you have done this, you are cursed more than any livestock and more than any wild animal. You will move on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life. I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike you head, and you will strike his heel.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
Have you ever gotten a stain on a new shirt? If you have, you know what an enormously frustrating experience that is. This new thing for which you had such great plans and high hopes is now ruined. Sure, it’s one small stain on a big shirt, but once it’s there, the whole thing is polluted by it. It affects how you see all of it. It won’t ever be the same again. And for the person who caused the stain, you have nothing but fury (especially if it was you). Yet what if it could be restored again? When the dust of Adam and Eve’s first sin exploding the previous perfection of creation into bits was still settling, God spoke words of judgment. But He also spoke words of hope and restoration. When He did, the seeds of Christmas were laid, and the world entered the first season of Advent.
So far in our journey to discover the heart of Jesus’ being God with us, we have looked at the “God” side of things. Today, we’re going to flip them on their head to see more clearly what it means that Jesus is “with us.” I’ll give you a hint: It reveals a humility that is truly unique in a proud world. Read on in the third part of our series, God with Us, to find out just why this idea is such a good one.
Power to the Nobodies
We love rags-to-riches stories. We love hearing about people who are down on their luck, but by working really hard (and receiving a bit of good fortune), suddenly coming into a life of ease and plenty. There’s simply something that feels just to us when the arrogant rich are brought low and the humble poor are lifted up. Think about how many of our stories include this kind of an element in them. Cinderella is perhaps the most famous of them. But that same theme appears all over the place. If you think through the list of Disney Princesses, nearly half of them (there are twelve total) started out poor and became a princess because she married the prince. Of the rest, nearly all of them went through a season when they lost all the trappings of wealth before coming back into it again at the end of their story. We want to see this dramatic transition happen because most of us don’t feel rich and live vicariously through their good fortune.
“And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
As we have been working through our Advent teaching series, God with Us, last week we talked about the incredible glory and power that belongs to Jesus as the eternally pre-existent second member of the Trinity. He is fully God, and we dare not forget that. And yet, at the same time (and as we will talk about this coming Sunday, available here on Monday), He voluntarily took on all the limitations of humanity. All of them. Not only that, when He actually entered the world, it was not among the halls of the great and powerful where He would be afforded the honor rightly due His station. Instead, it was through the womb of a poor, teenage mother who was giving birth on a cave floor with no one but an anxious father and a collection of smelly animals as her company. What could motivate the God of all creation to enter the world in such mean estates? One word: love.
That brings us to today’s song of the season. A Christmas album I keep going back to again and again each year is Meredith Andrews’ album, “Receive Our King.” Every year as I listen to it from start to finish over and over again, the rich theology and superb storytelling woven into some truly spectacular music leaves me looking forward to the next year’s excuse to listen again. If this were an old cassette tape, I would have likely long since worn it out.
Toward the end of the album is a song borrowed from another tremendous artist, Andrew Peterson, that starts out with an unassuming guitar line and Andrews’ declaration that the night of Jesus’ birth was not the silent night the traditional carol so beautifully but, in all likelihood, so inaccurately proclaims. The King of Heaven entered the world not with pomp, but with pain and a mess and the utmost of humility. I have yet to find a song that captures that night and the love that made it possible quite so well as “Labor of Love.” As you continue to celebrate through this Advent season, I hope and pray this is the blessing for you it has so often been for me.
“The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is near the brokenhearted; he saves those crushed in spirit. One who is righteous has many adversities, but the Lord rescues him from them all. He protects all his bones; not one of them is broken.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
We are sometimes tempted to think something about Jesus that is far too often presented as the truth, but which is about as far from that point as it could possibly be. We think He came to save people who have it all together. We think this even in spite of hearing numerous stories of dramatic conversions in which someone who was as far from God as he could possibly be finally embracing the Gospel. We treat those like the exceptions that prove the rule: Jesus came for the put together, and I’m not that. This morning, let’s talk about the truth.
The Nexus 