Incarnation | Glad Tidings, Great Joy | Intro | Matt Seymour

There should be a Bible near you, either on the back of your chair or on the back of a chair near you. If you do not own a Bible, please take this as our gift to you. We believe it contains incredible life. And it's always worth pausing every week just before we dive into God's Word to recognize that. People say faith gives substance to our hopes and convinces us of realities we don't see. And the Bible is a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. It waters the roots of our souls, our bodies and our minds, and it leads us into the story of Jesus. And we know that the stories that we live in are the stories that ultimately we live out. And so we want to immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus as a gift from God to us. So I'm just going to pray that God would breathe on His Word. And more than that, breathe His words into our hearts like sowing seeds of life, His living Word, that He would glorify His Son Jesus through sanctifying us and purifying us and helping us to live in the life of His light. So feel free to join me if you wish. We thank you for Jesus. We thank you that Jesus is life and He's light. And that whenever we ask the person of the Holy Spirit to lead us to the place where Jesus is, He does. So give us faith this morning that we would receive that which you've already given to us, the blessing of your Son Jesus in your living Word. Breathe on us now. So as I says this to the people of God, that the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness, a light has dawned. For to us a child is born, to us a Son is given and the government will be on His shoulders. And He'll be called wonderful, counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of His government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord or mighty will accomplish this. So we're beginning a new series today called God with us, subheading glad tidings, great joy over the next six weeks where we are going to immerse ourselves in the nativity narratives. He's zeroing in on Bethlehem, so we're going to be spending next week with the Shepherds and the week after that with Joseph and then with the wise men and then Mary and then we're going to land with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, our Carol's service is on 13th of December. So if you're asking, hang on a sec, Advent doesn't begin until 1st December. You've gone early. It's not because John Lewis have released the ad that we're doing it now. It's because we want to immerse ourselves in the nativity narratives and we don't have time to do that if we start in December 1st because it only have two Sundays on it. That makes sense. We want to give space for the Lord to shape us in this season through Advent, Christmas and then thereafter in Epiphany because we know that Jesus is like a diamond and that there are infinitely variable glories to behold in his beauty, however which way we look at him. So as we spend time with the Shepherds and with Joseph and with Mary and the wise men, the prayer is, Lord, you reveal a new aspect of your glory like a diamond refracting that kind of light. Amen? So we're heading towards Christmas, in other words, what C.S. Lewis called the central event in history where we remember in the words of Charles Wesley that God, the uncreated eternal one, in whom all things were made and without whom nothing is there is, contracts himself to a span, makes himself a single cell and is born as a baby. Paul takes up the language in the book of Colossians at the start like this, that the one in whom and for whom to whom through whom all things are made becomes a baby. In the language of Philippians, it's the God who is seated at the right hand of the father humbles himself and makes himself nothing, a single cell, taking on the very being and likeness of humanity and in the famous words of John, if you want an amount Everest moment in Scripture, John 1, 14, that the word, the logos, the uncreated being becomes flesh and lives and dwells among us. And the invitation over the coming six weeks is this, that we would fear not and we would receive great joy. We would be a people that as we journey towards Bethlehem and behold the glory and beauty of Jesus's refracted light through these different nativity narratives, experience a dimming of anxiety, a diminishing of self-centeredness and an uptick in fearlessness. If you want to hear a phenomenal talk on what it looks like to live without fear, please listen back to Sarah's talk last week, I believe it is word for this season and I think we need to lay hold of it, that as we come into the presence of Jesus, fears fall away. More than that, joy is available, more than that, great joy is available. So there's the invitation before you and before me and as a church before us that I want to invite us into chasing after this Christmas season, that we would hear the sound of the good news of the incarnation, we would hear the message of the angels that the word has become flesh and that in the hearing, more than in our heads, but as it roots itself in our hearts, a fresh, we would experience great joy and outpouring of joy. I want to say that Christmas is a subversive season because joy is available always and I might even go so far as to say especially in the darkness. The people of God have always encountered the presence of God in the person of God in great darkness and therefore the joy that is available to you and to me and to us this season is a subversive kind of joy because it is available within, not apart from the darkness. That's why Isaiah says to the people, walking in darkness, we've seen the light. More than that, we've seen a great light. Now just a bit of context, the people that Isaiah is speaking to 700 years roughly before the birth of Jesus Christ were facing great darkness. Existential geopolitical threats to their nationhood from more powerful hostile nations without who wanted to invade and dominate and assimilate them into their empire in the form of Assyria and Babylon. More than a geopolitical existential threat from without, they were also experiencing a kind of cultural darkness in their society. And so Isaiah says in chapter 5 verse 20, speaking to the people of God, not those who aren't among the people of God, but his people, woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness. In other words, who are creating a topsy-turvy reality where truth is falsehood and falsehood is truth, and ultimately the poor and the marginalized and the isolated and lonely and the widows and the orphans are afflicted and trodden down by the powerful, the elites, including the religious cast and the priests for the sake of power. So this great darkness culturally, more than that, it becomes personal. As Isaiah says in chapter 6 verses 5, "The as he confronts the glory and the beauty of the living God and the vision he has is of the angels bowing down in the throne room of heaven, singing holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Heaven and earth are full of his glory, Hosanna in the highest." As Isaiah sees this vision of the risen, holy God, he feels completely personally undone. And instead of casting judgment on the society around him who have made evil good and good evil, he suddenly recognizes that he himself is part of the problem and he says, "woe to me." I am ruined, for I am a man. of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips and my eyes have seen the king, the Lord Almighty. In other words, geopolitically, culturally and personally, the people walking in darkness have seen a great light on those living in the land of deep darkness. A light has dawned. Now I want to fast forward 700 years to the birth of Jesus and I want to suggest that it is different empires, different living people, but exactly the same principles at stake. So when Jesus is born geopolitically, it's not a serial or Babylon, it's now Rome, which is invaded and dominated and assimilated the people of God through centuries of exile and displacement. Culturally, the people of God are fractured and divided and you can actually see that in their worshipping ceremony. So there are different sects or minority groupings within the people of God who call themselves different names depending on how they diagnose the problem and what they believe the solution to be. So to give you an example, the Pharisees are a religious sect who believe that the reason that there is darkness that ultimately the people of God are enslaved by Rome is because they haven't fulfilled the Torah, their covenant laws and principles given to Moses or Mount Sinai. And if only they could fulfill them to the letter not missing a jot or a titl crossing every tea and dotting every eye, then the kingdom of God will come. That's the Pharisees. Then you have the Sadducees who say no, no, no, no, no. It's too difficult. Why don't we just have one foot in Rome and one foot in the temple? We'll assimilate, we'll kind of operate between the two powerhouses and try and negotiate a compromised settlement. Herod is a Sadducee. Then you have the zealots who just are up for a fight. They're like military power, begets military power. We might be small but let's form kind of military opposition and become a kind of terrorist organization and disrupt Rome from without. And then lastly you have the Essines who say let's leg it. Let's go and live in the desert and just commit ourselves wholeheartedly to God but just leave the city. And into this darkness Jesus is born. And then personally the people of God respond to the message of repentance like you would never believe. One of the messages that is associated with the gospel of Jesus Christ is to repent and believe the good news. And the hunger in the people of God, the softness of their hearts, not to say I've got nothing to repent about, I'm good thanks very much. Why would I even say sorry? But the hunger in the people of God to recognize that there's something fundamentally wrong with their hearts, that there is a darkness within their hearts, not just within the people of God at Israel and not just within Rome, that it's personal is incredible. And it finds incredible life when Jesus preaches that. Into this context, a great light has dawned. John one puts it like this, that the light that's Jesus Christ the incarnation, the unbegotten God becoming a baby shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. Fast forward to now. And I want to suggest that though we are a different group of people living in a completely different time two thousand years later, the principles are exactly the same. Geopolitically, there is darkness. We are living in a world I don't you don't need me to walk you through the uncertainty and the fear that is arising in the context of a spheres of influence, reality, security blankets being withdrawn, who's allying with who, and a kind of hardening with big strong men in countries looking to who've rub resources for themselves. I don't want to go too further because I'll probably get into trouble. To the politics of it. Well, we're living through whatever your politics is, a geopolitically charged moment which is feeling incredibly dark. Where are we going to be in five years, 10 years, 20 years time? No one knows. Secondly, culturally, we are a fractured and divided people, even in Britain, let alone in Europe or across the Western world or the world. Again, you don't need me to educate you in the way social media and bots amplify small divisions into arguments which make people think I feel like I want to go to war with you over this. Your flavour of ice cream is this, your politics is that but now we can't be friends because you either need reeducating or you need correcting. But you certainly aren't someone I can talk to. We're massively divided and into that division we live in an age of incredible injustice, homelessness in the UK according to Shelter has risen to about 380,000 people in the UK, that's one in every 150 people who are living without Shelter in the UK. Some of the highest levels of economic and wealth inequality among major developed nations occur in the UK. There are 4 million children in the UK that's 30% of children who live in poverty according to the House of Commons Library statistics. That's 8 out of every 30 classroom children who are living in poverty. And then there are some other stats around sexual abuse and porn and trafficking and international crime that I can't even bring myself to read out. We are living through a darkness culturally which if you're not aware of that means you're not paying attention not that it doesn't exist. So geopolitically culturally but I would also say I think personally the stats are all showing a spiritual longing, a spiritual openness in the context of incredible loneliness, anxiety, depression and mental health outbreaks. The likes of which we probably haven't seen before. People are regularly reporting depression or mental health anxiety in a sense of I don't know what to do about it and it's being medicalised and it's become a huge part of our experience of being a modern man or a modern woman. Geopolitically, culturally, personally, darkness and yet the people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned and then we get this in Luke 2 which we're going to sit in next week with the shepherds to the shepherds. An angelic visitation that says fear not do not be afraid for behold I bring you and here comes a subtitle of our series Glad Tidings Good News of Great Joy which shall be to all people. We're spending six weeks in these nativity narratives. In the invitation is that as we zero in on Bethlehem and we fix our attention on Jesus what might be released in our hearts and in our midst would be an experience of great joy as we hear again the message of the angels and I just want to encourage us into three postures over the next six weeks that I would love to run thematically through our experience of what it means to follow Jesus in this season. First of all that we would listen we would open our ears. A child has been born. What are we listening for? We're listening for the small and insignificant sound of a baby being born. In a noisy world in a brutal world that the sound of God revealed at Christmas is the sound as small as a child. I love the way that Jesus storybook Bible puts it by Sally Lloyd Jones as silent as falling snow. Jesus came in and when no one was looking in the darkness he came. Sarmate puts it like this that from the mouths of babies and infants at the breast God has established a stronghold against the enemy. Isaiah 42 puts it like this that the Lord that we worship will not bruise a read or snuff out a wick he's that gentle he's that quiet. He's the one who reveals himself not in wind or earthquake or fiber in a still small voice and he's the one who makes himself small enough for us to hold when we gather around the table and take the bread and the wine in our hands. God contracted to a span. I had the privilege of delivering my own boy many of you know that I've told the story before but just want to name it Christmas time it comes up again. We miss judge the timings when I say we I did and we were on the third full fifth floor of a block of flats it was really cold November 18th then 2013 and we just left too late for the hospital and what it meant was by the time we got down the incredibly slow lift out onto the street it was happening. Benji was banging the door down as the wrong phrase but he wanted to come out and we just moved into the flat the day before so here's another thing that's just embarrassing to name I didn't know the postcode of where we lived I just hadn't the address so when we called the ambulance said where are you I couldn't tell them that was bad then I called Addison Lee they said we don't take you know this kind of thing sorry Addison Lee if you're listening to that but that's the truth. So I saw a black cab coming down Albany Street I stepped out in front of the cab held it down and Gary's what he turned out to be his name initially had a look of serious doubt on his faith face but when I asked you down there to the back of the cab realized he had no choice and drove us to the hospital but in the three minutes. it took us to get there between our block of flats and UCLH, Benji was born. Now, when he was born in the back of the black cab, he was born into my hands, but he was born as all babies are, which I subsequently learned, not breathing, because babies don't come out breathing. I know you all know that, but this was news to me. And so in the what felt like hours, 'cause time does funny things when we're under stress, but was probably just a few seconds, I was holding Benji in my hands, I had a visceral sense of fear. It is this, is this really happening. He needs to breathe. And I remember, as you know, this is true story. Having wasted a lot of my time at university, watching daytime TV, a lambing program from the Welsh Hills, when the farmer, don't worry, I didn't do this to Benji, but this is what happened in the lambing program. Took lambs that weren't breathing and held them by the legs and gently swung them so the fluid in their lungs left their bodies. There's an image for you on a Sunday morning, you're like, what was Matt talking about this morning? I couldn't tell you, but I do know that farmers in Wales, when they lamb, swing the lambs gently back and forth. But anyway, I remembered this at that moment, and so I just started shaking Benji around. And this, what happened, the sound of Benji's crying voice was released into the atmosphere. And what was potentially one of the darkest experiences and moments of our lives when I just got everything wrong, released great joy, incredible joy into that moment. I want us to listen over the next six weeks to the sound of God's voice, articulated to you and me in the sound of a crying child, new birth, new life. And I want us to actively tune our ears and the ears of our hearts out from the loud noises which seek our attention through media channels or through distraction and actively fight to tune the ears of our hearts into God's voice. And in that place, here's a prayer, Lord, speak to me. Speak to me of your son, of his beauty. Speak to me of your reality, of your life. Speak to me of your power and in that place which you release great joy. Secondly, I would encourage us to look over the next six weeks at the kinds of people that gather around the manger in Bethlehem, shepherds of the lowest of the low and really, really smelly. Animals would have been in the stable and they would have put a lot. Teenage newlyweds who have just journeyed through the potential isolation of being disconnected from their community given that Mary's pregnancy happens out of the context of wedlock. We'll come to that story. Malcolm Guy, who's a great poet, currently alive, lives in Norfolk, got an incredible beard, wrote a poem called Refugees and he said this of Jesus, "We think of Jesus as safe beneath the steeple or cozy in a crib beside the font, but he is with a million displaced people on the long road of weariness and want. We just saw the picture by Stanley Spencer unveiling the warm moral at Cookeham. In that picture at first glance, it looks like a wonderful, peaceful scene, but as we saw, it was painted in the context of incredible personal grief at the loss of his brother. And yet every single person in that picture is someone Stanley Spencer new. In other words, they were the people that Stanley Spencer had been called to serve and to get to know over the course of his life. Who are you? Who am I? Who are we not paying attention to in our lives? And how can the story of the nativity that those marginalized, isolated, hidden in-plane sight characters and figures who have first seen at the central event in human history, coming alive for us in our lives? Incarnation, word-made flesh, happens on the sidelines. It doesn't happen in the corridors of power. It doesn't happen with big military enterprises. It happens on the edge of things in your peripheral vision. And if we do not actively choose to turn our gaze and focus on Jesus, we could miss Him. It's that simple. In Acts chapter 16, this principle outworks itself in the early missionary experience of the church. So Saul, the zealot and the Pharisee, becomes Paul, the one who has this incredible experience of the living Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul as a Pharisee would have woken up every morning, praying a prayer a little bit like this. Thank goodness I'm not a woman. Thank goodness I'm not a slave. Thank the Lord I'm not a Gentile. Now, I don't know if you've read Acts 16 recently, and I don't know if you've ever considered that the Lord might have an incredible sense of humor. But when Paul, in his converted zeal, is sent to Europe, Macedonia, modern-day Greece, to convert the first European, he thinks he's being sent to convert a man, which is okay with him. But who he encounters, really in Acts 16, is a young businesswoman, a selling cloth in a city called Philippi, called Lydia. After Lydia, Paul is sent to convert a slave girl. And after the slave girl, Paul is sent to convert a Roman God in the prison of Gentile. Christmas is a season where we should allow ourselves to be blown open by the reality that God really is invested in every single person's life on the planet, not just those who are like us, or we get along with, or who are acceptable within the parameters of our tolerance. We're not a people of tolerance, we're a people of love, and love has no boundaries. We go way beyond tolerance in the church, and incarnation in Christmas is a time for us to look and behold the baby in the manger, more than that, the characters gather around the manger and to ask ourselves, who might the Lord be leading me to pay attention to in this season? Lastly, my encouragement to us as a church in this season is to be hungry and to ask. For an experience or an encounter for a transformation, not just of our heads, but of our hearts, I love the carol in the bleak midwinter, but I am sadly disappointed to realize that I'm one of very few people in the church who love it. Many people don't enjoy it, but I love it. And here's one of my favorite verses at Christmas, which you probably won't sing this year, and that's okay, 'cause I'm not gonna force the church to sing songs that I love, but I wanna tell you that I love it, but here's the line that actually makes me cry when I sing it when the narrator says, "Sing it, I'm not singing it." (audience laughing) Don't tempt me, 'cause I would. No, I'm not going to, that would undermine the point and I'm making a serious point. Josh, that's not fair. Here's the line, "What can I give Jesus? Paul, though I am, if I were a shepherd, I'd bring a lamb. If I were a wise man, I'd do my part. Yet what I can, I give him, I give my heart." If we do nothing else this Christmas, and we bring Jesus nothing else, apart from our hearts, we will receive the fullness of the revelation of the uncreated God who has made himself small as a span, as a single cell, and quiet as the cry of a newborn baby. The only work for us this Christmas is to bring our hearts before God. Book of Proverbs, the book of wisdom in the Old Testament says, "Above all else guard your heart. For from your heart flow the waters of your life. If you want to know why you make the decisions you make, why your heart, your life tends in the direction it does, guard your heart." And it's an invitation for us to ask the Holy Spirit of God to set our hearts on fire, transform our hearts with a fresh revelation of God. Our land with this knowledge can get you to Jerusalem. So really strong theology, reading the latest John Mark Homer book, our Tyler Staten will get you to Jerusalem, it's gold. But only revelation will get us to the manger, will lead us to Bethlehem. Only God can leave us to Jesus. Only the Spirit of God can lead us to the second person of God, the glorified Son. To the manger so that we end up having experience of first seat, first row at the central event in human history. The stories that we're about to immerse ourselves in or the nativity are filled with revelation, a star which binds burns brightly over the shepherds and leads them to the manger. An angelic visitation where the heavens appeal back and shepherds who are tending their sheep at night suddenly caught up with the central point the whole of the universe where everyone is bowing down and working. worshipping Jesus. There are dreams, Joseph has many of them, and there's deep personal pain. Elizabeth and Zechariah find it hard to have children. Mary and Joseph encounter the visceral fear of being ostracized from their community. And on and on it goes, the joy that is being released and available for us through Jesus Christ is not one which is separate from grief and pain. It's one that can coexist with it, and if we'll let it root us deeply in the life of God, so the hope of God and the glory of God can bring us into the presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ. I love this bidding prayer, that's like an opening prayer, from the famous service at King's College Cathedral which we'll tune into at four o'clock on Christmas Eve. It's a really wonderful service, but at the beginning of that service we hear this invitation which is that we would as a people quote, "Here again the message of the angels and that we would in heart and mind go to Bethlehem to see this thing which will come to pass." God is with us. What is available is a message of such immense good news that he has the ability to release great joy in your life and my life regardless of what we're walking through because the light has shone in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it. So I'd love you to join me now and stand and we're going to pray that God would do only that which He can do and give us the gift of His Son that we would hear and see and feel the revelation of the very heart of God. We just hold a silence, I'm going to invite the Holy Spirit to be with us to be with you. My encouragement is just to open yourself to the reality by faith that Jesus is with you more than that by His Spirit. He's available in you. So Holy Spirit, we ask that you would fall like fine rain on tender shoots, lavish hours on growing plants, soften the soil of our hearts, breathe on us that we would receive the fullness of your presence even now. Holy Spirit, would you comfort us a fresh, which is way for a moment in this stillness. Welcome, the Spirit. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. [silence] Yes, there's nothing about trying to work ourselves up in this season to make ourselves joyful. The joy of the Lord is connected to the glory of the Lord, which is revealed in Jesus. All we're doing in this moment is we're asking the Spirit of God to lead us to the person of God, lead us to the manger. So far, if there's any anxiety that's being released or I haven't done that or I could have done better there, you just lift off any obstacle to faith in this moment and release fresh revelation and fresh joy. Carly Spirit, that we would be a people who might say we're walking in great darkness but we have be held a wonderful light. It's in a moment we're just going to carve out space to pray for one another. We do that as a Savior's by inviting you to take a bold and courageous step forward into this space at the front and a member of the church family will just come and stand alongside you and bless that which the Lord is doing. My sense of the invitation this morning is that for a number of people, joy feels like a laughable thing. Your actual experience of life right now is so far from joy, it's so far from delight that there's a voice in your head that's almost mocking the idea in this moment and if that's you, I would love to invite you to be bold and courageous and come forward and just receive the blessing of God that you would experience wherever you are at in your life, a fresh revelation of Jesus and in that place, a release of joy. Second group I'd love to pray for would be the evangelists so they're a folk here this morning that I like. You haven't gone too early for Christmas, Matt. You haven't gone early enough. I just want to go and share the news. I want to participate in the kind of declaration of the message of the angels. I want to go and tell everyone about it and one of the things we're praying for at the moment as a church community is that we would grow in our evangelistic zeal and our confidence. I love it. If you sense that there is evangelistic gifting on you and you just want God to bless that gifting and to breathe the Holy Spirit onto that to invite you to come forward and just to name that and allow someone to say, "Lord, would you increase your presence in this person's life?" And then lastly, just a group who's like, "I'm not sure what it means to make a journey to Bethlehem this Christmas. My life might be busy or chaotic. I personally might struggle with things like that. It feels a bit abstract, but I do want to ask that the Lord would help me get there." And if that's you, again, come forward and just say, "I just want to get to Bethlehem. I want to see Jesus a fresh, I want to hear the babies cry, I want to see the manger." (upbeat music)