Do you ever have trouble falling asleep? Drew Ackerman is the host of the podcast Sleep With Me, and his goal is to tell stories that help people fall asleep. He refers to his show as “the podcast the sheep listen to when they get tired of counting themselves.” According to Ackerman, the key to the perfect bedtime story is to make it slow and boring. Ackerman, who is from New York, slows his speaking tempo and speaks in a really low voice. His plots are hard to follow, and he goes on long tangents where he explores odd information, such as “a detailed exploration of the science behind mood rings.” The plot line of one story involved a secret war between two candy companies, See’s Candies and Whitman’s Samplers.
Ackerman says it takes a lot of careful editing to ensure his stories don’t stir up too many strong emotions in his listeners. He doesn’t want them to get so interested or excited that they can’t fall asleep. As he says, “I’ll be like, ‘Whoa, I got a little excited there,’ so I might try to cut that out.” He must be doing something right. Last year, his podcast was ranked in the top 50 podcasts on iTunes, and his stories are downloaded 1.3 million times each month. (1)
Mr. Ackerman may be the only storyteller on earth who wants to craft boring stories. Because his purpose is not to wow his listeners with his skill. His purpose is to help his listeners fulfill a need.
This morning, we’re going to look at the greatest story ever told, the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. And I hope I don’t get struck by lightning for saying this, but if I were God, I would have started this story very differently. I would have started with Jesus descending from heaven in the midst of explosions and earthquakes and shooting stars. No one could have missed it! The whole world would have bowed down in wonder before him. But God’s purpose wasn’t to wow us into submission before the awesome power of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His purpose was to save us and restore us back to a relationship with Him. God’s purpose was to give us unmistakable proof of God’s love for us. And so, God chose to become like us so we could see what love looks like when it walks in our shoes.
Our story begins, “This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.
“But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.’
“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means “God with us”).
“When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.”
Amazing! The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, God in the flesh, came as a little baby to a poor couple to save his people from their sins. From the very beginning of his life to the very end, Jesus’ story is the story of grace, the unending gift of God’s love for us.
Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch watchmaker whose family hid Jewish citizens and helped them escape from the Nazis during World War II. Corrie and her family were eventually arrested by the Nazi soldiers and spent four months in prison before being sent to concentration camps. Her father and sister died in the camps. After her release, Corrie became an author and speaker, sharing her war experiences and her faith with people all over the world.
One day Corrie and her ministry team were invited to speak at a prison. The men clearly didn’t want them there. The prisoners began making more noise, trying to drown out the singing that preceded Corrie’s talk. But then Corrie stepped up to the microphone and began her story, “When I was alone in a cell for four months—” And the men quieted down. Suddenly, they wanted to hear her story. She had been a prisoner too. She was one of them. (2)
I don’t know why you came through these church doors this morning. But I hope before you leave here, you hear the story of a God who loved you enough to take on human flesh and walk in our shoes. The God who became one of us. The story of Jesus’ birth, his life, his death and his resurrection are a story of love from beginning to end.
The first thing we learn from the birth of Jesus is that love makes a plan. Love makes a plan. When you love someone, you build your plans around them. You become intentional about spending time with them, watching out for their interests, envisioning a future together. The Bible tells us that before the foundation of the world, God chose us for adoption as God’s children (Eph. 1: 3-6, 11), prepared a kingdom for us to inherit (Matt. 25: 34), planned for Jesus to offer his life as a sacrifice for us (1 Peter 1: 19-20), and promised us eternal life (Titus 1: 2). What an awesome plan! Before God even created this world, He made a plan to restore our relationship to Him and give us eternal life through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Many years ago, Pastor R. Benjamin Garrison received a computerized chess game as a Christmas present from his wife. He loved playing the game, but it was also frustrating. No one likes to lose to a machine. He admits that one evening, he even yelled at the game, “All right, you idiot,” he screamed, “If you’re going to cheat, I won’t play with you any longer.”
In an article in The Christian Ministry magazine (Nov./Dec. 1988), Garrison wrote that he knew the computer didn’t cheat. It had simply made a move early in the game that would secure the win. Garrison had not noticed this move at the time. It slipped right past him. But the computer had already won the game long before it was over.
He wrote that God did something very similar at Christmas when He sent Jesus to be born as a baby in Bethlehem. He wrote, “That move secured the future. That move guaranteed the outcome. Meanwhile, we are free to go on making our moves on the chessboard of life, some rather good, others unbelievably bad. Yet all the while God is edging us toward the inevitable triumph—not over us, but in us.”
When you love someone, you build your plans around them. You are intentional about creating good for them. Before the foundation of the world, God planned, through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to restore us to Him and to give us eternal life. The first thing we learn from the birth of Jesus is that love makes a plan.
The second thing we learn from the birth of Jesus is that love keeps its promises. Love keeps its promises. We all know this to be true. Trust is essential to a healthy relationship. And when someone you love breaks a promise to you, it becomes difficult to trust them. When someone consistently keeps their promises to you, however, you feel valued and loved. So what does it mean that God is always faithful to His promises?
Let’s look at verse 22-23 in our Bible passage: “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’ (which means “God with us”).”
More than 700 years before the birth of Jesus, the prophet Isaiah was called to bring a message to King Ahaz of Judah. Ahaz was a wicked man, defying God at every turn. During his reign, Syria and Israel joined together to attack Judah. It was during this time of tremendous stress and suffering that Isaiah was sent to both warn Ahaz and assure him that God was still with him. And part of that assurance was the vision God gave Isaiah of the eventual birth of Jesus. It was an ironclad promise of hope and salvation for all people. In fact, the apostle Paul writes in Second Corinthians 1: 20, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ.”
Pastor Donald Grey Barnhouse writes of a French woman during World War I who was overcome by fear and hopelessness. Barnhouse had taught this woman to meditate on the promises of God. At his prompting, she had created a promise box, a small box in which she kept slips of paper on which she had written the promises of God. Each day, she would pull out a promise and meditate on it and on the faithfulness of God.
But the war presented a tremendous challenge to her faith. Her family was hungry, their clothing ragged, their nerves on edge. The situation was desperate, and this poor woman could not see how God could be working in the midst of a war.
So she prayed a desperate prayer and asked, “Is there a promise here that is really for me?” But when she reached for the promise box, she accidentally knocked it into her lap. It fell open, and all those little strips of paper spilled into her lap and onto the floor around her. And she was filled with hope as she realized that all the promises of God were for her and were ‘Yes’ in Christ. (3)
When you love someone, you keep your promises to them. God is always faithful to God’s promises. The second thing we learn from the birth of Jesus is that love keeps its promises.
And the final thing we learn from this passage is that in the birth of Jesus, love becomes a Person. The Creator God, the Great I AM, loved us enough to be known by us. How awesome is that? Immanuel—God with us. In the flesh, through the birth and life of Jesus Christ. And in our hearts and minds as the Holy Spirit who continually grows us in the grace and knowledge of Jesus. God’s continual presence with us is proof of His never-ending love for us.
Many years ago, Bono, the lead singer of U2, tells of a Christmas Eve service that changed his life. His band had just come home after a long tour. He went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the Christmas Eve service. But he was feeling sleepy and started to nod off. To keep himself awake, he began reading the Bible story himself. And as he read about the birth of Jesus, he began to cry.
As he said, “. . . love needs to find form, intimacy needs to be whispered. To me, it makes sense. It’s actually logical . . . Essence has to manifest itself. It’s inevitable. Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.” (4)
“Love has to become an action or something concrete. It would have to happen. There must be an incarnation. Love must be made flesh.” In Jesus, God became concrete. Love in human flesh.
The oldest known Christmas hymn in the Western world is “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” which was written around the 8th or 9th century. Pastor Daniel Im states that this hymn was originally a Gregorian chant performed by Benedictine monks. The original hymn has seven verses. In the week leading up to Christmas, they would chant one verse each day to prepare themselves for receiving the truth and joy and transformative promise that is ours through the birth of Jesus. (5)
How are you preparing yourself for Christmas? Are you ready to receive the truth and joy and transformative promise that God means for you through the birth of Jesus? It’s such a simple story that it’s easy to take it for granted. In Jesus, God made a plan for us, God kept a promise to us, and God became a Person for us. That is how much God loves us. I pray that this Christmas you will be fully ready to receive God’s love and to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, so that all God’s promises will be made complete in your life.
1. “The Podcast That Tells Ingeniously Boring Bedtime Stories to Help You Fall Asleep” by Nora Caplan-Bricker, The New Yorker June 11, 2016. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-podcast-that-tells-ingeniously-boring-bedtime-stories-to-help-you-fall-asleep.
2. SERMONS ILLUSTRATED, P.O. Box 388, Powell, Ohio 43065.
3. Story from Let Me Illustrate by Donald Grey Barnhouse (Revell, 1967), pp. 253-254. Cited by Steven J. Cole, https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-20-assurance-god-genesis-98-17.
4. “Bono on Christmas: ‘Love has to become something concrete’” by Jon Kuhrt December 27, 2014. All text taken from Chapter 6 of Bono on Bono: conversations with Michka Assayas, 2005 (Hodder). https://gracetruth.blog/2014/12/27/bono-on-christmas-love-has-to-become-something-concrete/.
5. “The (Hidden) Theology and History of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’” by Daniel Im December 19, 2017, https://www.danielim.com/2017/12/19/the-hidden-theology-and-history-of-o-come-o-come-emmanuel/.