Christmas Is Christ!
The Christmas Journey
Philippians 2:5-11
Are any of you traveling for Christmas? Maybe you are already making plans for travel. Many will go to spend time with family; others may go on a Christmas break vacation. If you have ever traveled, you will appreciate this story I came across on the internet written by a gentleman named Brett Wilson from Columbus, Ohio.
“Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. We have all sung this festive holiday song. It's Christmas! A time for family, the joy of the birth of Jesus, and the excitement of Christmas morning for the children to see what Santa has left them.
This year we are celebrating Christmas at Grandma's house. The day before Christmas 1999. We just finished breakfast and I am packing the car with our luggage and presents. Our trip from Columbus to St Clairsville is only 130 miles and takes about 3 hours. The weather guru on channel 10 said that the winter storm won't arrive until this evening around 7 PM. Looks like we're going to have a white Christmas.
As I loaded up the the presents and the 2 weeks worth of luggage my wife packed (for a 2 day trip) I noticed that the car seemed to be leaning a little to the right. Without looking, and knowing there was only one thing that would cause this, I began unloading the presents and 2 weeks worth of luggage to fetch the spare tire. This was confirmed by my wife Brenda as she was bringing me her make-up suitcase. "The tire is flat." she said in her Kentucky accent. Nothing gets by her.
The snow was falling softly as I repacked the car with the presents and the 3 weeks of luggage. (I seemed to have missed the kids luggage.) The temperature has now dropped 10 degrees and the snow is beginning to cover the ground. "Time to go." I hollered up at the kids. As I locked up the house, Brenda and the kids piled into the car to stake claim to their territory.
I jumped in, placed the key in the ignition and.....found out the battery was dead from leaving the doors open too long which leaves the interior lights on. Luckily I just remembered seeing the jumper cables. They were in the spare tire compartment. Unloading the presents and 3 weeks of luggage to retrieve the jumper cables to start the car was just enough time for my wife to fetch 1 more suitcase. I don't know what was in it and really did not care.
Off we go. Snowing really hard now. Looks like the weather guru might have missed the timing on this one. No worries. We are still ahead of the storm. As we travel east on route 70 from Columbus the snow is getting heavier. It looks as though we will be getting to grandma's later tonight. We stop for lunch at a little downtown restaurant in Zanesville Ohio. This is one of those little cafes that when a stranger comes in everyone stares at you, as their forks are suspended from their plate to their mouths until you are seated. You know; it was one of those cafes where they say, "Don't eat the meatloaf."
As I finished my last bite of meatloaf, I was thinking that maybe we should just stay in Zanesville tonight, and finish the trip to grandma's in the morning. This idea was quickly voted down. So it's off to grandma's we go.
Almost blizzard conditions now, as we began climbing the hills in eastern Ohio. As we came to a complete stop for what I thought was an accident, I heard what sounded like a growl. Unsure at what I heard, a sat silently for a moment to pinpoint the sounds origin.
As I confirmed the sound with a small pain in my abdomen, I flashed back to the meatloaf special. Remember the meatloaf?
About 2 hours have now passed sitting on the highway waiting for the accident . I flagged down a patrol car that was coming along side of us to ask him when the accident would be clear. He said that there was no accident. There was a rock slide from the weight of the snow. We were stuck there. They were unable to get the plows to us for the snow was drifting as fast as they would plow it. This was going to be a long night.
As I sat there a real concern came over me. Was it the concern for my kids not getting to open their presents Christmas morning? No. Was it a concern for not having enough gas in the tank to keep the engine running to keep my family warm? No. Was it a concern that I could not notify grandma that we were stuck? No. I was concerned about the meatloaf! Remember the meatloaf?
The sun was coming up when the snow plows roared by as I sat in the accident caused by the meatloaf. We began a slow ride up the hill that had just been plowed. It was about 15 degrees with 13 inches of fresh snow on the ground. "In case of carbon monoxide." was my answer to Brenda for why I had the windows rolled down. I told her we needed to stop at the next rest area so I could change.
As I unloaded the 3 weeks of luggage from the car at the rest area, I came to realization that apparently it was my responsibility to pack my change of clothes in the suitcase.
It does not matter that I have never done this and that it was not communicated to me that I was supposed to begin this duty at this time. Remember that last piece of luggage that I did not care what was in it? It was empty. That was mine.
We finally made it to grandma's. The kids opened their gifts that Santa had left them. I opened mine as I sat there in grandma's robe as my clothes were being washed. This would be a good Christmas for socks and underwear.
Christmas travel! There is nothing like it. I want to use that imagery this morning to remind you that when Jesus was born there was also a Christmas journey. We are told about it in the Gospel of Luke in particular. We are told about the journey of Joseph and Mary to the city of Bethlehem.
You know the story. It is quite familiar to us. Joseph, the carpenter, and Mary, his engaged wife gather some things together and make their way down to a little village known as Bethlehem. It was south of Nazareth. It was also south of Jerusalem about five miles. It was a journey of between 80 and 90 miles. They didn't have jet airplanes or trains or cars in those days.
No doubt it was a very hard and difficult journey of several days, especially considering Mary is nine months along in her pregnancy.
This was not a pleasure trip or family vacation. They were making that journey because Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor, had decreed that all of the Roman Empire had to go to be taxed.
I’m sure when they arrived in the village of Bethlehem, there was a strange crowd there. Many faces they had never seen before. Bethlehem was packed with people so the Bible says there was no room for them in the inn. They found kind of an animal stable and there, wearied from the journey, they crashed for the night.
And it was in that setting at the conclusion of that journey the Bible says that the Son of God, the Savior of the world, Mary's little baby, was born.
It was, no doubt, a long, long journey indeed when Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem and Jesus was born.
That’s the physical story of Jesus’ birth. But there was also a spiritual journey that took place when Jesus was born.
And the truth of the matter is the story of the Lord Jesus Christ being born is a Christmas journey of much longer length than merely traveling 90 miles to Bethlehem.
The Bible tells us that when Jesus Christ was born He made a journey which brought him all the way from heaven to this earth. It was a journey which carried Him out of eternity into time.
It is a part of the mystery of Christmas. Remember, our them verse of 1 timothy 3:16 reminds us that “Without controversy (argument) great is the mystery of Godliness. God was manifested in the flesh. . .”
There are four great passages in the Bible which explain for us the mystery of Godliness, the birth of Jesus.
There is John 1 and we considered that last Sunday. There is Philippians 2 and we'll study that this morning. God willing, next Sunday morning we'll look at Colossians 1, and on December 25, Christmas morning, we will talk about Hebrews 1.
All of these passages tell us the meaning of the birth of Jesus. The Gospels, primarily Matthew and Luke, tell us the story of the birth of Jesus. But these passages tell us about the significance of the birth of Jesus.
Why is it that you and I celebrate Christmas? What does Christmas mean to you and me, in the year 2011, in the United States of America? What difference does it make? Why is it significant to us? Why do we gather in a church like this to talk about the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, something that happened 2000 years ago?
The significance and the meaning of it for us and for you personally is that when Jesus Christ was born, something very important happened. When Jesus was born, the Scriptures tell us that He made the long journey to
I. A Cradle.
Philippians 2:5-11
Again, the Bible just pulls aside the curtain of eternity and lets us see Jesus before He was born in Bethlehem. And what we discover here is that before Jesus was born He had the attributes of God.
verse 6
The word there is where we get our word, morphe, the form of God. It doesn't mean a physical shape so much as “the essence of” or “the nature of”. It is “the exact representation of”.
And what that means is that in eternity, Jesus Christ existed in the form of God. He had the essential nature of God.
We found that out last Sunday morning in John 1, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God." Jesus Christ, in eternity, was God.
Listen to some passages of Scripture I'll read for you.
John 5, verse 18, says, "Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he had not only broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God."
Listen to John 10, verse 38. "But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works, that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him."
Listen to John 14, verse 9. "Jesus saith unto them, have I been so long time with you and yet has thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father, and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?"
Before Jesus was born, the Bible says He was in the form of God. Then in the latter part of that verse, it says He was equal with God.
The Greek word for "equal with God" is the word, isos, from which we get the Isosceles Triangle. That is a triangle which has two sides which are equal. So when it says Jesus Christ was equal with God, that means that in all ways He was God. He did not cease to be God when He was born into this world.
When you think about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have to keep in mind that there was no subtraction. A deity was not taken away from Jesus Christ. He did not cease to be God. There was no subtraction when Jesus was born. There was never a time when Jesus was NOT God.
But there was a time when Jesus was a man and STILL God. There was never a time when Jesus Christ was man and not God.
But there was a time when Jesus Christ was God and not man. So there was no subtraction. Jesus was still equal with God when He was born.
There was no division. He was not part God and part man. He was totally God. He was all God. He was fully man and yet He was fully God. He was the God Man. So when Jesus was born He was equal with God.
There was no subtraction. He didn't cease to be God. There was no division. He wasn't part God and part man.
But there was addition when Jesus Christ was born. He, who was God, now took upon Himself a human nature. Now you have deity in human form. You have God manifesting Himself as a man.
That's pretty heavy theology. What does that mean? It means that Jesus Christ, in all ways, possessed the attributes of God. God is all knowing. The big word for that is omniscient. Yes, God is all knowing and Jesus Christ was all knowing.
In John 2, the Bible says about Jesus, "He knew what was in man." He is all knowing. He knows what is in us.
God is also all powerful. The big word for that is omnipotent. God is all powerful, therefore Jesus is all powerful. In fact Jesus Christ could control the winds and the waves on the sea. He could speak the word to the waves and they would lay down like whipped puppies at His feet. Jesus Christ is God! He is all powerful!
And God is everywhere. The big word for that is omnipresent. I heard about a kid talking to another kid. One said, "Tell me where God is." The other kid said, "I'll tell you where God is if you'll tell me where God isn't." God is everywhere. There is nowhere God isn't!
What does that mean to us today? It means that wherever you are, Jesus Christ is right there.
You will never go through any experience or have any difficulty in your life or ever face a tragedy or whatever you may go through, the Bible teaches, that Jesus Christ is right there.
Jesus Christ possesses the attributes of God. He was in the form of God. He was equal with God.
But that's not all. The story of the journey of Jesus Christ from the palace to the cradle is also the story that He had the attitude of God.
In verse 6 it says, "who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God."
What is robbery? It's taking something which doesn't belong to you. Jesus Christ didn't have to rob equality with God. It belonged to Him all along. Yet, the Bible says that even though it was not robbery for Him to be equal with God, the word robbery carries the idea that He didn't hold on to it selfishly.
It means that in eternity, Jesus Christ who was God did not hold on to that position as God, but the Bible says He was willing to lay aside it all and come to this world.
Think about an imaginary meeting in the councils of eternity. There's the God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Imagine they were having a council meeting in eternity. It is determined that man is going to sin. It is understood by the Godhead that man is going to need a Savior. In that council meeting of eternity, imagine that the Lord Jesus Christ did not hold on to His holy prerogatives as God.
He decided and was willing to come into this world and be born.
The Lord Jesus Christ, in eternity, who was in the form of God, equal with God, didn't hold on to that position in eternity, but He was willing to leave all of that and come down here.
In a moment of time, He went from the robes of royal glory in heaven to the linen, swaddling clothes of a cradle.
In a moment, he left the heavenly praise and magnificence and glory of all that heaven is and will be for you and me, and suddenly is being squeezed through a birth canal and finds Himslef lying in a cattle stall the odors of the cow manure and goat urine.
In a moment, the Lord Jesus Christ came down to a cradle. What a journey!
But His journey didn’t stop at the cradle. It continued to
II. The Cross.
It says in verse 6, "But he made himself of no reputation."
With that statement you now have the descending rungs of the ladder of our Lord's humility. The Bible says he made himself of no reputation. Literally, that means “He emptied Himself”. What does that mean?
Does it mean He emptied Himself of His attributes of God? No. Does it mean that He emptied Himself of His deity? No. Colossians 2, verse 9, says, "In him (Jesus Christ) dwells all the fullness of the godhead in a body."
It means that Jesus Christ laid aside all these prerogatives of His deity. It means that when Jesus Christ came down and was born, He was God but He didn't appear to be God. There were some occasions when that inner deity burst out into an outward manifestation like the Mount of Transfiguration.
In one moment of glory, everything that Jesus was on the inside was manifested on the outside. But for the most part that's not how He appeared to people. When people saw Jesus Christ, as He walked on this earth, He just looked like a man.
He emptied Himself. He laid aside His gorgeous insignia of outward glory and came to earth. The Bible says that He took upon Him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of a man. He just came like a man. He just looked like a man.
He went through the same things you and I go through. He knew what it was to be mistreated and to be lied about. He knew what it was to be treated unkindly. He knew what it was to feel loss and sorrow.
He was emptied.
And He humbled Himself. He was born to a humble peasant girl named Mary. He was raised in a hick town named Nazareth. He humbled Himself.
He devoted His ministry to a motley ragtag group of disciples who were a constant source of heartache and brokenness to Him.
Why did he do it?
Jesus came down in order to be accessible. Jesus brings God close to us. Jesus makes God accessible. Some important people aren't accessible and rightly so (we understand the reasons). If you decided that you would like to see the President, you could catch a plane and fly to Washington. If you ever got past the gate and into the outer office next to the Oval Office, how long do you think you would have to sit there before you saw the President? Unless you were bringing a check for about $50,000 for the re-election campaign you might sit there a while.
Important people are inaccessible sometimes and understandably so. But when Jesus came, blind people had access to Him. Deaf people had access to Him. Outcasts had access to Him. Lepers had access to Him. The good news of the Christmas journey is that you and I today have access to God through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
What a journey! The first rung of the ladder was the emptying of Himself. The second rung was the humbling of Himself. That wasn't the last rung of the ladder.
In the last part of verse 8 it says, "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." There we find the giving of Himself. That was the bottom rung of the ladder.
When Jesus was born He not only came to the cradle, but when Jesus Christ was born He came to the cross. Somebody said they MADE Jesus die on the cross. No. They didn't. They didn't force Jesus to die on the cross. The Bible says He became obedient unto death. That means that Jesus agreed to die. He gave Himself.
He didn't have to die. You and I have to die. But Jesus didn't have to die. But Jesus did have to die for us to be saved! That's what Christmas is all about. He became obedient unto death. He decided to die. He was willing to die. He obediently died. He was not on the cross because of obligation, He was on the cross because of obedience. He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
Too often modern people today think about a cross as something on top of a steeple of a church. Or they think about a cross as a piece of jewelry on a necklace around their neck. But when you read the Scriptures you will find that the cross was a place of pain. A person died a thousand deaths when they died on a cross. When Jesus died on the cross it was not a place of congratulation, it was a place of shame.
I was reading something that Dr. Death, Jack Kevorkian, who assisted people in committing suicide wrote a few years back.
In regard to the death of the Jesus Christ. He said, "Do you think it's dignified to hang from wood with nails through your hands and feet? Had Jesus Christ died in my van it would have been more dignified."
What poor old Kevorkian didn't understand was that Jesus didn't come to die a dignified death. Jesus
came to die a horrible, embarrassing, humiliating death. It was a place of pain. It was a place of shame. It was a place of curse.
He went all the way to a cross to be hanged on a tree, to be accursed for you and for me.
From below Satan's demons assailed Him. From about the people mocked and jeered and scorned and ridiculed Him. From above the heavenly Father drew a veil over it and turned His back on Him. Then He cried, "My God, why have you forsaken me?"
He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
That Christmas journey is the journey that brought Jesus all the way from the cradle to the cross and you don't have the Christmas message until you understand the journey that took him to the cross.
But our text also tells us that His Christmas Journey also took Him all the way to
III. The Crown
When Jesus Christ died on that cross, it wasn't the end of His journey. When Jesus left heaven, He did not have a one-way ticket. Jesus had a round-trip ticket. I can almost imagine when He went out of the gates of glory, coming down to this old world, He looked at the angels and the saints and said, "Don’t worry, I'll be back."
That’s what Paul has in mind when he writes
verse 9
The journey wasn't complete until Jesus went all the way back to glory. The Bible said God gave Him a name when He got back. It's the name of Jesus!
At this time of year people speak the name of Jesus, some in mockery, some in unbelief, some in anger, some in malice, some with great hostility.
But if you will come to know this Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, you will be able to identify with the songwriter who said, "Jesus is the sweetest name I know. And He's just the same as His lovely name. That's the reason why I love Him so. Jesus is the sweetest name I know."
There are some names that man a lot to me. Della is an important name to me because that’s the name of my mother. The name Lisa means a lot to me because that’s the name of the love of my life.
But the name above all names to me is the name of Jesus. The Bible says God has highly exalted Him and given Him a name that is above every name and "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord."
That means that every demon in hell, it means every pagan on this earth, it means every angel in glory, it means every human being one of these days, if they haven't already, they will bow the knee and acknowledge Jesus and with their tongue they will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and will acknowledge Him!
Everybody will make the Christmas journey. One of these days you will have to come to the Lord Jesus Christ and face Him. It will be in one of two ways.
It will either be by way of Revelation 6:16 where it talks about the lost facing the Lord Jesus Christ and "Hid(ing)e us from the face of Him who sits on the throne."
Or it will be by way of Revelation 22:4 which tells us the children of God “shall see His face."
"Face to face with Christ our Savior. Face to face, what will it be? When with rapture we behold Him, Jesus Christ who died for me?"
Now here’s the deal: If you want to go to heaven when you die, and if you want to have the best experience in life right now that you could ever experience, then you’ve got to take the same journey Jesus did.
First of all, you have to travel to the cradle. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” That means you have to have a salvation experience.
Second, you’ve got to go the cross. Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” The requirement for following Jesus is dying to self and living for Him. That starts out with acknowledging Him as Lord and Master. You need to learn all you can about the Bible and what it teaches about your relationship with God. And that process lasts the rest of your life.
And when your life here is over, you travel to a crown. In fact, you get the honor of the crown righ now. The Bible says that God “exalted” Jesus. And He exalts us also. There is no higher honor than being a child of God and follower of Jesus Christ. You can know the honor of living for Christ right now, and one of these days, you’ll receive a crown than can then be laid back at the feet of your Savior.
So you’ve got to take the same journey Jesus did with one exception. He traveled alone but you don’t have to. First of all, He’s going to make every step you do. He will never leave nor forsake you.
Second, you’ll have a church family to travel with you also. And I want to tell you something: I don’t care who you are or what you possess, there is going to come a time in your life when you will need what only the church can give. You’re going to need someone to pray with you and cry with you and rejoice with you, and the best place to get that on earth is a Bible-believing, Spirit-filled church.
So let me ask you a question. Have you made the Christmas journey? I have good news for you. It's not as nearly as far as you think it is. Jesus has already traveled all the way from heaven to meet you right where you are.
In fact, the Christmas journey is very close. It's just as close as the words on your lips and the desires of your heart and a single step of faith and repentance.
Because Jesus made the long, long journey all the way to the cross to die for your sins, you can make a rather short journey, repenting of your sins and by faith inviting Jesus into your heart.
Let’s pray.
