Sing: O Come All Ye Faithful
This is the 4th Sunday of Advent, and this week’s word is love. Thinking about this word made me quickly realize that there are a lot of popular catch phrases about love: love does, love wins, love is love, etc. That’s the world’s attempt at being profound and clever. I am not a fan of any of those. There is also an endless list of songs about love. Love even has its own category of books and movies: romance. As someone famously said, “Love makes the world go round.” The amount of quotes about love is also almost literally endless. From Euripides in 400BC who wrote, “Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness,” to Shakespeare who wrote, “Love is not love which alters it when alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove,” everyone seems to have something to say about love. At least those two quotes are poetic and far more profound than our modern generations’ quips.
What does the greatest author say about love?
In John 15:12-14, Jesus says, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.”
There has never been and never will be a better example of love than Jesus. Everything we could ever need to know about love is personified in Jesus. Like He said, the greatest love of all is laying down one’s life for one’s friends. That is exactly what Jesus did. Does it seem strange to bring up Jesus’ death during Advent? At first thought, it might seem out of place to think about the cross at Christmas, but we really can’t examine Jesus’ birth without bringing it up. After all, when we first hear about Jesus’ birth in the New Testament, we learn that Jesus’ purpose in coming to earth as a baby was so that He could die.
Just like an angel appeared to Mary, an angel appeared to Joseph. Matthew 1:18-25 tells us the story:
18 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.19 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.
20 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. 21 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.”
22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).
24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.
There is a lot we could talk about from this text, but I want to look at just verse 21, “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.”
First of all, do you know the significance of Jesus’ name? There is an asterisk in the NIV translation that says, “Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua, which means the Lord saves.”
I thought I should probably look into this a little more. If you enjoy rabbit holes of research, look that up the meaning of Jesus’ name. The amount of information and debate was pretty crazy. After a lot of reading, I read this summary that I think is pretty accurate:
The name Jesus, announced to Joseph and Mary through the angels (Matthew 1:21; Luke 1:31), means “Yahweh saves” or “Yahweh is salvation.” Transliterated from Hebrew and Aramaic, the name is Yeshua. This word is a combination of Ya, an abbreviation for Yahweh, the name of Israel’s God (Exodus 3:14); and the verb yasha, meaning “rescue,” “deliver,” or “save.” The English spelling of the Hebrew Yeshua is Joshua. But when translated from Hebrew into Koine Greek, the original language of the New Testament, the name Yeshua becomes Iēsous. In English, Iēsous becomes Jesus. Thus, Yeshua and, correspondingly, Joshua and Jesus mean “Yahweh saves” or “the Lord is salvation” (gotquestions.org).
All that to say, from the very beginning we are told that Jesus is the Savior. His very name means “Yahweh saves.” The angel is announcing Jesus’ reason for being born.
Jesus’ sole purpose in being born as a baby was so that He could die. Jesus literally was born to die. I thought that maybe that phrase is found in scripture but I couldn’t find it. Regardless, it is an accurate statement.
1 Timothy 1:15 supports this idea. Paul says, “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”
Hebrews 2:17 also supports this by saying, “For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”
Each of these verses is saying the same thing: Jesus became a human baby so He could save us. In other words, He became a baby so He could die on the cross to save us from our sins. He was born to die. So you see, it is important when we talk about Jesus’ birth to also talk about His death on the cross. Just like the angel who spoke to Joseph, we should remember the reason why Jesus was born.
And that is not the end. He was born to die so that we might live! And as Jesus Himself said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” He gave His life for us. His death purchased our life.
One of my favorite Christmas carols is O Little Town of Bethlehem. I really like the line, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Have you ever given that line much thought? This song was written by Phillips Brooks in 1868, so we can’t ask him what the line means, but I think it means that we can give to Jesus all of our hopes and fears. Hopes and fears are opposites. Yet, so many times they go together, don’t they? For example, we could hope for God to answer a prayer a particular way and yet, so many times, we also fear that He won’t answer the prayer the way we want. Or we can have hope that this coming new year will be blessed, but underneath that hope is a fear that problems and trouble will arise. If we take all those hopes and fears and give them to Jesus, He can meet those hopes and fears. He can meet them head on and help us. This line that Phillips Brooks wrote so many years ago is only true because the God who meets us loves us.
The thing that sets God apart from all other gods and religions is that our God is a loving God. He interacts with us because He loves us.
This is why Jesus is sometimes called “love incarnate.” He is the embodiment of love. He literally took on human form and became the greatest example of love. If we don’t pause to think about what Jesus did on the cross, we miss out on the profundity of what Christmas is actually about.
Christmas time is so amazing because God became a man. Christianity is the only religion I know of where God reaches down to humans. All the other religions have humans trying to become like a god or reach up to god or earn a god’s approval. Christianity is unique. Its basic tenet is that God loved the world so much that He sent His son to earth to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. We cannot earn salvation, so He took our place on the cross.
If we don’t believe or remember that Jesus died for us, it reduces the weight of His love for us. If we think Jesus was just a prophet or nice guy who got killed for His radical statements, then we completely miss the enormous sacrifice it was for God to become a baby. If we lose sight of the fact that Jesus is God, then these statements don’t carry as much weight.
Jesus loves us so much He did not consider equality with God as something to be grasped. He let go of that when He became a man. He still retained His divinity, but He humbled Himself.
Philippians 2:1-11 (NASB) explains this perfectly:
1 Therefore if there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and compassion, 2 make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. 5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, as He already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself by taking the form of a bond-servant and being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death: death on a cross. 9 For this reason also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus showed us what love really is like: it is sacrificial.
It was a sacrifice to become a baby. It was a sacrifice to humble Himself. It was a sacrifice to die on a cross. By doing those things, He showed us what love is.
That is why Christmas is the perfect time to bring up the cross. We are celebrating the birth of the Christ child, who was born to die so that we might have life. By doing that, He perfectly illustrated what love looks like.
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 tells us, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.”
In other words, love seeks the best for others. It is not self-centered. Love is not about us, it’s about the other person. Love isn’t turned inward on ourselves, but looks outward at other people. Love is the antithesis of the selfie. Love is everything that Jesus did and said.
Let’s read one more time what Jesus said in John 15:12-14, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.”
Jesus exemplified that sacrificial love by willingly coming to earth to be born as one of us, and then He suffered and died for us. All because He loves us. This is why Christmas is my favorite time of year. We rearrange our houses and schedules to celebrate this once in all of history’s greatest events! The God who came down to be with us.
I think now would be a great time to take communion together and remember His purpose in coming. Let’s take up this bread and do as Jesus taught us to say: the Lord Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed, took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me” (1 Corinthians 1:23-25 NASB).
Pray:
Thank You Jesus for shedding Your precious blood on the cross for us. We remember Your sacrifice and we are so thankful to You. We are sorry for the many times we have failed to love like You love. Please forgive us of our sins and wash us clean. Holy Spirit, please fill us with Your love so we can better love the people around us. Make us more like You. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
Sing: O Little Town of Bethlehem
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