21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: 23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel” (Matthew 1:22 - 23)
Whenever I preach at conferences and churches overseas, I would call home as often - maybe a few times a day - to find out whether my wife and young kids then were eating well, exercising regularly and sleeping early. All the fatherly things I should be concerned about.
On one of those calls during school holidays, my wife quipped: “You don’t have to call so often!” I asked why. She said: “Of course we miss you! But we are having a ball of a time eating chips, staying up late, watching endless movies.” Lesson? What my wife and kids were jokingly telling me was how good it was to live without my fatherly presence!
I was preaching in Australia once and a man shared his painful testimony. He adored his father as a boy. Then his mother discovered his dad was having an affair. His father left when confronted. The son was never the same again. His world spun out of control. He was hellbent on never trusting anyone ever again. How? By taking full charge of his own life.
Psychologists tells us of the deep trauma that many never seem to recover from. The absence of people who are most precious to us, not just deeply deforms us, but finally destroys us more than any other experience.
All of which must make us ponder: How much the absence of God should mean to our hearts, relationships, marriages, families, communities, and world? When we live without God, we live with limitless immorality and bottomless depravity. Once we dare to sin against God, there is no sin we dare not commit against one another.
Christmas is about the life-changing choice between living with the presence, or the absence of God. The coming of Jesus is the arrival of God’s final and permanent presence with us! That is what Emmanuel means. Hence we must ask: How did God go about fulfilling the promise of Immanuel – God with us?
Matthew 1 covers the family tree of Jesus the Christ. Who was part Jesus’ genealogy? It included dubious women. Like Tamar who committed incest (Genesis 38) and Rahab the prostitute (Joshua 2). It is filled with weak willed men. Like Abraham who lied about his wife Sarah in order to save his own skin. Like Jacob who stole his brother’s birthright. Like king David, initially a man after God’s heart, who committed adultery.
The genealogy shows us that God chooses the most unlikely and unthinkable people to be part of his family! It is as irrational as a sports manager recruiting short people as NBA basketball stars. The police department employing crooks to become cops. The airforce enlisting the blind as fighter pilots.The holy God welcoming hardcore sinners like us into his kingdom is more irrational and mind boggling. But it is true! Have we noticed from Jesus’ genealogy that God’s promise to save us is always one step from annihilation and always hanging by a thread?
That’s not just Israel’s history without God. That’s our story with God. In a relational meltdown, we think the nastiest and sprout the darnest words which we regret for the rest of our days. We are always one click away from porn. One ideation away from suicide. One friendship away from an affair.
This is the absence of God – experienced moment by moment in us. If God is not with us, we would be enslaved to Satan, addicted to sin and defeated by death. We would have gotten so used to dehumanizing one another with the absence of God.
Yet God always graciously gatecrashes our lives to save us. The family tree of Jesus tells us that God would go against all odds and pay any price - he uses the most unthinkable of ways to save the most unthinkable and undeserving people. That is why God’s presence must mean the world to us.
Christmas is about God making a promise and paying the ultimate price of his Son to be with us. Immanuel – that’s what the name means. Christmas is about each of us - young and old, men and women - humbly confessing our desperate need of Jesus and yielding in sweet surrender to Him as Lord. Why don’t you do that now, and experience the new life that Jesus alone can offer? Amen.
Reverend Dr Christopher Chia
Adam Road Presbyterian Church
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