INTRODUCTION
God made us for love and to love. God made us for his love and to love him. He made us to be loved by others and to love others. In the creation, he designed love, defined love, declared love, displayed love, demonstrated love, and donated love.
But when Adam and Eve sinned, love became rare, difficult, temporary, distorted, and unreliable. As history and the Old Testament records, many decades, centuries, and millennia passed with few experiencing true love as God intended it. Few experienced love by God or for God. Few experienced love by others or for others. There were bright though brief pockets of love here and there, but on the whole, the world was loveless, and even hate-full. But then, about 2000 years ago:
Love came down at Christmas,
love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas;
star and angels gave the sign.
Christmas is a time to rediscover the love of God and love for God. In an often loveless and even hate-full world we can re-experience the love of God and love for God. How can we experience love in the birth of Christ?
BACKGROUND
Our text is a simple historical description of the birth of Christ. It’s probably the greatest understatement in the whole world. It wouldn’t capture much attention in our headline-driven, click-bait, sensation-seeking world. It wouldn’t get many likes, loves, hearts, or shares. And yet it’s God saying, “I like you, I love you, I heart you, I want to share my life with you.” So let’s look behind the simple historical narrative. Let’s pick up the baby Jesus in our arms and unwrap him, and as we do, we will hold and unwrap love, we will discover and experience love in the birth of Christ.
How can we experience love in the birth of Christ?
1.WE LOVE HIS ALL-LOVELY EYES
As we pick up this all-lovely love, before we even begin to unwrap him, we see his all-lovely eyes and all-loving eyes. His eyes are ordinary human eyes, but they are also extraordinary divine eyes. Through them God is looking at the world with love, and we are looking at God and his love.
These eyes would see scenes of utter cruelty, yet stay-all lovely and all-loving. These eyes would weep tears from pain, tears of loss, tears of disappointment, tears of loneliness, yet stay all-lovely and all-loving. These eyes would weep over the death of his friend Lazarus, and over the unbelief of his enemies in Jerusalem. These eyes would widen with welcome when they saw sinners come to him, with joy when he saw his disciples follow him, with gratitude when he saw people believe in him, with delight when he saw others serve him.
These eyes would see his closest disciples betray him, deny him, and abandon him, yet they stayed all-lovely and all-loving. These eyes would look to heaven in his darkest moment and see nothing of his Father’s love, yet they stayed all-lovely and all-loving. These eyes would close in death, stay closed for three days and nights, yet stayed all-lovely and all-loving. These eyes would open again in the grave, adjust to the darkness, then walk out into the light of Easter Sunday morning squinting then opening wide as he saw a new world, a new people, and a new experience for himself. These eyes were born all-lovely and stayed-all-lovely for 33 years.
He still has these all-lovely eyes in heaven right now. Can you imagine what they look like. One day, you don’t have to imagine. You will see him face to face. Our loved ones who are with him in glory saw these all-lovely eyes when they died and can see them every day forever.
CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY
Do you love his all-lovely eyes? As they look at you with love this morning, do you look back at them with love?
Will you love with his all-lovely eyes? As they look at you and as you look at them, your eyes cannot but change so that they become increasingly lovely and loving to others.
HIS EYES CHANGE OUR EYES
What else do we see as we unwrap this baby?
2. WE LOVE HIS ALL-LOVELY MOUTH
We pull back the swaddling clothes to see his all-lovely mouth. Just as with our own mouths, his mouth had four functions: facial expressions (body language), speech (verbal language), eating/drinking, and kissing.
Facial expressions. Human facial expressions are one of the most important non-verbal ways we communicate. With 43 different muscles, our faces are capable of making more than 10,000 expressions. The mouth is one of the primary communicators of body language. The tiniest little twitches can communicate massive internal changes of opinion or mood. That all-lovely baby-mouth would become an all-lovely child’s mouth, teen’s mouth, and adult mouth. It would communicate his all-lovely love perfectly throughout his life. Wouldn’t you love to have seen his smile?
Speech. No mouth ever spoke such words of love. It wasn’t the quantity of his words but the quality of them. He only ever spoke truth. He knew when was the time to speak and when was the time to be silent. His words were not always gentle and mild. Sometimes they were direct and convicting. Sometimes he had to speak to the Pharisees and sometimes to the devil. But even these words are all-lovely to us and an expression of his love to us.
Eating/Drinking. Even his eating and drinking are all lovely and all loving to us. Although it was intended as an insult or accusation, we hear the Pharisees say, “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:1), we hear this and see his all-lovely and all-loving mouth. We see him instituting the Lord’s Supper and eating and drinking the bread and the wine with his disciples. As he ate the bread and drank the wine, he knew what that meant for him in a very few hours. No one understood the Lord’s Supper like the Lord of the Supper. We see his mouth being tortured with vinegar wine in his thirstiest moment. We see him proving his resurrection to his doubting disciples by eating fish on the shore with them. How his disciples saw his all-lovely mouth in these moments.
Kissing. A kiss on the cheek was a normal greeting between friends in that culture. It was a way of expressing a special affection. His kisses must have been so full of love. Then we see him accepting even the kiss of Judas out of love.
CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY
Do you love his all-lovely mouth? By faith in the Gospel story we can see his mouth: its expressions, it’s words, it’s eating and drinking, and its kisses. We see them crying in a manger, crying on the cross, silent in the grave, saying “All hail” at his resurrection. Love his all-lovely mouth.
Will you love with an all-lovely mouth? As you pull back the swaddling and see his all-lovely mouth, your mouth will change in its expressions, its words, in who you invite to your table in hospitality, and in how you express your love through kisses.
HIS MOUTH CHANGES OUR MOUTHS
What do we see when we pull the clothes back further?
3. WE LOVE HIS ALL-LOVELY HANDS
We see beautiful little baby hands with their perfect little nails, their cute little wrinkles. Mary puts her finger in his palm, and she feels God grip her hand in love.
- These hands would work hard around the house, helping his mother in his chores his dad in the workshop
- These hands would work hard in the workshop of his carpenter dad as he learned his trade.
- These hands would stretch out all day long to a disobedient people.
- These hands would reach out and beckon, “Come to me all you who labor and I will give you rest.”
- These hands would touch lepers and cleanse them.
- These hands would touch the eyes of the blind and give them sight.
- These hands would lift the corpse of a 12-year-old girl to life.
- These hands would touch the heads of children with warmth and welcome them when no one else did.
- These hands would patiently write in the sand while hypocritical Pharisees slinked away.
- These hands would clasp and pray desperately to his heavenly Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.
- These hands would hold and drag his cross until he could hold it no longer.
- These hands would be pierced with nails and hung on the cross.
- These hands would lie still in the tomb.
- These hands would break bread with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, revealing who he really was.
- These hands would raise in blessing his disciples as he ascended to heaven.
- These hands welcome every saved sinner who enters heaven.
CHANGING OUR STORIES WITH GOD’S STORY
Do you love his all-lovely hands? Do you see them working for you, welcoming you, cleansing you, touching you, praying for you, carrying the cross for you, pierced for you, offering life to you, blessing you?
Will you love with all-lovely hands? Whether you have infant hands, child’s hands, teen hands, adult hands, old, wrinkly, and arthritic hands, you’ve been given them to love like Jesus loved.
HIS HANDS CHANGE OUR HANDS
CHRISTMAS COUNSELING
We were made to love and be loved by God. If you don’t have love, find it and receive it through the all-lovely love of Jesus. As you get his all-lovely love you will increasingly have all-lovely love for him.
We were made to love and be loved by others. The Christmas season is an opportunity for the church and even world to reset and remember the all lovely love of Jesus. What a difference this makes in our love-less and hate-full world. As the last verse of the song says:
Love shall be our token;
love be yours and love be mine;
love to God and others,
love for plea and gift and sign.
Prayer: Altogether lovely one, love me so I can love you and others in a loveless love-desperate world.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. How has Christ’s love changed the way you love and experience love?
2. What do you most love about Christ’s humanity?
3. How did Christ love with his brain? his feet? his ears?
4. In what other ways did Christ love with his eyes/mouth/hands?
5. How does Christ’s humanity change your humanity?
6. Who will you love with your eyes/mouth/hands this week?