Scripture: Isaiah 9:2, 6-7
Last week, during the current season of Survivor, I laughed out loud when a contestant named Steven said he felt like “a pair of shins in a room full of coffee tables.” What a perfect description of fear, pain, and helplessness. Now imagine walking around in that same room—except in the dark.
Ouch.
That image captures something of the dread that had settled over the people of Judah when Isaiah spoke the words of Isaiah chapter 9. Judah was small, vulnerable, and surrounded. To the east loomed the ever-growing Assyrian Empire. To the north stood a hostile coalition of Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel. Danger everywhere. No safe steps. Just sharp corners of coffee tables waiting to inflict pain.
What was this tiny, militarily weak nation of Judah—this pair of shins in a room full of coffee tables—supposed to do?
Isaiah’s answer is surprising. Don’t panic. Don’t compromise. Don’t trust in political alliances. Trust instead in God’s ability to deliver. Trust that God himself would act.
And how would God do it? Not by raising up a fearsome military general. Not by sending a mighty warrior. But by giving a child. A baby. A son.
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.”
This is the same child Isaiah had spoken of earlier: “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel”—God with us.
That promise found its ultimate fulfillment seven centuries later, in the birth of Jesus Christ. He is the true Mighty God, in the flesh—accompanied by armies of angels rather than men—entering our world of darkness, saving us from our sin, and making us God’s beloved children through faith.
Scripture: Micah 5:2-4
When the Wise Men in Matthew chapter 2 followed the miraculous star hundreds of miles west, searching for the newborn king of the Jews, they stopped first in Jerusalem. It made sense. How could Israel’s king be born anywhere other than the capital city?
Of course, these Wise Men knew little of Israel’s Scriptures, wherein God reminds his people, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.” The Wise Men did not yet know that when God acts powerfully in the world, he so often defies human expectations. But the Bible scholars in Jerusalem set them straight: Israel’s Messiah was to be born not in Jerusalem—one of the ancient world’s great cities—but six miles south, in tiny Bethlehem, the hometown of King David.
But what kind of child is the prophet Micah describing? A ruler “whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.”
What does that mean?
My own “coming forth,” after all, happened on February 18, 1970—or at least no earlier than nine months before that. And all of us, whether younger or older, can trace our beginning to a moment in time.
But not this child.
To say that Jesus Christ is “from of old, from ancient days” is to say that his origin lies beyond time itself—before time began. He is not merely born into history; he is from eternity past.
In other words, he had no beginning. He is God—God in the flesh.
Scripture: Luke 1:26-38
“How will this be,” Mary asks, “since I am a virgin?”
Mary knows the facts of life. And why wouldn’t she? Contrary to a popular modern myth, people in the ancient world understood just as well as we do that women don’t become pregnant without a human father. So Mary asks a very reasonable question: How will this be?
You may recall that earlier in Luke chapter 1, another person asked the angel Gabriel a “how” question—and it didn’t go so well. Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, asks in verse 18, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”
But Zechariah’s question is different. He’s really saying, “I don’t believe this can happen—or that God is willing to do it—so give me proof.” His question grows out of doubt.
Mary’s question doesn’t. She’s saying, “I believe God is going to do this. I simply don’t yet understand how—because I know I have never been with a man.” Her question is not whether God can act, or whether God will act, but how God will act.
And that makes all the difference!
Mary’s question reveals a deep, abiding faith: “I don’t know how God is going to do this astonishing thing in my life, but I trust that he will.” That’s why she can finally say, “Let it be to me according to your word.”
After all, as the angel reminds her—and us—nothing will be impossible with God.
Scripture: Luke 2:8-16
The Scripture we just heard was read from the English Standard Version, a contemporary translation. Some of us might instinctively prefer the more traditional King James—the same translation Linus famously reads in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Including the words of verse 14: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
As beautiful as those words are, they can be misunderstood. In the King James phrasing, it can sound as though the peace the angels announce is a warm, sentimental calm—something like that “peaceful easy feeling” that the Eagles sang about.
And many of us do feel peaceful at Christmastime. I certainly do, for instance, on Christmas Eve, when the lights are dimmed and we sing “Silent Night” by candlelight.
I like peaceful, easy feelings! But the peace the angels proclaim in goes much deeper. It is not merely peace within us, but peace with God.
That’s how the apostle Paul describes it in Romans 5:1: “Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The alternative to peace with God, after all, is conflict with God. Paul even says we were once God’s enemies. Apart from God’s grace, our sin places us in opposition to God. And that’s why God sent his Son—so that through Jesus Christ, that hostility would end, and we would be reconciled.
This is the peace the angels sang about: not just comfort for our hearts, but reconciliation with God—and the gift of becoming his children.
Scripture: John 1:1-14
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”
The Greek word for “dwelt”—es-KAY-noh-sen—literally means to “pitch a tent,” or, especially in the language of Scripture, to build a tabernacle. So verse 14 literally says, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” Recall that before Solomon built a permanent temple in Jerusalem, God’s dwelling place among his people was a movable temple—a tabernacle or a tent.
At the center of that tabernacle was the sanctuary, and at the very heart of the sanctuary was the holy of holies. There, God’s presence rested in a unique way above the Ark of the Covenant. Only the high priest could enter that space—and only once a year, on the Day of Atonement… and only after careful preparation. To be in or near the holy of holies was as close to God as a human being could get.
And even that closeness was dangerous. To stand in the presence of a holy God as sinful people was not something to be taken lightly. Again and again, God’s people in scripture discover this. Some are struck down. Others fear they will be.
Remember Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6. When he finds himself in God’s direct presence in the temple, he cries out, “Woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.”
So what does it mean that Christ has “tabernacled” with us?
It means that God has drawn closer to humanity than ever before—not in fire or cloud that hovered above the Ark of the Covenant when Israel wandered in the wilderness… not behind a veil, which separated humanity from God’s presence in the holy of holies… but in flesh and blood.
In Jesus Christ, God comes near us in a way that no longer destroys us, but saves us. The holiness that once kept us at a distance now comes to us in mercy and grace. And because the Word became flesh, we are not merely allowed near God—we are welcomed, forgiven, and made his children.