1) Why is it difficult for many today to believe that the miracles in the Bible really happened? Do you believe that God does miracles yet today? How would you define a miracle?

In your Redeeming Notes there are listed five miracles of Jesus. I’m going to ask you quickly to rate them according to the degree of difficulty to believe for you – with 1 being less difficult and 5 being more difficult.

• Turning water into wine
• Raising Lazarus from the dead
• Stilling the water on the Sea of Galilee
• Becoming a human being
• Ascension into heaven

Now of course to anyone who assumes that miracles cannot happen, this is a totally futile exercise. Such a one has made up his mind in advance and no amount of evidence will change it. To us who do believe that miracles can happen, however, some may be easier to believe than others.

2) Pastor Dave states that the Incarnation is the greatest miracle ever. Do you agree or disagree? Why might it be considered the greatest?

Today we hear people – even by some who call themselves Christian - making statements that Jesus was a person in whom God was especially and uniquely evident. In other words, Jesus was unique in that more than through others of us God especially manifested himself. But incarnation is saying something far more than this. It is saying something far more than Jesus was a person who was especially close to God or that somehow God showed himself through Jesus more than through anyone else. Incarnation is saying something much more radical than this. It is saying that Jesus himself was God. His being was divine.

If we get a hold on this, we realize that the Incarnation is the miracle to end all miracles, the Grand Miracle, the one that makes all other miracles sort of fade into the background. We think of the arguments over miracles in the Bible – did Jonah really get swallowed by a big fish? Could Jesus really still the water or raise a man from the dead or change water to wine? But these are merely changing normal causation, altering the normal pattern of causation that we have. The Incarnation is God becoming man. This is qualitatively and completely different.

Often the analogy of the anthill is used to try to explain God becoming man. I see an anthill that is about to be destroyed by a farmer’s plow. In love for these ants, the only way I can communicate with them to warn them and save them is by becoming an ant myself. In like manner, the only way God could communicate and warn and save us is by becoming a human being himself. The analogy may be helpful up to a point but in another way it completely falls short because me becoming an ant is one creature becoming like another creature. Incarnation is the uncreated God taking the form of a 5-6 pound baby. This is so radical I cannot probe to the depths of it in understanding. How God and man can co-exist together in one person is ultimately a mystery. But here is my point. The Incarnation makes all the other miracles child’s play - mere recreational activities for God! If Jesus was actually God in human flesh and I believe this greatest of all miracles, then I will have no problem believing that this God can supernaturally step into normal cause and effect and turn water into wine and raise Lazarus from the dead. If we believe in the Incarnation then it is relatively easy to believe in all the other miracles we read about or experience in our own lives.

3) Since Jesus is the only person who ever got to decide what kind of family to be born into, what does it say about him in choosing the family he did?

But let’s move on and look at what actually happened on the first Christmas. Let me ask: “Who of us chose to be born into the family we were born into?” Some of you are saying “Boy I wish! I’d sure have chosen differently.” Has it occurred to you that Jesus was the only person to decide to be born? You and I did not decide to be born. No other human being has decided to be born. And isn’t it interesting that Jesus is the only person that’s gotten to decide what kind of family he would be born into. It’s interesting, I think, to note his choice.

How old do you think Mary probably was when this tiny child Jesus was born? We can’t be sure but we know that the normal age for a Jewish girl to be engaged was between 12 ½ and 15 years old. So if a Jewish girl reached age 17 she was pretty much over the hill and could only marry a shepherd. You see no one wanted to marry shepherds because they were outcasts. They were outcasts first because they were poor and had to live in caves and tents, and second because they had to stay with the sheep and therefore could never go to the temple and go through the various rituals and so were always unclean. Shepherds were not only poor but frowned on as unclean and unholy. So its unlikely that Mary was more than 15-16 years old.

4) In what way was Mary’s pregnancy both a wonder and anguish for Joseph and her?

*note to leaders: dialogue on this question could bring out hidden hurts and shames for people who may have found themselves pregnant out of wedlock. If issues arise because of this, be sure to offer words of forgiveness, hope, restoration, and healing. This will be a “Gospel” moment!

It’s extraordinary to think of such a young girl bearing the Son of God. And for her it must have been a mixture of real wonder and anguish and worship. Wonder in realizing that of all women, she had been chosen to bear the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Her Song of Praise in Luke’s gospel shows that she knows the incredible honor that is bestowed on her. But anguish because her fiancée didn’t believe she was telling the truth. He believed she had been sleeping with somebody else. And I would say, “Why should be believe differently?” Would you have believed her? I don’t think I would have believed her. It must have been a tremendously painful thing for both of them: for him to think she had been unfaithful; for her knowing the tremendous honor that was hers and yet not being able to convince the man she loved.

5) What can we learn about God’s character by the way he came into this world?

But let’s ask what is being told us by the way Christmas happened. I really worship God for the way Christmas happened. It’s wonderful that he chose to come into the world in this way and it’s so true in many ways to His character. To me it’s a mark of his majesty and his greatness that the Almighty God, when he came and was a man, was so completely free from the need of human trappings – clutter and tinsel – and all the means of human recognition and admiration. He was completely and totally free from it.

Think with me of just the amount of time we spend seeking recognition, power, and admiration – PhDs, Nobel prizes, titles, metals, super bowl rings, bank balances, palaces, rockets and armies. All these things that seem to matter in human society to set one person above another. All these things that frail human beings need to impress one another; to convince ourselves that we are somebody, that we matter. All these things people clutter their lives with and spend their lives pursuing with tremendous energy. Jesus is completely free from this. When God comes into the world - being a model for what it means to be a human being and how we are to live as a human being, look at the way he comes. What a tremendous contrast to human ideas of greatness.

6) Discuss how our normal view of human greatness and God’s view of human greatness differ?

God didn’t need a palace or a great temple. He didn’t ride in a chariot or bullet-proof limousine with motorcade. There is a tremendous humility about the first Christmas that to me shows far more the grandeur of God, his true greatness and his glory. Do you see it? There is a certain way the Christmas story pours scorn on human ideas of greatness, which shows God’s disdain for man’s power and respectability. And yet certainly the main thing is not God’s scorn for man. The main point is God’s love for man despite so many things in human existence that are scorn-worthy.

Here again I’d read from Luke 2:10-12_____. So the overall thing is certainly the tremendous overwhelming love of God and this tremendous expression of it, of God descending and becoming man. But in the way he does it, we must not miss the real bite, the revelation we have of the contrast between this and ideas of human greatness. One day Jesus asked his disciples “Do you want to be great?” His disciples all responded “Yes, we want to be great!!” Jesus said, then you must be the servant of all. For the one who serves others is the greatest of all. Just by the way God came into the world, he demonstrates that servant’s heart. He came to serve us.

7) How does believing in the Incarnation make the Bible fit together for us? How does it make human existence fit together?

A. First of all, it makes the Bible fit together. Without Jesus actually being God, to me the Bible becomes hopelessly disjointed, a hodge-podge of ideas and thoughts and promises none of which would hold together.

But if the Incarnation is true, it explains how the death of one man 2000 years ago can have infinite importance to every one of us today. People ask, “How can someone who died so long ago have any significance 2000 later?” It’s an excellent question. How could his death have any significance today? Only if he is God can it have significance. His death in human history has significance for all time. It makes what he does and says very easy to understand. If he is God it is not surprising that his death has saving significance for human beings no matter how much before or how much after his death they live. If he is God, it is not strange that he would rise from the dead. If he is God, it is not strange at all that he would ascend to heaven. In a sense his Ascension is the most natural event in the whole of the N.T. story. For if Jesus is God then it would be the most natural of things to go back to heaven where he’d been for all eternity. If Jesus is God, all these things make sense rather than being weird. If we embrace this one central grand miracle, all these other things are child’s play by comparison.

If the Incarnation is true, it explains how just three years of the life of a Jewish peasant could so alter the history of the world. I always like the way we date the reign of Caesar Augustus. Caesar Augustus reigned from 31 B.C. to 14 A.D. It’s just delightful for me to think that here is this guy Caesar Augustus, the emperor of the whole world who ruled over more of the world than anybody certainly since Alexander the Great, and yet we know him and his life and reign is dated according to the birthday of a tiny carpenter’s in some tiny little corner of his empire. He would never have heard of Jesus during his lifetime. And yet, we date this famous emperor’s life around the birthday of Christ – B.C. to A.D.

B. So it makes the Bible fit together if we believe that God really became man. It makes all things fit together in Scripture. It also makes human existence fit together. If God became man it explains that there is a purpose for human existence. Human life isn’t just a chance combination of molecules. Our human aspirations for purpose and meaning, our aspirations even for greatness, for doing something important are not just whistling in the dark. But God made us in his image and God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth loves us, cares for us enough to send his Son into this world to live in it, to redeem us, and to bring us back to reconcile us to him, to get past the alienation and rebellion. Think again of the image of the scuba diver going down, down, down to the bottom of the ocean to bring us back up.

8) Read Philippians 2:3-4. Discuss how the Christian life is to be lived out. What changes are led to make in your life to model Jesus’ way of living?

Philippians 2:3-8______. This is how the Christian life is to be lived out. This is the whole spirit of the Christian life – living our lives as he did – living as freely from the world’s cannons of respectability and desire for power and admiration and recognition as he did. Jesus who lived this way is our model.