Main Idea: The story that cannot be explained away must be told so all can find the way of faith.

Introduction: Two weeks ago a genetic research company, Advanced Cell Technology, announced they had cloned the first human embryo. They did this by injecting a very small cell with its genetic material into a donated egg. The purposes of such a project, they said, is to aid the healing of diseases by the use of human embryonic tissue. (Arkansas Democrat Gazette, 11/26/01) There is much about this accomplishment I do not understand. I think you would agree with me that the ability of humans to reproduce human life outside of the womb of a woman is filled with frightening ethical and moral questions. The idea of a donated egg being injected with genetic material that is capable of creating human life is unexplainable to me. However, when you and I come to Christmas we are confronted with the harsh, naked reality that for lack of a better term, God "cloned" Himself in the womb of Mary. Mary was the donor of the egg and God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, injected the genetic material of Himself into that egg. Nine months later we read, "…and she gave birth to her first born son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger…" (Luke 2:7a NIV). We call it the Virgin Birth. It is unexplainable yet it’s reality is undeniable.

When you talk about the Virgin Birth we mean that Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit before she ever had sexual relations with a man. When we say that we mean that God entered our world as a baby. For us to be saved from ourselves and from our sin he had to enter our world somewhere. He chose for that somewhere to be the womb of someone—Mary.

When our daughter Jennifer was probably 7 or 8 years old I was trying to explain this miracle to her. After doing the best I could, she said, "I don’t believe that’s right…Daddy, Jesus was God’s Son…He was God himself and Jesus himself…We don’t understand that, do we Daddy?" No, we don’t. I didn’t then and I don’t today. What we are faced with at Christmas is a story that cannot be explained away that still must be told so all can find the way. Finding the way takes eyes—eyes of faith.

This morning I want us to hear again what Mary saw with her eyes. She saw shepherds who heard and saw what cannot be explained but left telling all they met so others could find the way to this baby. Let’s listen to one voice that was witness to God doing the unexplainable.

"My name is Eleazar, Eleazar the wild-eyed shepherd they call me. One who continues to tell the story of a night, of angels, of a mother and a baby. It is a story that each time I tell it I realize that I cannot understand it. I have tried to control my lips so that I do not tell of what I cannot explain. I try but then it comes out of my mouth like water from a hidden spring. It is a story of life, a story of hope, a story of salvation. Oh, you’ll have to excuse me for I am not the same since I saw…I saw God…God, as a baby. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just that…oh, you wouldn’t understand or maybe you world. I know you want the details. Just let me tell you what I saw.

It was in the winter. The nights can be cool on our Judean hills in winter. The other shepherds and I were taking care of the sheep for the sacrifices for the Temple in Jerusalem. We roamed from hillside to hillside but never strayed far from the quiet village of Bethlehem. Tending sheep is all I know. It is what my father did and his father before him. Living outdoors and working with sheep is not the work of those who are soft. Our bodies and clothes smell of our labor and of those we care for. We live alone but for our families it gives us a freedom that those who live in villages cannot know.

"Business had become brisk that winter season and it was all Caesar’s doing. It’s hard for a Jew to be thankful for a Roman emperor but the denarius in our pouches clinked with gratitude. Caesar had ordered a census to be taken of the entire Roman world. Every man was to return to the city of his birth and register. Those who returned to Bethlehem, the wealthy ones, would purchase a sheep to be sacrificed in the Temple so priests and shepherds all were enjoying the decree of Caesar.

"We had been buying, selling and caring for the sheep. The routine can be monotonous in the day and can lull you to sleep at night. We must always be wary of any predator so we watch for their attacks. That night, that night began like any other. The darkness fell around us. The stars began their scheduled appearance. The sheep quieted themselves. The lambs were stilled by the ewes. Our fire was a signal to any thief or animal that we were protecting and watching. The others were sleeping. I was watching and listening – and then it happened! How to explain it even now is hard.

"The darkness was suddenly penetrated by light. It was not the light of the moon or of a star falling from the sky. It was not like any light I had ever seen. I turned to see the source and when I turned I heard a voice. The voice was one voice but it was like many voices speaking all at once. It was like the sound of water that rushes through the rocks after a rain. The voice awakened the others and immediately their eyes and mine were blinded by the light. When you know you are seeing what you see but what you see you cannot describe, it is terrifying. We all began to tremble. I brought my cloak up over my eyes as I fell in fear before the voice and the light. We were dazed, confused and yet drawn to what was before us. What was before us? It was—the Angel of the Lord.

"I know. I know it’s hard to believe. If you think seeing the Angel is difficult, let me tell you what they said. Trying to calm us was not easy. The voice of the Angel said, "Don't be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy for everyone! The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David! And this is how you will recognize him: You will find a baby lying in a manger, wrapped snugly in strips of cloth!"(Luke 2:10-12 NLT) No sooner had those wondrous words been spoken than it seemed to us that the whole sky ripped open to reveal a universe full of angels shouting this news from every cloudbank under heaven. It echoed back and forth and back and forth—voices, words, light—triumph! It seemed that their presence would remain while the stars marched their way across the sky.

"We watched. We listened. We stood in amazement. Then like the Menorah’s candles are extinguished at Hanukkah, they left one by one. When the last one had gone we were standing there mute in the darkness. The stars, the moon, the fire all the same. When you have seen angels in the dark light and life are never the same. The echoing of the message of the Angel still rang in our ears—Bethlehem, Savior, baby—manger. Immediately we each began to say, "Come on, let's go to Bethlehem! Let's see this wonderful thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." (Luke 2:15 NLT) Like men who are dying of thirst seek water we left sheep to go look for a baby who was our Savior.

"As we approached Bethlehem we suddenly realized what we were facing. The city was full of people. All we were told was that we were to find a baby in a feeding trough. We decided to search the places where travelers would stay but because many people kept their animals inside their houses the manger could be anywhere. We looked in stables—small caves or wooden shelters for there we knew would be a trough to feed animals. We looked and found nothing but sleeping, stinking livestock. It made no sense to me. Had we all been crazy? Why was I leaving my sheep to look for a baby that an angel said was God? It all sounded insane.

"We were growing tired and beginning to doubt what our eyes had seen when I saw a light. It was a light from a lamp where lamps are not usually found and it came from a stable. I cried to my friends, ‘Amos, Josiah—here, look here! There’s a light in a stable!’ We rushed to its entrance, hardly drawing a breath and not knowing if this was the baby in the manger or villager with a cow giving birth to a calf. When we got to the doorway we knew and we saw.

"How do I tell you? For years I have told of this sight. Each year when we celebrate this birth those who don’t believe plead with me not to tell it because it makes no sense. But I know what I saw. What I saw there in the light of an oil lamp. I saw a woman looking into a manger and a man staring in dumbstruck wonder. What held their vision so strongly? I stopped closer to see a tiny hand reaching up from the straw that surrounded it. I heard a cry, a cry of a baby. I saw a tiny head still damp from the fluid of his birth. The hair was black as the wool of the goats of the Negev. The eyes looked liked twin wet coals tucked into the snow. The face was red and swollen from a birth that had taken the entire night. I watched the exhausted mother lift the tiny form, unwrap the cloths from around him and place him next to her breast. His tiny cheeks and lips drew life from her body. That was the moment that I saw God.

"Yes, I saw God. God in human flesh. God willing to be naked, vulnerable, humble, ordinary and weak. I knew from the teaching of the synagogue that Isaiah had promised it would be this way. ‘The Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel’ (Isa. 7:14) – God with us. That night it was all true. God was now part of my world.

"I could not help my questions. They came stumbling out of my lips. ‘Is this the child who is the Messiah?’ The husband, who called himself Joseph, and his wife was Mary, told me the story of angel’s announcements and their engagement. He struggled to say what I wanted to know, that she had become pregnant miraculously. That it was all God’s plan and purpose. Normally, I would have shaken my head at an excuse for young lust so ridiculous but when you have seen and heard the voice of angels, you believe. I looked at her, so young, so pure, so radiant. She looked at us one by one. It was as if her eyes had seen something so deeply wonderful that none of us could know. As if every word and movement was being remembered, absorbed, treasured over and over again and hidden away not merely in her memory but locked in her heart.

"The quiet of our amazement was deafening. The only sounds were those of the cow and her calf moving in the straw and the sucking, gurgles of a baby nestled in his mother’s arms. In that moment Mary spoke. She said his name. ‘The Angel said his name is Jesus. His name is Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.’ The baby seemed to flinch at those words. Maybe it was coincidence. Maybe it was conscious. Maybe it was mystery. Somehow I think he knew what we would know thirty-three years from this night – of a hill and a cross.

"As the angels had slipped away, so we began to ease our way back out into the night. I was the last. Amos pulled at my staff, reminding me of an approaching dawn and perhaps missing sheep. I looked just one last time at the baby and the mother and knew I had been forever changed.

"Yes, I was changed—all of us were. You cannot witness God in human flesh and not be changed. As we left the stable we told the story—the story of the angels, the husband, the mother and the baby. We told what the angels had said to us, that on this day the Savior was born. The Messiah had come! Christ the Lord was now here! ‘But where?’ they would ask. When we told them in a manger in the stable behind the inn, we knew then that they couldn’t understand. But I tell you every street in Bethlehem heard our story! A Roman guard wanted to arrest us for being drunk and causing a riot but he just ignored us as insane. We shouted to God what we had heard, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to all that God favors.’ We shouted all the way back to the sheepfold. We told all who would listen that night. We sang to the stars and whispered to the sheep. I have told this story every day of my life. You cannot see God as a baby and be silent.

"You have listened to my story. Some of your faces tell me you know the story of this night as I do. You have seen God in this baby and you have been changed. I must ask you, though, if you know, do you tell? I know that this story of God in human flesh is unexplainable. I know all of the objections. I know all the ridicule and the risk for believing what is impossible. Yet that doesn’t change the truth that God wants you to tell the story.

"He has always wanted this story told. He sent angels, across eternity to tell us. We have told this story since that day. I have discovered that when I think I cannot tell one more person that there is within me a power to tell it again and again. Oh, and one more thing—no one else can tell the story but you and me. Since that night I have heard no stories of angels again interrupting midnight to choir their anthem of this birth. No, God has chosen people, people like you and me to tell this story.

"Can you leave this place shouting as we did? No, but isn’t there one you can tell? One who wonders at the meaning of this night and this baby? One who is looking for hope, for life—for God? I tried to tell the world that night. Since then I have told each one that God would bring my way. I discovered that telling the world begins with telling one.

"Oh, I know it all sounds so unreal—‘God chose flesh!’ ‘God became one of us!’ The God of all power became flesh and has lived among us—God closer than close. Yet, this is the story that must be told. This naked God is the path to God. God has done the unexplainable. Tell that story to just one.

Sunday, December 9, 2001

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org