Main Idea: The shipwrecked at the stable believe that the birth of Jesus Christ goes beyond anything our normal human experience can understand.

This morning we come to our last message in our Shipwrecked at the Stable series. We have described the shipwrecked at the stable as those for whom Jesus Christ alone is their absolute confidence and hope. They are those who know that there is another voice that calls to them and speaks to them more deeply than others dare to listen. They are those, as Brennan Manning says, whose "exposure to spiritual, emotional and physical deprivation has weaned them from themselves and made them re-examine all they once thought important." (Watch for the Light, p. 191) They not only re-examine all they once thought important but they also re-examine all they once thought they believed. The shipwrecked at the stable understand that when it comes to the birth of Jesus Christ they are being asked to believe the unbelievable. That belief will take them beyond anything our normal human experience can understand.

Dr. Seuss’s book On Beyond Zebra describes a boy who thought he had reached the limit of his knowledge but suddenly is introduced to letters that were beyond his understanding, "Said Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell, My very young friend who is learning to spell: ‘The A is for Ape. And the B is for Bear. The C is for Camel. The H is for Hare. The M is for Mouse. And the R is for Rat. I know all the twenty-six letters like that…through to Z is for Zebra. I know them all well.’ Said Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell. ‘So now I know everything anyone knows from beginning to end. From the start to the close. Because Z is as far as the alphabet goes.’ Then he almost fell flat on his face on the floor when I picked up the chalk and drew one letter more! A letter he never had dreamed of before! And I said, ‘You can stop, if you want, with the Z because most people stop with the Z, but not me! In the places I go there are things that I see that I never could spell if I stopped with the Z. I’m telling you this ‘cause you’re one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!" (On Beyond Zebra by Dr. Seuss)

So Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell was about to learn letters beyond what he thought he knew and understood. He was soon to learn that there are things and places that could never be spelled if you just stopped at Z. There was a world that was "On Beyond Zebra."

When you and I come to talk about the birth of Jesus Christ we come up against the limits of all we know as humans. There are people today, persons without faith and those who have faith, that when they come to the unique birth of Jesus Christ they can only stop at "Z". They can only stop at the limits of what their mind can understand. As I said last week, the cover stories of both Time and Newsweek (December 13, 2004) explore once again the mystery surrounding the birth of Jesus. The articles quote the most current research of the biblical texts that provide some with the conclusion that to believe what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke claim—that Jesus was born without the aid of a human father—is to believe the unbelievable. Yet those who are shipwrecked at the stable hear God say, "My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends." The shipwrecked at the stable believe the unbelievable.

The birth of Jesus at Christmas has always been a mystery to humanity. That mystery was foretold in the prophecy of Isaiah almost 2700 years ago and fulfilled by Jesus being conceived seven centuries later in Mary’s womb without the aid of a human father. We call it the Virgin Birth. No other person has duplicated the circumstances that surround that birth. The events go beyond anything our normal human experience can understand. They "go beyond zebra".

Preceding our text for this morning is the genealogy of Jesus in Matt. 1:1-17. In Matthew 1:16, Matthew leaves open the idea that Jesus birth could not be traced physically to Joseph. The New Testament affirms what the Old Testament promised that the Messiah was conceived and born in a way unlike anyone before or after that time, meaning that his birth would be and was truly an event outside normal experience. The reason that a human father is missing is that Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb of Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit before she ever had sexual relations with her husband Joseph.

This event was the result of a promise God made through the prophet Isaiah, fulfilled in the birth of Jesus and lives today as the miracle of Christmas. There is no doubt that this promise is difficult to grasp for our modern minds. We ask, "Could it really be true?" We discover, however, that we are not the first to ask because Mary was the first to question. She said to the Angel Gabriel, when told she would have a baby, "You will become pregnant and have a son, and you are to name him Jesus." (Luke 1:31 NLT), her response was, "But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin." (Luke 1:34, NLT). She was the first to ask, "Can I believe the unbelievable?" Joseph also struggled with what he knew for his plan after finding out Mary was pregnant was to "divorce her quietly". So let’s spend some time this morning looking at circumstances surrounding this birth that push it outside our normal experience and see that once again we are asked to go beyond what we thought we understood.

Matthew quotes a prophecy of Isaiah in verse 23, "Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Immanuel (meaning, God is with us)." It is significant that Matthew, without any hesitancy, saw the fulfillment of this 700 year-old prophecy in the birth of Jesus (Matt. 1:22-23). At the time of this prophecy, Isaiah’s tiny nation, Judah, was faced with war from two powerful nations to the north, Syria and Israel. It would be the equivalent of over twenty divisions of an enemy force camped just over the Canadian border. Ahaz, the king at the time, has gone out of the city of Jerusalem to inspect the defenses of the city to prepare for the possible siege of the city. Isaiah finds him and tells him that his ultimate trust must be in God, not in his own strength or power (Isa. 7:4-11). When Ahaz protests that he would not dare to try or tempt God’s power (Isa.7:12), Isaiah promises that God’s answer to the battle he faced was beyond his human experience! "All right then, the Lord himself will choose the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel—'God is with us.'" Where Ahaz’s alphabet ended God’s alphabet began. God’s answer to his battle would be a baby.

What this meant to Ahaz was that the promise would not be fulfilled in his own son but in God’s own Son, "Immanuel, God with us."(Matt.1:23). Ahaz would die and seven hundred years of time would roll by until this promise would be fulfilled. The birth of Jesus to Mary would be the "sign" that God alone can and will save his people. The promise of 2700 years ago is something that is beyond our human experience. The letters that God used to spell "Immanuel" go beyond the alphabet we have.

Yet not only was the uniqueness of Jesus’ birth the testimony of the Old Testament, it is also the testimony of the New Testament. (Matt. 1:18-25, Luke 1:26-38) The birth stories found in Matthew and Luke are similar yet independent from each other. Matthew writes from the viewpoint of Joseph with few details as to how the birth would occur except that it is by the work of the Holy Spirit. Luke does the same but presents Mary as the key witness to the miraculous birth. Without many details, the Angel makes it clear that the birth will not come about by the ordinary method of human generation but by a totally unparalleled action of the Holy Spirit. It would "go beyond zebra."

This is recorded three times in the birth narratives of Jesus. Matthew 1:18 says, "Now this is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit." Then verse 20 says, "Joseph, son of David," the angel said, "do not be afraid to go ahead with your marriage to Mary. For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit." In Luke 1:35 the angel said, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God." The Angel makes clear that God’s alphabet starts where Mary and Joseph’s alphabet ends.

However, in spite of the biblical evidence to support such a birth, there are many today who do more than wonder, they deny that Jesus’ birth was any different from another. The Jews themselves tried to defame this in the centuries following the birth of Jesus. Some say that his birth is like other stories in pagan literature. Others say it is only a legend and must be understood correctly or that the New Testament writers created it to link up Old Testament history and prophecy. In other words it is merely a vehicle to get us from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Another argument is that it was just something the early church believed and we know better now. Some suppose that Joseph and Mary didn’t understand the laws of nature. Yet Joseph and Mary both knew enough biology to say they didn’t understand how this was supposed to happen. The Da Vinci Code version by Dan Brown is basically adapted from some of these. Brown’s idea that Mary was actually bearing a child as the result of an affair with a Roman soldier is really a modernized version of a Roman writer, Celsus in A.D. 180. Celsus said that the early church created the whole idea of the Virgin Birth to cover up the embarrassment of Mary being pregnant before she was married.

How do we explain the unique birth of Jesus Christ? We will never know completely "how." It is and ever shall be a mystery. Yet we understand it by understanding the process of normal human generation. The conception of a child begins when a specific microscopic particle of a man’s body and a specific microscopic particle of a woman’s body are connected. In this case God took a short cut. This time God did it directly! C.S. Lewis said, "Jesus was conceived when God took off the glove of nature and touched Mary with his naked finger. Thus, Jesus did not evolve up and out of history." God went beyond our normal human experience! He went "beyond zebra".

Such a unique birth was the means by which he chose to spell "Immanuel," so that he might be "God with us!" It was not so that he would be sinless which would imply that Mary was without sin. It was not the only way God could have done it. I mean he could have arranged it so that Jesus would be born to a good father and a good mother. The problem here is that he would have been totally human. He could have created Jesus like he did the angels but then he would have been totally divine. He could have borrowed a body but then that body would not have been his own. What God did was allow himself to be born through the means of a virgin so that he would be God himself and Jesus himself. This was the best way for us to clearly understand that what God was going to do in Jesus was beyond anything our normal human experience can understand. If God was going to do something totally beyond what we can understand then it called for a birth that was "beyond zebra"!

For every one of the reasons why the unbelievable can’t be believed there are opposing reasons why it can. Yet even if we spent our time doing that this morning (and some of you are frustrated that we don’t) what do we gain by winning an argument? Don Miller writes, "Sooner or later you just figure out there are some guys who don’t believe in God and they can prove He doesn’t exist, and some other guys who do believe in God and they can prove He does exist, and the argument stopped being about God a long time ago and now it’s about who is smarter, and honestly I don’t care." (Blue Like Jazz, p, 103) Sooner or later you understand that either you believe the unbelievable or you don’t and all the arguments and evidences aren’t going to change anything.

The shipwrecked at the stable believe the unbelievable: Jesus was conceived in the womb of a woman named Mary—a woman who had never before had sexual relations with a man—by the power of the Holy Spirit without a human father. So what? What does this mean for me? You see, one thing that the truth of the Virgin Birth teaches us is it is evidence of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. This means that Jesus is God’s only, unique, particular, divine Son of God. Why would you want God to be someone only just like you? On the one hand they can really understand all you feel and think and that’s good. But if all they are is just like me then they can’t go beyond what I can feel or know. They may feel it or know things different but they are still limited by what a human feels. Because of the unique birth of Jesus we have a God who can go beyond what I feel and know and this God chose to only do this once-in Jesus Christ. Buddha and Mohammed could only go as far as their human experience can take them because they were just human. Jesus, because of his unique birth goes beyond human. There is and never will be anyone else like him. Jesus goes beyond zebra!

It also tells us that the way we have a relationship with God is beyond our what our normal human experience can understand. Matthew 1:21 says, "And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins." This tells us that when it comes to repairing all that is wrong with us that God did it all. I can’t fix what is wrong with me. I can make adjustments or improvements but when it comes to repairing the brokenness of my soul, I’m hopeless. Our salvation is not by our abilities. We were helpless to even introduce Jesus into our world. So what God does for us is incapable of being done by any human—it is supernatural. Saving me from my sins needs a new alphabet. It needs something that goes beyond what I can do. Jesus is the only one who can do that.

Still the Virgin Birth of Jesus is a reminder that our relationship with God is a gift, a gift of grace. God chose Mary for the task of being the womb in which this miracle would occur but he chose her – by grace. In Luke 1:28 and then again in verse 30 the Angel tells Mary, "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you…Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God." Those words "favored one" and "found favor" mean graced one or the one who has found grace. God chose Mary not on the basis of her own efforts but because of his grace. When ever a person tells you that in order for God to accept you and they basically say, "Jesus is fine but "We must…," "We must…, "We must…" you can know that their faith is not based on grace. You want to say, "Aren’t you tired of trying to make God like you?" Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast." The birth of Jesus Christ points to a relationship with God that is based solely on the fact that God just wanted to change me not because of anything special about me but because of his grace!

There’s one more thing to say and that is that the Virgin Birth is a reminder that what God specializes in is beyond the categories of our normal human experience. There are many miraculous births recorded in Scripture using human fathers. Yet how much more this birth. Mary was told when she doubted, "For nothing shall be impossible with God."(Luke 1:37) She was reminded that God’s alphabet starts where her alphabet began. That He could and would do this impossible thing tells me what an awesome God He is! Any expression of spirituality whose goal is for all of us to become better people falls short of God’s intention. The Virgin Birth is evidence that the God we know, who came into the world as a baby, is an awesome God for whom nothing is impossible! The truth is you will miss the magnificence of Christmas unless the God in whom you believe can take you beyond zebra!

To spell Immanuel requires letters that go beyond our normal human experience. To spell "Immanuel" Christians will believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus. This mystery occurs all without a human father, to demonstrate that Jesus is not like anyone else, that the way we have a relationship with him is beyond what we can understand, totally apart from any value of our own and reminds us that God specializes in what is beyond our normal human experience.

The boy in Dr. Suess’s story is told, "So you see! There’s no end to the things you might know, depending how far beyond Zebra you go!… I tried hard to tell Young Conrad Cornelius o’Donald o’Dell a few brand-new wonderful words he might spell. I led him around and I tried hard to show there are things beyond Z that most people don’t know. I took him past Zebra. As far as I could. And I think, perhaps, maybe I did him some good…Because, finally, he said: ‘This is really great stuff! And I guess the old alphabet ISN’T enough!’ NOW the letters he uses are something to see! Most people still stop at the Z…but not HE!

On one night 2000 thousand years ago shepherds heard the words that God had chosen to go beyond anything their normal human experience could understand, "This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger"(Luke 2:12). The shipwrecked at the stable are those who are willing to go beyond where their normal human experience will take them and believe the unbelievable about the birth of Jesus Christ. But that’s just where their alphabet starts! They know that with God "there is no end to the things you might know depending on how far beyond zebra you go." May you go far beyond zebra this Christmas!

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org