The Wonder of God's Goodwill

Amazing, isn't it? What the prophet said Jesus would do and accomplish? Great things. A powerful king, a word that will go out and accomplish all that the Lord has determined. For the zeal of the Lord will see to it.

The words of scripture on which I wish to meditate briefly with you this morning are found in that well-known passage which we almost call the Christmas passage in scripture, Luke chapter 2. I'm going to just refer to verses 13 and 14. After the angel had announced to the disciples, oh sorry, to the shepherds, "This will be a sign to you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." Suddenly, a great company of the heavenly hosts appeared with the angel praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men on whom His favour rests."

The wonder of God's goodwill. The other day when we read the Christmas story at home, I thought, what an amazing contrast we find in this story of the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. On the one hand, there was this amazing experience of the shepherds in the fields of Ephrata who must have been blown away and wondered what was happening when the angel appeared to them and said, "I bring you good news of great joy. To you is born today in the city of David a Saviour, Christ the Lord." Magnificent. An announcement by angels, the glorious messengers of God.

And then they go to a stable, and there they find that the experience of this little child born to be King, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, is lying wrapped in rags in a trough for the food for animals. The shepherds heard impressive words, but Jesus Himself experienced poverty and rejection. No special privileges. No special arrangements. It reminds you of what Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 53, doesn't it?

"Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him. Nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him."

"He was despised and rejected of men. A man of sorrows and familiar with suffering, like one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised and we esteemed Him not." Why? Why was the Saviour Christ not more impressive? Why didn't He come with glory so that everybody would fall down and worship?

Why did He come in such a way that they thought He's nothing? He's someone to be shunned, despised, rejected. Why? Because of the way that the kingdom of God that was promised in the Old Testament and that Jesus came to bring into reality, it was because of the way the kingdom of God comes to this world. Do you know the Beatitudes?

Do you know those sayings of Jesus in Matthew 5 which start with "Blessed are"? "Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied."

Have you ever noticed that the Lord Jesus here is talking about people who do not have a high opinion of themselves? Who don't believe in themselves? Who don't push their own barrow? They're rather people who measure themselves by God's great commandments, by God's great expectations, by God's great will. You know that will of God, don't you?

Those two commandments which are foundational to all faith and life: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and you must love your neighbour as yourself." God will be satisfied with nothing less than that. God wants us to love, to love Him above all else, and to love every neighbour as we love ourselves. And that was Jesus' aim. That's what Jesus wanted to do.

His great goal in life was to please God and to be a blessing to others. Jesus Himself said that He did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many. That's why He was called Jesus. Remember, that's what the angel said to Joseph when he thought, "I better get rid of this girl. She's been unfaithful to me."

And the angel came and said to him, "Joseph, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife. What she has conceived is from the Holy Spirit, is from God Himself. And when He is born, I want you to give Him the name Jesus. Because He will save His people from their sins, from their unlovingness." That's why Jesus, why God sent His own son to this earth.

That's why God arranged to have Jesus to be born through the Virgin Mary. I think the apostle John sums it up as beautifully as anywhere in scripture. When in his first letter he writes, "This is how God showed His love among us. He sent His one and only son into the world that we might live through Him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us."

"Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son, His one and only son into the world as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." Yes. Glorious that God so loved us that He sent His son into the world to take our sins upon Himself and die as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. To take all our sins upon Himself and away from us so that they are no longer ours, but His.

And therefore, He was made a curse for us that we might be the righteousness of God. Jesus, the eternal son of God, was born as a human baby so that He could make right what Adam did wrong. You know the story of Adam and Eve. Do you not? You know what their trouble was?

They didn't take God seriously. They made God out to be a liar. They believed the evil one who said, "God didn't mean it when He said, the moment you eat from the fruit, you will die, you will separate yourself from God. Don't believe it." And they didn't.

And so they took what was not to be theirs, and they ruined it for themselves and for everybody, for all their children. They did what they thought was good in their own eyes, which had been blinded by a lie. The lie that God doesn't love you and doesn't want the best for you. Isn't that the big lie? Isn't that the big lie of the atheists who don't want to know God because they don't believe that God loves them and wants the best for them?

Isn't that the big lie? Isn't that what makes us do what is contrary to God's will? Because we don't believe in our heart of hearts at that very moment that God wants the best for us and that's why He says, "Don't do this and don't do that." Like a father and a mother tell a child, "Don't run across the road because when you do, you might be run over." Why do they say that?

To make their little kids' life miserable? No, because they love them. They want them to live, not to die. And God says, "I do not delight in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked shall turn and live." You know, what Adam and Eve did made them enemies of God.

And isn't that what we are all by nature, enemies of God? For when we do act against God, then we become His enemies. You know, one of the most amazing statements in the Bible is that Christ gave His life for us while we were still enemies? Christ died for us while we were still enemies. This is love: not that we love God.

No. We didn't love Him. But He loved us. God loves sinners. Don't get me wrong.

God loves sinners not because they sin. Don't ever ever touch think to yourself like the little kid did when we met him on his way from school and he was late and he's going to tell his mother a big fib and you said, "We told him, you can't do that." He said, "Tomorrow, I'll go to confession." And that's the way many Christians live, don't they? Tomorrow, I'll pray for forgiveness.

But if you do that, you are sinning with a high hand, says the Bible. Then you are sinning deliberately, and you are snubbing your nose at God right at that moment. And do you think that He will turn around tomorrow and just blindly forgive you when you have not an ounce of genuine repentance in your heart? It's just a matter of, well, what is it? Economics with God, mathematics?

Today I will sin. Tomorrow I will confess and that's it. No. It's not. It's about a daily walk with God.

It's about a relationship of love with God. That's what salvation is all about. That's what Jesus came to bring. That's what He died for. And the Bible says that if we keep on sinning deliberately after we've come to know the truth, there remains no more sacrifice for us.

You wanna check that up? Look it up in the book of Hebrews. I say, God loves sinners, not because they sin, but in spite of their sin. Jesus came to give His whole life to God. His great motto was, "Not my will, but God's will" is in all important.

Jesus came to demonstrate the goodness of God, to prove that God's word can be trusted. That's what His life was about: trusting God. No matter what people did, no matter what people said, "I will do the will of God and God will raise me, give me life because of that." That's what we read in the New Testament: that Jesus was raised from death and Jesus was glorified because He did what God wanted Him to do.

He became obedient even to death on the cross. Jesus came to show us that God wants people who, because of their sin, deserve to suffer eternal death to have eternal life. You know this the verse John 3:16, do you not? "For God so loved the world that He gave His only son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." That means that God loves His enemies.

God loves His enemies. God wants the best for His enemies. Do you know that Jesus once said, "He who's seen me has seen the Father"? If you've seen me, what I'm like, that's what the Father is like and you know what Jesus did? Maybe some of you can remember.

When Jesus was on the cross, He said a prayer. For whom? He said a prayer for the very people who'd crucified Him. He said, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." Now think about that for a moment.

Was Jesus praying against the Father's will when He said, "Forgive them"? They were doing something wrong. Were they not? They were doing something evil. There was hatred in their heart, was they not?

They wanted to get rid of Him. And Jesus says, Jesus says, "Forgive them." Is that how we act? Is that how we treat each other at home, as husbands and wives?

"Father, forgive her. Father, forgive him. Father, forgive Dad. Father, forgive my child." Is that how we do things?

Or do we raise our voices and proudly tell them, "You're wrong, you know? You're wrong. Gotta get down on your knees"? Well, we don't expect people to get down on their knees, but we ask them to apologise for their wrongs to prove that we're right.

And that's often the thing, isn't it, that gets us. But Jesus didn't do that. Why? Because He loved even the very people who crucified Him. And He was showing that God loves the very people who don't want Him to rule their lives.

He wants to change that around. He wants them to have life, and life is to be in love with God and to love God and to be loved by God. Isn't it? God sent His son into this world to deliver us from our distrust of God, from our false ideas about God, and showing us how much God loves us. And that took something, you know.

Remember His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane? "Father, if you are willing, please take this cup from me." What was He talking about? He's talking about what we find in the Old Testament: that the wicked will drink the cup of God's wrath. In other words, they will have to take the consequences of their evil behaviour.

And that is eternal punishment by God. And Jesus is asking, "Father, please don't let me have to drink that cup. Is there no other way that I can achieve what you want me to achieve?" And God says, "No. I want you to keep on having and bearing those sins of all the people that I've given to you, and I want you to drink the cup of the consequences of their sins."

And that's why Jesus died as a criminal, as a cursed one. God's curse was upon Him because He carried our guilt. Why? Because God wanted Him to do that so that we would be rid of our guilt and we could live in harmony with Him. We could receive His forgiveness and we could have the heart to repent and to apologise to God and say, "Lord, I've stuffed it up.

I've not loved You. I've treated You with shame." You see, it is the love of God that makes us weep for our sins. The law will never make us weep. You shall will never make us cry in shame.

When do we feel rotten about our sins? When we realise that God sent His son to take those sins upon Himself and suffer for us. "It was the Lord's will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer and make His life a guilt offering." Why? Is that fair?

Is that fair that Jesus should suffer what the wicked deserve? It was the only way that sinners can be saved from themselves, from their guilt, and have peace with God because of God's astounding love for us, His creatures. Jesus Christ had to deny Himself and simply trust that God would honour His faith and obedience as He promised. Is it any wonder that the angels sang, "Glory to God in the highest and peace upon earth among people upon whom God has showered His goodwill"? What makes the birth of Jesus so memorable and so important?

Not that He was such a cuddly little baby. Not that the stable was such a romantic setting. But here was the son of God starting that journey He had to take on this earth in order to deliver us and give us a future. And not only us.

The effects of sin were universal. We read about that in the book of Romans about coming under the curse of sin, the bondage to decay. But the whole earth is looking forward to the day when all creation will enjoy the freedom of the children of God and that's simply made possible by Jesus dying and enabling us to become the children of God. And that's the greatest blessing that anyone could possibly ever enjoy. And so the question I'd like to leave you with: do you know that through faith in Jesus, you are a child of God because the son of God came?

And took away your guilt so that you may now live fully under the loving care of God as your heavenly Father.