The Christmas Story and Our Story

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Dec 12, 2021

The Christmas Story and Our Story

This time of year we like to recount the Christmas story with Mary and Joseph, Bethlehem, the manger, the shepherds, the wise men, and of course, at the center of the Christmas story is baby Jesus. The birth of Jesus, our Savior, is what the Christmas story is all about.

I want us to appreciate how deeply the Christmas story intersects with our story. Your story. My story. Our stories are our lives. Jesus came not only to save our souls, he came to save our stories. Let’s look at a couple whose story was completely changed by the Christmas story.

⁵ In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. ⁶ And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. ⁷ But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

I want to pause there for a moment because we’ve just gotten a snapshot of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story. They are good, godly people, they love the Lord, but there is a sadness, a missing part in their story. Zechariah was from the priestly line of Abijah, one of the 24 priestly divisions that was established by King David so he has a deep connection to Jewish history. Elizabeth can also trace her lineage back to the priestly line of Aaron, Moses’ older brother. But they are advanced in years and they have no children. Of course they ache for a child but they also know their lineage will die with them. Their deep rootedness in Jewish history will be no more. Because of that they’ve cried tears and prayed prayers, but when we find them, they’ve resigned themselves to the fact that their story will end with them. But then the Christmas story intersects with their story:

⁸ Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty, ⁹ according to the custom of the priesthood, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense. ¹⁰ And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense. ¹¹ And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. ¹² And Zechariah was troubled when he saw him, and fear fell upon him. ¹³ But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. ¹⁴ And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, ¹⁵ for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb. ¹⁶ And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, ¹⁷ and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.”

Their story intersected with the Christmas story, and the Christmas story completely rewrote their story. What they thought was a hopeless situation, a dead end, became the brightest hope of their lives. They would not simply have a son who would quietly carry on the priestly services in the temple, they would have a son who would prepare the way for the Messiah, a son who would turn hearts of fathers to their children and sinners to the Lord. God’s story for them became so much bigger than the story they would have written for themselves!

The angel told the shepherds, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. The good news that causes great joy for all people is that the Christmas story isn’t something that simply happened to other people a long time ago in Bethlehem. The Christmas story intersects with the stories of all those who believe and trust in the Savior born that Christmas morn and turn our stories into stories of good news and great joy. Jesus came not only to save our souls, he came to save our stories.

I’m deliberately saying “our story” instead of “our lives” because we can get so caught up in the here and now that we lose sight of the fact that our lives really are stories. Your story was probably different ten years ago than it is now, and it will probably be different ten years from now than it is now. So what you’re living right now isn’t the whole story, it’s a chapter in your story.

How’s that chapter reading? For some of you it’s an awesome chapter. You’ve got the world by the tail. You start a new job soon. You’re getting married. You’re having a baby. Or maybe it just feels like all is right with the world and you’re really enjoying the Christmas season. For you this is a joyful chapter.

But for others, you’re in a sad chapter. A hard chapter. A discouraged or a raw or a painful or a regretful chapter. For you, the Christmas season, with its songs of joy and good cheer seem to grate on your heart. They are salt on the wound. To you, right now, it’s not the most wonderful time of the year, or the hap-happiest season of all. It’s actually one of the most painful seasons of for you.

One woman who had recently lost her son put it so poignantly:

I’m not in a celebratory mood, like at all, so when I woke up to this dumb drizzly day, it felt *so right*. Weather like this is strangely comforting to me right now. It’s an actual relief when the light is dim and the clouds are low and mist has softened all the sharp edges… when fog has filled the void with mystery and all of the trees are heavy laden. Under the burden of a sad stormy day, everything seems to grow smaller and quieter and more vulnerable, until the world looks exactly how I feel.

And I wonder if maybe this is the spirit of Christmas, too. Sure, Joy to the World, and all that jazz — but when Heaven and Nature sing? Maybe sometimes they sing a sad song for the sad people. And maybe that’s enough.

The Christmas story is no stranger to the chapter called “Loss and grief. Jesus was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isa 53:3). Zechariah and Elizabeth spent, I don’t 40, 50 years sending up desperate prayers to God that God seemed not to be willing to answer. Those years and those tears and those prayers would always be an important part of their story. The joy of Christmas morning would soon turn to horror and grief as Herod sent soldiers to kill every boy child under two years old.

Listen to Matthew 2:18

“A voice is heard in Ramah,weeping and great mourning,Rachel weeping for her childrenand refusing to be comforted,because they are no more.” Matt 2:18

God didn’t remove the sad chapters from their lives; He redeemed those chapters.

And Jesus can redeem our sadness too. Five years ago several of us gathered over a dear friend to pray for him and his family. He had just found out his daughter was pregnant outside of marriage with a man who was not a Christian and my friend’s heart was hurting. As we prayed with him he wept openly. Because of his strong faith in God there was hope mixed in with his sadness, but it was still sadness.

God used that pregnancy to draw his daughter’s heart back to God and when she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, they could all see God’s good and loving hand at work and sadness was in large part replaced with joy. There were some challenges as his daughter embraced being a single mom and some sadness still, but the overwhelming love and joy that came to their family through this precious little girl made any hardship and sadness pale in comparison.

But God wasn’t done with the story. Over time, the father of this baby girl began to see the love of Jesus in their lives and even though he lived in a different country he began to attend a church and before long he gave his life to Jesus, was baptized, and eventually he and my friend’s daughter were married. They now have two precious little girls.

I love that story and asked my friend for permission to share it. Sometimes Jesus removes our sadness this side of eternity, sometimes he doesn’t. The Bible says when we see God face to face, He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. That means some of us will enter eternity with sadness.

Whatever chapter you’re in – whether happy or sad, easy or hard – the Christmas story can meet you right where you are and mean the world to you. I want to quote my friend Walt Bieser in a message he wrote: There is great happiness in the Christmas season, and it’s good to embrace and celebrate that happiness…But to those of you who find yourselves driven by obligation and busyness and guilt in this season, it’s OK to stop, and say no, and pause and embrace a part of the season that brings you personal happiness. And to those of you who find Christmas to be a painful, difficult season; to those of you who are hurting or grieving personally or feeling discouraged by this tumultuous last year we’ve been going through; and to those of you who are happy to revel in this season—it’s OK to feel and to embrace. God sees you no matter where you are on the emotional spectrum of happiness.

I love that. It’s important that you know that it’s ok if you’re not on the cheerful, joyful, happy side of the emotional spectrum. God sees you where you are, He sees the chapter that you’re in, and Jesus has been there too. The joy he gives us is strong enough to weather some sad days.

The angel told Joseph that Jesus would save his people from their sins. Jesus came to earth to save our eternal souls by living in perfect righteousness and then willingly laying down his life for our sins. Jesus came to save our souls.

But Jesus not only saves our souls, he saves our stories too. Apart from Christ our story is utter hopelessness, utter despair, untethered from anything that has eternal meaning, our lives had no lasting meaning or eternal impact either.

Jesus changed all that. The Christmas story changes all that. The Christmas story took Zechariah and Elizabeth’s story and used it to create ripples of redemption that would travel throughout history. The Christmas story took a young virgin and a good-hearted man named Joseph and used them to create ripples of redemption that would save more eternal souls than could be counted. The same is true of some shepherds who were visited by angels by night, and wise men who traveled long miles to give gifts to the baby born a king.

When Jesus is at the center of our story, he will use our lives to create ripples of redemption that go far beyond our lives, and far beyond what we can see. We’ll pick this back up in a couple weeks but be encouraged. If Jesus is your Savior, you’re in his story and he’s in your story and he has good works for you to do and ripples of redemption for your life to make in history.

The Bible says God brings beauty from ashes. Sin had burned our stories to ashes. Ashes of regret. Pain. Sadness. Selfishness. Foolishness. Anger. Sin ignites a thousand matches to reduce our lives to ashes. But out of those ashes God makes something beautiful. Jesus redeems the ashes and turns them into something beautiful, a story that can lead others to the Savior who can turn their ashes into something beautiful.

Jesus came not only to save our souls, he came to save our stories. Let’s believe Jesus, ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit, and live our stories to the glory of God!