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The Greatest Story Ever Written

Rev. Doug Pratt — December 13, 2009
 

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In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, ²but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe. ³The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word. After He had provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of Majesty in heaven. ⁴So He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is superior to theirs.
Hebrews 1:1-4 (NIV)

Imitating God
It must be an amazing experience to be the author of a novel. I’ve never tried it. Perhaps some of you have. Last winter one of our special guests here at First Church was Dr. Walt Larimore. Walt, one of the most versatile, intellectually-agile and diverse men I’ve ever known, moved from a career as a family practice physician to being a medical journalist and an author. All of his previous books had been non-fiction: either about medicine and health, or Christian living, or his personal memoirs. But in the past year Walt “took the plunge” into fiction, and just a few months ago published his first novel. I asked Walt how writing fiction was different for him. His first comment to me was, “It’s a bit scary.” He explained that in writing non-fiction, an author’s imagination and control are limited somewhat by reality. But in fiction, anything is possible. And everything is up to the author to invent or construct: the setting or locations of the scenes, the characters, the plot twists, and the eventual outcome. A writer of fiction can choose to make his or her book a comedy or tragedy, a romance or mystery; characters can be rooted in events of actual history or can be placed in imaginary worlds with their own unique cultures.

It is an overwhelming power and responsibility, to create and produce a new story the world has never read or heard. It’s the same great freedom [and burden] all artists, architects, musicians and film makers must deal with. And every time a human being uses such an art form or technique, he or she is acting (whether intentionally or unintentionally) as an imitator of God—who is the Ultimate Author, Creator, Composer, Designer and Artist. Whenever we use our creative gifts, we feel a bit of the thrill and burden God feels as He creates and forms out of nothing this vast universe.

But only God can…
While our world has been blessed by people with amazing skills and creative gifts (all, of course, placed within us by our Creator and Heavenly Father), there are definite limits to our capacities. Though Shakespeare, Hemingway, Dickens and C.S. Lewis may develop remarkable and thrilling stories that capture our imaginations and linger for a lifetime in our memories, there are two things those great authors cannot do that only God can accomplish. The great ongoing story of the life and times of Planet Earth and its inhabitants demonstrates these two unprecedented features.

First: Only God can actually give His characters life itself, with the will and freedom to choose. Sometimes novelists will describe the fascinating process of writing a story and will claim that their characters almost took on lives and personalities of their own. But the reality is that those characters only exist in the mind of the author and on the two-dimensional printed page. Though they may be described vividly, they can’t actually speak or act apart from the author’s pen strokes or keystrokes. But throughout the Bible and human history we see demonstrated the awesome freedom God put within us human beings. At times this freedom results in beautiful acts of love and compassion and self-sacrifice; and at times the result of our human freedom is horrible—as people make evil or disastrous choices. We are allowed, within constraints, to actually cooperate with our great Author in writing the story of our own lives.

Max Lucado, a pastor and author of many non-fiction spiritual books, has expressed the wonder we should feel at God’s gift of freedom in these eloquent words:

Each of our lives is a book, not to be just passively read but rather actively written. The Author [God] starts each life story, but each life will write his or her own ending. What a dangerous liberty. How much safer it would have been to finish the story for each Adam, to script every option and choice. It would have been simpler. It would have been safer. But it would not have been love. Love is only love if chosen. So the Author decides to give each child a pen. “Write carefully,” He whispers.
[from A Gentle Thunder]

And then there is the second phenomenal aspect of God’s Authorship of Mankind that is unlike anything anyone else could ever do: Only God can actually write Himself into the story. This is what our text in Hebrews chapter 1 is telling us: after speaking to people from a distance for centuries, God Himself in the form of His Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, actually entered into history. This is, of course, what happened beginning on that first Christmas. It’s why we celebrate it with such wonder and awe; it’s why Christ’s coming to earth as a baby was such a profound miracle. The Author makes Himself one of the characters in His drama.

J.K. Rowling may be able to invent and put on paper the characters of her best-selling Harry Potter series, but she can neither make them come alive in three-dimensional reality, nor can she ever become one of them—squeezing herself inside the covers of a book. That is the limitation of human creative ability that only the all-powerful God who can do anything was able to overcome.

God enters our story
Christmas is about God desiring to give and receive love with free creatures like us. And it is about His interjecting Himself into our lives in such a way that we can come to know Him personally. Because He became one of us, He really understands everything we experience. And because He has broken through the barrier that separates the spiritual from the material world, we can actually have Him with us, in our hearts, every moment of our lives. The announcement of God’s arrival on earth, in the form of the baby Jesus, is a familiar passage of scripture. But this morning I’d like us to revisit it—to “unpack” it, the way we might unwrap a Christmas present.

⁸And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. ¹¹Today in the town of David a Savior has born to you; He is Christ the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
      ¹³Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom His favor rests.”
Luke 2:8-14 (NIV)

The appearance of a single angel (verse 9) is entirely consistent with the larger story recorded in Luke. Earlier in this gospel, special-delivery messages of great importance had been delivered by an angel messenger to, first, the parents of John the Baptist and, second, to Mary and Joseph. This is also consistent with many stories in the Old Testament, where an angel appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, to Moses, to Daniel, etc. We might think of this messenger as being like a postal worker or UPS or FedEx driver, arriving with a special-delivery letter or overnight package.

Reversing society’s “order”
The content of the message was that the great King of the Universe had just made His entrance to human life in a new and dramatically more intimate and personal way. The purpose of the message the angel delivered was to round up some witnesses who would be able to see for themselves and testify to what happened that night. Scholars and Bible students for centuries have been speculating on why God chose these particular people—a nondescript group of blue collar workers who were on the night shift—to be the privileged few to actually be there. And most are convinced that this wasn’t just an accident (that the shepherds were the only people awake late at night when the delivery occurred). Rather, it fits the pattern of the Gospel story: the great reversal or upending of the ways of mankind.

Mary and Joseph, after all, weren’t from the upper crust of society. They were two young kids from working-class parents in a small town in the middle of nowhere. And all through His ministry, Jesus would choose just such ordinary people (fishermen and tax collectors among them) to be His instruments. And here we find that God reverses the “pecking order” of society. When the President of the United States pays a state visit to another country, he is greeted with the highest honors. When he descends from Air Force One, there to greet him on the red carpet is the President or Prime Minister of that country, along with all the dignitaries and a military honor guard. It’s always been that way among us.

But not when God paid His state visit to earth. He arrived in the dead of night, with no honor guard or red carpet or dignitaries awaiting Him—just a manger. The prosperous and successful people of Bethlehem were all asleep in their comfortable beds, as were King Herod and his court in Jerusalem a few miles away. It would be the lower class who would be afforded the great honor of comprising the welcoming party to officially greet the arriving King of Kings.

A spontaneous celebration
But the story goes on in Luke 2. Before the shepherds could gather up their lunch pails and walking sticks and head to Bethlehem, they were struck by another surprise. An entire “company” or “multitude” of angels suddenly appeared and began to celebrate. Some have envisioned this vast number of angels in far too limited terms. I have seen paintings where the announcing angel has three or four others behind him—the way Bruce Springsteen or Madonna or Garth Brooks might have a back-up band behind them at a concert, singing a little harmony and strumming a bass guitar and drums. But the actual word used for the number of angels present had to be much greater than a backup band, or even our choir and orchestra. There were likely hundreds, even thousands. They filled the air all around—a regiment of angels!

The best image I have been able to come up with is a great victory parade—like the ones at the end of a war, or celebrating a Super Bowl champion—where thousands of people line the streets to cheer and celebrate. I believe the celebration of the angels described in Luke 2 was not the carefully orchestrated harmony of a backup group for a performance aimed at the shepherds. No, I believe this was a spontaneous eruption of applause and celebration that could not be contained. I believe the angels, those spiritual beings who are not limited by space and time but are not at all on the level of God Himself in their knowledge or power, were in absolute amazement and awe and wonder.

Like a crowd erupting in celebration at the end of a surprising athletic triumph, the angels are absolutely thrilled and enraptured. Did you see that? Did you see what our Lord just did? That God would work the most astounding miracle of actually becoming a human being while still being God was incredible to them (as it should be to us). They had never imagined or contemplated such a thing.

The message of the angels
What were the angels saying during this time of spontaneous celebration and mesmerized wonder as they witnessed the Incarnation of God into human nature? Let me expand a bit on the brief words Luke has recorded. I believe the celebration of the angels had two points—and if we could understand angelic language, this is what they were really saying.

“How amazing is our God! He has absolutely outdone Himself this time! Of all the wonders we have witnessed—the forming of stars and planets, the various species of plants and birds and fish and animals He invented, the physical laws and forces that govern the cosmos, and the amazing gift of life—we have never seen anything as amazing as this. How could our Infinite Lord manage to become a little baby? Who would ever have been able to imagine or write this surprising script, except Him! All praise to the great Author of this story!”

“How blessed beyond their imagining is the race of men! They have no idea what is happening. They are receiving a gift no other creatures have ever gotten. They are so incredibly and undeservedly singled out and favored. Our God never became one of us, an angel. He never became a lion, or a dolphin, or an eagle. He has only become a man. They are so blessed. They can experience such a ‘shalom’ [the biblical word for the ultimate and greatest form of inner peace and blessedness]. If they will but recognize and receive what God is doing for them, their world will never be the same.”

Don’t miss the real joy of Christmas
That is the message that Christmas brought. Those are the great truths we need to learn from the spontaneous celebration of the angels on that night when history turned a corner and started in a new direction. For nearly 2000 years those who have heard and understood this story have tried, in our own humble and inadequate ways, to reflect the great celebration of that first night. We don’t have the voices of angels. Our music and words and images are limited. But nevertheless, we do our best to “pull out all the stops” and make our Christmas a time of appropriate joy and wonder.

Whatever is going on in your life right now personally, whatever health problems or family problems or financial problems you’re feeling, whatever worries you have for our nation and world, whatever distractions are coming at you from the routine details of life, don’t let any of them rob you of the joy in your heart that Christmas is meant to bring to all of us. This is our time of celebration, for God has come to us and will never, ever leave us.