Downward Mobility

Happy Sunday, and Merry Christmas! I want to thank you for joining with me today. I also want to thank those of you who have given to David Shivers Ministries in 2022. Please know how grateful I am. If you'd like to make an end of year gift, you can go to my website, davidshivers.com, for an address, or a PayPal link is also there.

Have you ever been part of a live nativity? The last time I did that was in 2006. I lived in Indiana. We were set up at the Ripley County Fairgrounds. We had the animals and the manger built and a crib and uniform outfits, and I was Joseph that night, and my wife Jeannie was Mary.

The baby Jesus was a plastic doll. It was too cold to use a real baby. As I recall, it was single digits. You have to love Jesus to stand in the cold like that in a live nativity in December in Indiana.

Well, I was going well, and I'll stop the story and ask you the question: has your cell phone ever rung at an awkward time? Well, mine did that evening. Thank goodness it was on silent, that nobody knew it was ringing but me. When there was a break, I listened to the message that my friends left. They were on the way to the hospital for the birth of their first child.

I thought of the contrast as I put my phone away and went back to the manger. Their baby was to be born in a sterile, climate-controlled Hospital. Jesus was born in a manger. It was not clean, it was not sterile, it was not ideal, it was not comfortable. It was probably smelly, like our Nativity was that night in Indiana.

God's plan once again astounds me. A major was a feeding trough for animals. When Jesus was born, maybe it was a stable, maybe it was a cave; we really don't know. Luke tells us that there was no room in the Inn. The place of our Lord's birth, it was less than ideal.

Please know that God did not forget to make reservations. The stable was part of his divine plan, or the manger. As I stood there in that live nativity, I was thankful. I was thankful that God came to this messed up world filled with messed up people. So today I'm thankful that God got dirty.

Let me explain. As the Book of John begins, we learned that Jesus was there from the very beginning. He was present at creation and before. Remember these words: "In the beginning there was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God."

Skipping to John 1:14, we read, "And the word became flesh and lived Among Us, and we have seen his glory, the Glorious of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." As a child, I thought that Jesus began that day in the manger, but scripture teaches that he always existed. He chose to come here. He chose to lower himself. He chose to leave heaven. He chose to get dirty.

Downward Mobility. I love these words from Philippians 2:5-8: "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but he emptied himself, taking the form of a Slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross."

It's an amazing gift. We should be most careful to not ever take it for granted. Jesus came to die, to get so dirty that he took away my sin and the sin of all who would believe. Second Corinthians 5:21 puts it this way: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

It is hard to fathom Jesus choosing to come here from there. My goal is to get from here to there. What would cause that? What would cause Jesus to do such a thing? You know the answer, don't you? Love. The love of God is so great that Jesus came here for us. Merry Christmas.

Lord, thank you for that wonderful gift, that you really traded places for us so that we can become righteous. You took away our sin by taking it upon yourself. Father, the word Saint, thank you, seems so insignificant. So let us thank you with the ways we live, the way we talk, the way we pursue you, and the way we let our light shine in a dark world. In Jesus name we pray, amen.

God bless. Merry Christmas.