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Hi everyone, this is Emma from Encounter Church Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our podcast.

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Our prayer is that through this podcast you can have an encounter with Jesus that will change your life.

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And now get ready for an inspiring message from our preaching team.

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Welcome to church, if you don't know me, my name is Tim, I'm one of the pastors here.

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Towards the end of year 12 I came home from a basketball trip to Melbourne and I got into a row with my parents.

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I've been away for a week and the first thing I wanted to do when I got home was to go and see my girlfriend.

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I just wanted to see her. A week is a really long time when you're 17 and you're infatuated.

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But there was a problem and that problem was that my girlfriend lived just outside the middle of nowhere, far out into the country in a place called Balaclava.

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My parents, they weren't having any of it. You're not driving into the middle of the night, into the middle of nowhere at this time.

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You know as a kid and even as a teenager, it's inconceivable that your parents were ever teenagers.

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It's like they just dropped and appeared out of thin air the moment you were born and they never experienced any of the joys or horrors of teenage years.

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So I said what most teenagers say at some point in their lives. I said, you don't understand what it's like.

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Now as an adult, I can almost guarantee that my parents did understand what it was like and they probably had tried to visit a girlfriend or boyfriend late into the evening.

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At least I respected them enough to ask, you know. I mean I needed their car but that is beside the point.

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As a teenager, you think that your parents are clueless to how life really works.

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You think as an adult they couldn't possibly know what it's like to be a teenager.

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But if they walked a day in your shoes, they would let you take their car in the middle of the night into the middle of nowhere.

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But there they are, adults standing over you, judging you and your perfectly rational teenage logic.

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I wonder how often we maybe not consciously but subconsciously see God this way.

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As a divine parent holding the keys of the car just out of reach telling you that you can't go and see your girlfriend.

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I wonder how often we see God as a divine being out there, distant, maybe a little judgy, over preoccupied with you being a good person,

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who has no idea what it's like to be human, who does not know grief or suffering, who does not know anger or lust,

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who does not know pain or sickness, who does not know poverty or heartbreak or homelessness.

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And if God walked a day in our shoes, if he really understood what it was like to be us,

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would then he cut us some slack.

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He'd not stand over us like a parent holding car keys.

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If he really understood what it was like to be me then things would be different.

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If he really understood what it was like for me, would then he would fix things for me.

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I think for many of us who grow up in this Western culture we wrestle with these questions, especially at a time like Christmas.

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We're seeing about the Son of God born in a manger when we hear the story of shepherds and angels at a time like Christmas,

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when God comes back into our peripheral vision.

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Every Christmas those questions about God, they come back up to the surface.

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What is God like?

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And does he understand what it's like to be me?

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And yet, the whole point of Christmas is to tell us what God is like.

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Today we're going to look at just one line from the beginning of John's Gospel.

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And John's Gospel is one of the four biographies that Jesus' followers wrote about his life.

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John doesn't have stories of mangers or shepherds or wise men in the East.

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John has a poem to begin his Gospel where the other Gospels they deal with the details about Christmas.

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John wants to deal with the meaning of Christmas.

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And so we're going to look at half of one verse, John 1 verse 14.

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And this verse is about what God is really like.

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It's a verse about what Christmas is all about.

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This is what it says.

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So the Word became human and made his home amongst us.

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A Word became human. What's that all that about?

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Well, John's not talking about any Word.

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He's talking about the Word.

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John tells us what he means by the Word at the beginning of his poem in John 1.

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He says, in the beginning, the Word already existed.

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The Word was with God and the Word was God.

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He existed in the beginning with God.

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God created everything through him and nothing was created except through him.

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In the beginning, before anything was created, the Word was there.

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So the Word can't have been created by God.

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The Word was with God, so the Word is not the same as God.

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And the Word was God.

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So the Word is both distinct from God and a part of God, one with him.

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And it was through this Word that God created everything in cruel creation.

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So here, John is painting a picture of the Word as uncreated, yet one with God, but distinct.

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And it's through this Word that the universe is created.

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What's John getting out here?

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Well, let's look at the creation of the world in the first book of the Bible, which is Genesis 1,

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where God creates the universe and see what we can find.

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What we find here is God speaking creation into being.

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He says, let there be light and there is.

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He says, let there be sky and there is.

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He says, let there be dry land and flowers and trees and there is.

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He says, let there be stars and planets in the cosmos and there is.

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He says, let there be fishies in the sea and there are over and over and over again.

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God speaks creation into being and his words create life, all life as we know it.

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In my house, when I say, let the dishes be done, it doesn't just happen.

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I have to go and do it.

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And I know if I ever walked into a room and declared to ash my wife, let the dishes be done.

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They certainly will not be done by her and how dare I.

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When we say something, it doesn't mean it's done.

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Most of the time we have to go and do it.

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For us, there is a difference between our words and our actions,

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because I can say, I'll do the dishes and then I can not do them.

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But for God, his word is his action.

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What he says is done. There is no gap between his word and his action.

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They are one and the same.

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This is what God says through his prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 55.

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It is the same with my word.

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I send it out and it produces fruit.

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It always produces fruit.

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It will accomplish all I wanted to and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

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It's a power of the word of God.

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The word of Tim returns empty constantly.

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But the word of God does not.

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It accomplishes whatever it pleases.

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And in Genesis we see a pleasing God to speak creation into being.

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And it's this word, it's the creative force that gives life to the universe.

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This is what Psalm 33 says,

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The Lord merely spoke and the heavens were created.

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He breathed the word and all the stars were born.

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So the word became human and made his home amongst us.

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So this is the word.

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The word that is God but is distinct from God.

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The force of life that creates the universe, the word became human.

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And he made his home amongst us.

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This is an incredible thing.

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When you read that verse in its original language,

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what's translated in English, made his home among us,

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when you read it, you see something that you miss in English.

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The word made his home among us or another translation that's dwelt,

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it literally means to tabernacle.

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Now some words are simple words and some words are loaded words.

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They come with deeper images and meanings.

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And this happens all the time and everywhere in the Bible.

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There are these loaded words and phrases and they deepen the meeting

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when you notice what else in the Bible they are pointing to.

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And tabernacle is a loaded word.

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Because just after the plot of the Prince of Egypt in the book of Exodus,

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God tells the Israelite people to pitch a tent in the wilderness

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and it's called a tabernacle.

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And he gives them very specific instructions

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and they build it down to the very finest detail.

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And after some drama, because there's always drama, it's finished.

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And when it's finished, a cloud descends on the tabernacle

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and the glory of the Lord fills it.

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God's presence fills it.

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And the Lord speaks to the people and he speaks to Moses from within the tabernacle.

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This tabernacle, this tent,

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was a very place where God's presence would come to rest

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and where God could meet with his people.

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John's saying, the Word became human and he tabernacled amongst us.

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Meaning that where once God's presence lived in a tabernacle made of

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cloth and wood and gold, now God's presence lives in this human being.

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Where once God spoke to his people from within a tabernacle made of cloth,

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now God speaks to his people from a tabernacle made of flesh and blown.

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The Word tabernacled among us, John says.

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And just like the Israelites beheld the glory of the Lord,

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filling the tabernacle, we beheld the glory of the Lord in this one man, Jesus,

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the God, the Father's one and only Son.

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This is what Christmas is all about.

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This vulnerable, weak baby,

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dependent on his mother for life,

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asleep in a manger, this baby,

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this baby is God.

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This is the God who made the universe.

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This is the God who made the universe, making his home on earth in Jesus Christ.

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This is the God that breathed creation into breathing, into being,

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and he is breathing and he's probably crying.

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And the glory of the Lord, glory of God, born, is born in the home of animals,

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surrounded by food and dung.

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And this is what Christmas is all about.

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This is good news of great joy,

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because God has come to us.

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God is with us.

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And we might think that God is distant, like some divine parent with no understanding what it's like

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to walk in our shoes, to live in this mortal coil, to experience what we experience,

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to be vulnerable, to be hungry, to be in need,

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to really, really go without, to be homeless, to grieve,

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to suffer, to experience trauma, to be lonely, and to die.

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We may picture God high and His throne in heaven,

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all sunshine and rainbows up there, out of touch, with reality down here,

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safe and secure in immortality and needlessness.

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And we might be right to think that.

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And that might even make some sense, except for Christmas.

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Except for this little baby that named Jesus, because in Jesus, God is vulnerable.

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God is hungry.

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God has need.

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God will go without. God will be homeless.

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God will grieve.

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God will suffer.

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God will experience trauma.

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God will be lonely.

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And God will die.

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God isn't out of touch with what life is like, because Jesus experiences it all.

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The whole of the experience. God knows what it's like to be us.

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And He has walked a day in our shoes.

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And if we acknowledge Him, He is ready and willing to give us the peace that only He can give.

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Whatever it is you're going through, God is with you.

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Whatever you are suffering, God suffers with you.

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Christmas is extraordinary.

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Why? Why would God do this?

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Why would God take the risk of becoming human and making his home among us?

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The author of A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine Liengel, she wrote a poem for Christmas in 1973.

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And that Christmas, as it is in this Christmas, there was a war in Israel.

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There was a war in Bethlehem. And the poem that she wrote was called The Risk of Birth.

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I'll read it to you.

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This is no time for a child to be born.

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With the earth betrayed by war and hate, and a comet slashing the sky to warn the time runs out,

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and the sun burns late.

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That was no time for a child to be born.

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In a land in a crushing grip of Rome, honour and truth were trampled by scorn yet here did the Saviour make his home.

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When is the time for love to be born?

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The inn is full on planet earth, and by a comet the sky is torn, yet love still takes the risk of birth.

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Love still takes the risk of birth.

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Why would God become human and make his home among us?

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Why would he descend from glory into the muck of this world?

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Why would an immortal God take mortal flesh?

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Why would God take the risk of being born into this world?

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Because love takes the risk of birth.

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God did it for love.

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He did it out of sheer, relentless, passionate love for you and for me.

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You see, over and over again, humanity, we separate ourselves from God by choosing to go our own way and do our own thing,

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rather than acknowledging God as our Lord and King.

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And the Israelites, they saw the glory of God descend upon the tabernacle,

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like a cloud of fire, and they continued.

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They still, time and time again, they disregarded God's ways and did as they pleased.

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And the Bible calls this sin, and sin, it separates us from God.

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And this is a big problem, because God is the source of all life.

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He spoke the world into being.

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His breath breathed life into us.

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Without Him, we do not have life.

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Without God, without His life, we're like a phone without a phone charger.

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At some point, we run out of juice, we die.

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And God could have just let us.

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We were the ones who kept constantly not keeping up our end of the relationship.

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But God loved us so much that He risked birth.

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He came in Jesus, and Jesus never went his own way.

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He never disregarded God.

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He did not sin.

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And Jesus made this place his home, and we saw His glory.

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And He was the presence of God in human flesh.

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And we still rejected Him.

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Not only did humanity reject Him, they had Him unjustly condemned as a criminal and hung up to die.

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And yet Jesus does not resist.

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He lets it happen.

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Jesus gives His life away.

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God loved enough to risk birth, and it seems like the wrong move.

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It seems like God shouldn't have risked it with us.

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He was a glory of the Lord made human, and we had Him crucified like a criminal.

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And God just lets this happen.

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This is the word that was out there at creation that God made everything through, and He just lets it happen.

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He just lets Jesus die.

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And the pattern of humanity rejecting God is just allowed to continue.

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And the Word of God who made His home amongst us is crucified on a cross.

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Where is God?

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Is He distant?

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Surely He couldn't allow something like this if He knew what it was like down here.

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But He does allow it.

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And He allows it for our sake.

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You see, Jesus never sinned, and yet He experiences the result of sin, which is death.

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And in doing so, death dies.

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The cross seems like all is lost.

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It seems like God was wrong to risk it for love, but just at the last moment,

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like a victory that is snatched from the jaws of defeat, the cross wins a decisive victory over death.

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And Jesus is raised from the dead.

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Death is reversed.

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And you know what all of this means.

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It means that when we're in Christ, when we believe in Jesus, when we accept Him in His way,

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and we say, Jesus, You are Lord and King of my life, we have been reconciled to God.

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And we can come home to God.

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In Jesus, we can come alive to the reality of God again.

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We can live with God each and every day of our lives.

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And you might think that God is distant and doesn't understand what it's like for us,

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that He doesn't know what it's like to be vulnerable, to be hungry, to be in need,

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to really go without, to be homeless, to grieve, to suffer, to experience trauma, to be lonely, and to die.

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But the message of Christmas is this.

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God isn't distant.

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God is with us.

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God is with us in our vulnerability.

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God is with us in our hunger.

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God is with us in our need.

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God is with us in our lack, in our grief, in our suffering, in our trauma, in our loneliness,

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and ultimately, even in our death.

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God is with us.

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And we can be with God.

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Jesus made His home on this earth so that we could come home to God.

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That is the message of Christmas.

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Thanks so much for tuning into this week's message.

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If you felt challenged or need prayer, we'd love to hear from you on Instagram, at Encounter Henley.

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Or, if you're interested in how you can support this ministry, please go to our website,

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EncounterAdelaide.com.au.

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Thanks again for listening. God bless you.