TD Jakes — For Unto Us
Are you serious? This is it. Your answer just wet his diaper. Your answer just needed to be nursed. This is your answer? Have you ever asked God for something, and when he answered: you want me to do what? Lord, I'm backed up five payments on the house, and here come the little answer. Here's a refund on your water bill for $29.99, it says... but don't underestimate small packages because this baby was the first baby to make the milk he drinks. He was the first baby to make the milk he drinks.
From heaven's perspective, the birth of Jesus was spectacular. From earth's perspective, it was mundane and disappointing. From heaven's perspective, it was just awesome to think that the eternal, everlasting, immutable God would wrap himself up in flesh, and come and tabernacle amongst men. From man's perspective, he was born on the hit list. They were trying to kill him when he got here. There was no room in the hotels where he stayed. He was born to a virgin who was trying to explain to her boyfriend, "This is not what it looks like". From earth's perspective, no palace, no guards, no palatial surroundings.
Don't let people tell you that just because your external circumstance is being challenged that there is no Christ there because Christ came in a barn. But the glory of his coming was not in the furniture that he lay in or the environment surrounding him. The glory that really matters in life is not so important, the surroundings. It comes from the abstract things that your accountant cannot count, that your bookkeeper cannot chronicle.
The glory, the things that really matter in life, are not the tangibles. They're the intangibles. I know, I've had it both ways. I've been up, I've been down. I learned how to survive with nothing; I learned how to survive with something. And both of them are deserts in their own way. His coming into this meager environment is not a suggestion of his mediocrity, or his endorsement of poverty, or his celebration of notoriety. It is him stepping outside of all of that to say none of that really makes any difference. What really matters is in a family, it's not what you eat, it's who you eat it with. It's not how much you paid for the bed, it's that you slept good.
You can have a big, old, fancy bed, big, old, expensive bed that you had shipped in from Spain, hand carved with rubies from Italy, and can't sleep. So, what's the point of all the stuff? What's the point if somebody gives you a big, wonderful gift, but they don't love you? And somebody else who loves you gives you a hot apple pie from McDonalds and puts a candle on it with a tear in their eye and say, "You the best thing that ever happened to me".
Talk to me. There is no question that his ultimate purpose in coming into the world was to redeem the world from sin and death, to deliver us from the curse of the law, to set us free from our own human depravity, and ultimately to destroy the works of the enemy, that through him our enemy might be vanquished by the precious blood of the lamb, that he might render him helpless and bruise his head for the things that he had done to us. And it was his ultimate purpose to fight back the forces of evil that you would never be able to master, that you would never be able to combat. And while he was walking toward his purpose, he did some other stuff like being wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. Chastisement of our peace was upon him. With his stripes we are healed.
Healing was just a byproduct. He said, "Since I'm coming through, I might as well take these stripes for your healing and pay the price, that all manner of diseases could be removed away from you. I bore your transgression. I carried your sorrow. So those of you that are carrying depression, why are you carrying what I already carried? I bore your griefs, I carried your sorrow, I took your whooping for you". Hallelujah. Glory to God. There is no question that hell got nervous when they saw him coming. That's why he was born on the hit list, trying to stop him from reaching his purpose. When you are sent on a purpose, there will always be obstacles to come against you that are unfair. And the obstacles that come against you come because the enemy knows where your ultimate destiny is going to take you, and he's trying to sabotage your progress. But greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.
And whether you know it or not, he was born in a barn strategically. There's a purpose in your problem. There. There's a purpose in your adversity. It is not that God can't get you out of it. It's not that God can't afford it. It's not that God can't fix it. But if you have a problem and God doesn't fix it, there's a strategy that he's using. He hid him in a barn, locked him away where he couldn't be detected, put him in a place where only the wise men could see him.
Sometimes, God will allow you to have a problem to stop your enemies from having access to you, and he'll put you in a place for a while. But the Bible said, "After you have suffered for a while," he said, "I'll establish you and make you perfect". A lot of people don't know that Mary and Joseph had Jesus and had to hide him in Egypt for 2 years. They had to hide him, living on the run, the Savior living on the run. Glory to God. Imagine had somebody met him on the run and said, "Ain't not much of a Savior".
Some people meet you at a time in your life that things are not going right, and they'll judge you prematurely because they don't see your ultimate destiny. Had they seen him then, he didn't look mighty. He didn't look like a conqueror. But the reason that I am attracted to this text is because it takes away from this huge, illuminated perspective of who Christ is, and personalizes it and says unto us, unto us a son is born. Unto us a child is given. I suggest to you, my brothers and sisters, he did not just come to redeem the world, or rebuke the enemy, or to set them free. He came the way any lover ultimately ends up coming to the place where he wants to understand your perspective.
Now I understand why the Bible says, "In all thy getting, get an understanding". Here's a bonus for you. You cannot live nor love effectively somebody that you cannot understand. The Bible tells men with living with women, he said, "Dwell with her according to knowledge". He said you're going to have to know her to be able to stay there. And since Christ is married to the church, he says, "I'm going to have to know you in order to dwell with you". So, he came so he might see what it was like to be you. Without him coming, he would have never known what tired was. Without him coming, he would not know what sleep was because in his eternal state, he neither sleeps nor slumbers.
That's why you can pray at 3 o'clock in the morning and you don't have to wake him up because he neither sleeps nor slumbers. Because your 3 o'clock in the morning is somebody else's 12 noon. He can't go to bed because somewhere in the world, your night is somebody else's day. He can't go to sleep nor slumber, so he's available to you all the time. But he came so he would know what sleep was, or lonely, or empty, or temptation. He came so that he could be touched with what it's like to be you.
If there were no snow, if there were no violins playing, if it were not even in the winter, if it were the 15th of July, I don't care when he was born. I care that as a born again, blood-washed, sanctified, Spirit-filled child of God, you can't stop me from praising God, who loved me enough to come where I was, arguing about a date or what he wore or what he had on. I don't care. I care that when sin had me shackled and I was bound in bondage, when all hell was breaking loose and I was at my wit's end, when I was suicidal and taking pills and trying to die, and nobody understood what it was like to be me, I care that he loved me enough to come where I was, and feel my pain, and be touched by the feeling of my infirmity. Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given.
Finally, somebody understands my groanings and my moanings and my sign language when my soul is overwhelmed. Somebody understands how I wrestle against my own struggles and weaknesses and temptation. Somebody understands the difference between weakness and wickedness. Somebody understands the groaning and the moaning of my soul. Somebody understands what I didn't get in life, what I didn't have, why I walk crooked, why I stand funny, why my knees buckle, why I'm afraid, why I'm worried, why I'm angry. Somebody understands. So when you... I better quit. Whoo!
When you walk away and won't let me into your little club, and isolate me, and ignore me, and limit me, and frustrate me, and Whitney Houston says I can't get no, I can't get no satisfaction, I can't get no understanding, I can't get no sensitivity. When I turn to you and you don't get it, I go to the rock of my salvation. I go to the stone that the builders has rejected. You know why? He's not just the God of the universe. He's not just the ruler of heaven. He's not just the CEO over creation. He is not just the chief administrator over the angels that go to war. He is not just theirs.
In fact, he's mine, for unto us a child is born. And unto us a son is given. To the motherless, stop telling people you had no children, for unto us a son is born, a child is given. This is your baby, the baby Jesus, born in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, given to you so that when nobody gets you and nobody understands you, so that when you pour your heart out to people who are calloused and cold and indifferent and cannot be touched by the feeling, not your infirmity, the feeling of your infirmity. He said, "I'm not only in touch with what happened to you, I'm in touch with how you feel about what happened to you".
Unto us a son is born. Unto us a child is given. He's yours and nobody can take him. He's yours and can't nobody rob you of him. And he came because, like all good lovers know, if you're going to stay together with somebody you love, you can't just see love from your side. Young couples always argue to prove their point, but people who have been married for years survive because they learn how to see it from the other side. He says, "I came so I could see what it's like to be you".
Your kinsman redeemer. You cannot redeem what you are not kin to. So, as we close this service today, we cannot add nor take away to what Christ did, who he is, or what he has become. He was that before I was born, and he will be that when I am gone. His Word is forever settled in heaven. He is God before there was anybody there to say he was God. We cannot add to him. We cannot diminish him. He is God all by himself. But maybe, maybe just maybe we can learn something from a baby in a manger. Maybe you might have to leave your perspective long enough to see somebody else's, and sit in their seat, and feel their pain, and imagine what it was like to grow up like they grew up. And maybe you'll stop blaming them for being how they are because they did not get there by themselves.
Unto us a child is born. Unto us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Beverly, his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father. And if you need some peace, he's the prince of it. He's altogether lovely. He's your joy, your strength, your peace, your wheel in the middle of a wheel. He's your bush burning. He's Ezekiel's wheel turning. He is the seed of Abraham. He is the meek and humble lamb. He is the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley.
He is the bright and morning star. He is my turtle dove, my trumpet, my peace, my fortress, my bulwark, my mighty God. He is El Shaddai, Jehovah Rohi, Jehovah Tsidkenu, Jehovah Manna, Jehovah M'kaddesh. He is my Savior, my king, my peace, my deliverer, my bridge over troubled water. He is my healing, my strength, my life, my peace, my shield, my sword, my buckler, my defense. He is my lawyer, my attorney. He is my justice, he is my lover, my mother, my father, my sister, my brother. He is the lifter of my head. He is my king. Whatever you want, whatever you need, whatever you ask, whatever you seek, this man is named Jesus. Demons tremble. Jesus, hell gets nervous. Jesus, sickness flees. Jesus, dead men rise up. Jesus, graves open up. Jesus!