Does God care about us?  We say he does, but in this Christmas season it may appear to us as though these are words spoken, not truths revealed. 

                Sometimes I think we feel disconnected from God.  He is way up there and we are way down here.  The physical world in which we live is not like the spiritual world in which God lives.  God lives in a land of love, peace, joy and contentment.  We live in a world with war, arguments, tragedies and suffering.

                Then we come to Jesus.  We discover he is the creator, he was with God and he is deity.  His very essence is divine. He is made of “God-stuff.”  That idea causes us to pause.  If he was God, then the temptations and struggles he faced were a piece of cake.  Dealing with tough times is not hard if you are God!

                John, the writer of this book, would not have agreed with you.  He knew who Jesus was.  He is the one who is telling us about who Jesus is.  He is the one pointing out that Jesus lived before he was born.

                But in verse 14, he gives us another reason to trust Jesus.  Why should we trust Jesus?  Because Jesus is like us.

                The Word was deity, now the Word becomes flesh.  Before Jesus was alive, his essence was deity; he was made of “God-stuff.”  Now he is made of “human-stuff”, flesh.

                In 1850 John Millais (1829-1896) painted a picture of Jesus working in Joseph’s carpentry workshop, entitled Christ in the House of His Parents. Jesus had given himself a bad gash in his finger and blood streamed down onto his feet. Mary was there comforting him. Although only an imaginary incident, it portrays very well what John means in his Gospel today, ‘The Word became flesh’.  Jesus bled. 

                We sing, “No crying he made...”  Baloney!  He experienced hunger and pain as every other baby did.  Do you think for a moment that when the swaddling clothes were filled with the remnants of his supper that he didn’t let everyone know that a change was in order?

                No, when we finish this journey to Bethlehem, we not only see God in the manger, we see a person, as human as you and I. 

                So why would this be? Louis Cassels gives us a modern day parable to explain this.  Let me read it to you.

                “You know, THE Christmas Story, the God born a man in a manger and all that escapes some moderns, mostly, I think, because they seek complex answers to their questions and this one is so utterly simple. So for the cynics and the skeptics and the unconvinced I submit a modern parable.

                Now the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man.

                "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

                Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window.

                But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window. Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it.

                Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.

                He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, the scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn. And then, he realized, that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me -- that I am not trying to hurt them but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.

                "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm . . . to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand."

                At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells -- Adeste Fidelis, [O Come all Ye Faithful] -- listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow.”

                I know this is a parable.  But it makes a true point.  God becomes man so he can personally experience what we experience.  Why?  Because God cares.

                So why do we have this disconnect?  One reason is that God sees problems in a different light than we do.

                We are like the person who is concerned about getting the right station on the radio.  We are quite frustrated by it.  But our spouse is screaming at us because she is worried about the car staying on the road!

                Or we are like the person who is troubled by an itch and wants itch cream.  But the doctor sees cancer and wants to do surgery.

                The Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World.  We are worrying about where we will get enough money for college, or to buy a house, or to get a new car.  God is concerned that you go to heaven instead of hell and that you live a life that is worth something while you are on earth.

                The Word becomes flesh to show us what it is like to live as humans the way God wants us to live.

                What do we learn?  We may have no place to lay our head.  We may have to travel a lot.  We may find people don’t like us.  We may even find ourselves behind bars, in court or on a cross.

                Jesus knows what life is like.  He lives as both God and man.  Fully human so that he could live as we live.  Fully God so that he could live a perfect life so that his sacrifice would be sufficient for our sins.

                Do you know what Jesus is doing right now?  The Bible tells us that he is praying for you.  He is making intercession for you!  How can he do that?  Because he has experienced our struggles and knows that we are but dust.  “13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin. 16 Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:13-16, NIV.

                John knew this.  That is why he wrote this book.  He wrote John to encourage us to believe in Jesus and through believing to have life in His name.  He wrote because he knew that God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).

                    God cares about you.  Trust Him.  Why trust him?  Because he is God.  That’s one reason.  Because he became flesh and understands.  That’s a second reason.  Trust Him.