What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet. So wrote, does anyone know who wrote that? William Shakespeare, obviously. That's a famous line from his play Romeo and Juliet. The idea is that names don't matter in the scheme of things. In the scheme of things, names aren't really important. It shouldn't matter what someone's name is. Why should it matter to who they are? I wonder if you believe that, that names aren't really that important or significant. I don't believe that. I don't know if, well, maybe you were expecting a child, your first child, or maybe you had a brother or sister who was gonna be born, or perhaps you've known some friends who are expecting a child. Do you remember all the discussions about what you were gonna call the child? So you have all the things, what are you going to call this baby is actually super important, right? And you spend a lot of time thinking about that. At least I assume you did. Maybe you didn't. Maybe if you're older, maybe you got one of those books with lots of different names and maybe you like to look up the meanings of names. If you're older, there's no way you would have looked it up in a book. You probably just Googled or something. But have you ever looked into the meaning of your name? Names have interesting meanings. I don't know if you know this, but the name Nigel doesn't actually mean no friends. It means champion. Or the name Nick. Do you know what the name Nick means? Doesn't know. Nick actually means victory, people. Chris, Chris means, what does Chris mean? Christ bearer, that's right. Emma, still in our kids' talk, Emma means whole or universal, same idea. My name, Ryan, it means little king. We've had a little baby recently at reforming. She's here somewhere. I saw her, yeah, sleeping over there. Little acacia. Do you know what acacia means, Rory? Do you know it means thorny? Apparently acacia trees are thorny. Rory, I did not know that. But it can also mean honorable or integrity, so we'll go with that. One of my nieces, the day she was born back in 2010, there was over a hundred millimeters of rain that fell on that day. And her name, Talara, means rain. That's where she got her name from. Well, in the part of the Bible that we read, that I read from Matthew chapter one, you'll see there's actually two names given to Jesus. And I want to put it to you, if you understand the two names given to Jesus, you'll actually understand the meaning of Christmas. You'll actually understand what Christmas is all about and why we celebrate it. Did you notice the two names as I read them? The first one was in verse 21. Um, hopefully you should see them all. So I put them in the, if you've got a sermon outline there in the service sheets. The first name is, you will call his name Jesus. And the second one is, He shall be called Emmanuel, which means God with us. Have a look, verse 21. She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. It's what the word Jesus means, it means savior. I put it to you that Christmas is all about being saved. It's all about being saved by God, about being forgiven by God. And when I say Christmas is about forgiveness, I don't mean that I should forgive you or you should forgive me or we should forgive each other. All those are probably good things to do. But I'm talking about the forgiveness that God gives to you and I, that forgiveness, forgiveness from God. And there are two accounts of the Lord Jesus. There's one in Luke's gospel and one here in Matthew. This one tells us how Joseph felt when he found out that his fiancee Mary was pregnant. You see, marriage regulations are different in different parts of the world. I work at the university here and there's a lot of Indian students that come and study there. And in India, it's really common for marriages to be arranged where your parents pick out your spouse. I mean, in the West or here in Australia, that might seem crazy to you to have your parents pick out your spouse. It's hard for us to imagine that. Well, at the time of Jesus, it was actually, normal for people to enter into kind of formal engagements before they were married. It was like a binding thing and, uh, it couldn't be dissolved except through like legal divorce. In Matthew chapter one, we see Joseph. He's in a pretty tricky situation. He's engaged to Mary. He loves her. He's a godly man. He wants to try and do the right thing. And he discovers that Mary is pregnant. Now, I don't know if this is because Mary told him, or maybe it's just become really obvious, and he can see that for himself. Whatever the case, he knows he's not the father. So what's he gonna do? What should he do? There's probably only one option open to him. He's probably gonna have to annul the engagement. But as he's thinking about this, An angel appears to Joseph in a dream. This angel's a messenger from God. And the angel informs Joseph what is going on. And this is really common if you look at Jesus' birth. We're actually told there's these messengers who show up from God to say, this is what's going on. This event that's about to happen is a really, really significant moment in human history. This angel comes to Joseph and explains what's going on, and we don't know why Mary hadn't told him that. Maybe she was too modest, or maybe she just thought, he's not going to believe me. I mean, would you believe if your fiancee come along and said she's pregnant by the supernatural intervention of the Holy Spirit? Whatever the reason, we know Joseph, he assumed unfaithfulness on Mary's part, but he's actually, he's caught up here in something really amazing, really momentous. He's found himself in God's plan for saving the world. See, Joseph, the village carpenter, he's gonna become the father of the son of God. Wow, that was some dream that Joseph had. I'm not much of a dreamer. I can rarely recall my dreams. My sister seems to have all these weird and wakey dreams all the time, and she'll often share them with me. Can you imagine someone that comes, hey, I had this dream last, My fiance is gonna give birth to God. Wow. This baby's gonna be God with us. Verse 21, you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. See, the Jews, the Jewish people, they'd waited a long time for a savior. They'd waited thousands of years. God had promised that a king was gonna come. This king was going to come and he would save them from their sins. And he was going to rule in such a way that peace and justice would happen. And Joseph is discovering in this moment, he's caught up in that plan. But I kind of need to interrupt the story at this point with some explanation, because if Jesus is going to save people from their sin, I need to kind of explain what is sin. And how's he going to save them? Because sin is one of the most misunderstood things that I know. See, if I say to you that you're a sinful person, I'm not really making a character statement about you. I'm not judging you. I'm not saying that you're a bad person necessarily. That may be true, but you might be a really respectable person. As respectable, at least as anyone else. What we mean when we talk about sin. is that when we say someone's a sinner, we mean that they've said no to God as being their God. That's the heart of sin. We're saying to God, I don't want you to be in charge of my life, God. I want to be in charge of my life. I want to decide for myself what's right, what's wrong. I want to do that independently of you, God. You can believe in God and do that. You can even go to church and do that. You can even pray to God, but when it comes down to it, ultimately what we don't want to do is listen to God and follow him and obey him. It might even look sometimes like we're following God, but when it comes to the crunch, I'm only happy to do that as far as God kind of directs me to do what I want to do. You know, if he calls me to do something that I don't really want to do, well, that's when we see, actually, no God, I still want to do my own thing. You can be a really good person and do that, or you can be a really horrible person and do that. See, think about the rich young ruler. I don't know if you know the story of the rich young ruler, Matthew 18. He comes to Jesus and he says that he's been keeping all the commandments, you know? It's like, I haven't murdered anyone, never committed adultery, and Jesus just says to him, Sell everything, give to the poor, come follow me. And he went away sad because he couldn't do that, but it ultimately showed his heart that he wasn't interested in following God. He wanted to do his own thing as long as God was okay with it. So you can be like the rich young ruler and be a sinner, or you can be like Adolf Hitler and still be a sinner. But when it comes down to it, all of us at one point or another said to God, God, we want to do our own things. We've all lived like that. We're all sinners and we all need saving. Because actually that kind of behavior, that attitude towards God is deserving of death. So that's what I mean when I say Jesus came to save us from our sin. But how is he going to save us? Well, we all know the story of Jesus being born as a baby. Great story. But we know that that baby grows up to be a man. He comes and he dies on the cross. It's by his dying, it's by his living the perfect life, always trusting his father, by his dying in our place, that he saves us. He takes that punishment that we deserve for the way we've all at times treated God. This angel tells Joseph, this son, Jesus, you call him Jesus because he will save his people from the sin. I don't know if you've ever been saved from something. Remember there was a story a few years ago of those The soccer team that got trapped in Thailand in a cave that was stuck there, but they got into this cave system and there was this huge downpour of rain, monsoon season, and they got trapped. They couldn't get out. They needed someone to come and save them. And after a couple of weeks, fortunately, some divers were able to get in there. They were able to get them out. They were able to be saved. But can you imagine how you'd feel after being stuck, after being trapped, after being in a situation where you can't save yourself and someone saved you? They were helpless. They couldn't save themselves. They needed someone to rescue them. Well, the rescue, the saving that Jesus does is like that. He comes and saves us out of a situation that we can't save ourselves from. We're all deserving of God's anger. We're all deserving of death. And yet Jesus comes to die to rescue us from that. The rescue, the saving that Jesus brings is far more consequential than that one. He comes to bring a permanent rescue from the consequences of sin. He comes so that we can be forgiven. And I wonder, do you know what it means to be forgiven? That's what Christmas is all about. That's why Jesus came. He came so that we can be forgiven. But the second thing, verse 23, we read, Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which means God with us. This baby is not just going to come and forgive us and save us. This baby is going to be God. Jesus comes to save us, but he comes to also draw near to us. God becoming one of us, there's an intimacy to that. There's an intimacy to the Christmas story. When I was in high school, there was this song that came out. It was called One of Us by Joan Osborne. Anyone old enough to know what I'm talking about, that song. It went like this, it went, what if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way. She obviously doesn't get Christmas because Christmas is about God becoming one of us. God was one of us in his son. And that's what we celebrate at Christmas. We celebrate that God did become one of us. You see, the God of the universe, he took on flesh and blood, he became a man, he lowered himself, he became a human. He was born as a baby, born to a woman, the woman Mary, he lived among us. He experienced life as a man, the God who made the universe. He lived the personic life, he lived the way we ought to live, the way we were created to live. Could you imagine you becoming a dog? See, you're still you, you're still what makes you, you, but you kind of enter into the dog world so that dogs could know you and experience you in a new way. That's kind of like what God was like, except us becoming like a dog is just a creature becoming like another creature, but this is the creator becoming part of the creation. This God came to save us, but he came to be with us so that we could have relationship with him in the most intimate of ways. And Jesus didn't stop being a human after he died. Jesus is still a human today. When he rose, he had a human body. It was a resurrected body, admittedly, but he still had a human body. And more than that, he gives us his spirit now to dwell in us so that we can have relationship with him now. Today. Jesus said that it was good that he had to go to be with his father. And I never really understood this when I was younger. How can it be good for Jesus to leave? But he had to go to send his spirit. Why? Well, because if Jesus stayed, With us as a human, relationship with him would be limited to where he is. And if Jesus wasn't in Australia, well, too bad for Australians getting to know Jesus. But Jesus, he came to be God with us. And by his rising, by sending his spirit, he can be with us. He can be with you today. See, it's because of the reality that Jesus is the Savior that we can also know the reality of the presence of God with us all the time, today. That he's God here and now, not just on special occasions, not just at Christmas. We can know friendship with this God every day in life, in the good times and the bad times, in the times of sorrow. in the times of joy, when things are going well, when things are totally messed up. So I think this is the best part about being a Christian, is to know the presence of God with me, God with us, each and every day that I get to love and serve him every day. Because of Jesus, because of God becoming man, I can have my sins forgiven and I can have friendship and relationship with God all the time. See, I don't know about you. I don't know what you do for Christmas. Usually for Christmas, I go in a state and I'm with my family. We go to my hometown, a little place called Schumet in New South Wales. In fact, I can only remember one Christmas where I didn't spend in China. That was when I went to Sydney to my uncle's, but anyway, that's beside the point. But for me, Christmas has always been with family. We have these kind of Christmas traditions, things that we do for Christmas. Do the same things every Christmas. We eat the same food every Christmas. It's great. I love it, but it's always the same. This is what Christmas day looks like for my family. We'd go to church. Usually 8 or 9 a.m. morning service, Christmas day, go to church. Afterwards, we'd go to the cemetery, visit the grave of, well, first my grandfather, he actually passed away on Christmas Eve, the year I was born, and we always used to go to his grave. There's been a few extra family who are now buried since I was a kid, but we used to go to the cemetery. But after that, we'd go home and then we would open presents. We'd all get together, and my grandparents, now my parents, and starting with the youngest person, we'd open presents. There was a time when I was fairly close to the beginning of opening presents, but as I found as the years go on and on, I'm slowly getting later and later in order of opening presents. So we'd all sit around in a circle, we'd open presents. Someone was tasked with handing them out and we'd open up presents. I don't know about you, but there's never been a Christmas day though that's gone by where I haven't opened a present. You know, it's easy to watch other people opening presents to get excited and play with whatever it is that they've got. But as late as it's got in the day for me to open my presents, I still always do it. It'd be silly for me to go at Christmas time. I'm not gonna receive the gift that someone's gotten for me. That's why they got the gift, that people give me a gift at Christmas so that I'd receive it, so that I would enjoy it. It never occurred to me to not accept a gift at Christmas time. Can you imagine me rocking up to my parents sometime next year, And I turn up and they, hey, do you want to take your present that's been sitting there for the last year? Oh yeah, looks like a bike. Of course it looks like a bike. It's pretty hard to gift wrap a bike and make it look like anything else. It seems fairly foolish of Shiba Dozen of us to leave gifts unopened, to leave them unreceived. If you can understand that, And hopefully you can see why it would be silly to leave God's gift to us at Christmas unreceived, unopened. See, God came into the world at Christmas in the person of Jesus so that we could have the gift of forgiveness. He came to save us from our sins. He came to be with us, that we could have relationship with him. I don't know where you're at in terms of relationship with Jesus, but If you've never received that gift, well then, why not accept God's gift that he's prepared for you this Christmas? Don't let another Christmas go past without you knowing the forgiveness that comes from God at Christmas time, without you knowing Jesus as your savior. Jesus came to save you from your sins. He's come to be God with you. Don't you want him to be with you? That's what Christmas is all about. It's about the gift of forgiveness, the gift of friendship with God, about how Jesus makes that possible. If you do know that gift, maybe there are some people that you know who don't know it. It's a season of giving gifts to people. Why not share about the great news of Christmas with people so that they might know forgiveness with, they might know friendship with. When you understand that reality, then wonder Christmas is such a great time. No wonder it's something that we celebrate. It's a great time to celebrate. So how about we do that? How about I give thanks to God for his gifts to us at Christmas of forgiveness and our friendship with him. Let me pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you sent your son into the world to be born as a human, that he came to save us from our sins against you, the punishment that we deserve. Thank you that he not only saved us, but he came to be with us, that we can know you intimately as God. As we get to know him, we get to know you. Help us to know that each and every day and help us to share this amazing news of Christmas with those who might not know it, so they might accept and receive this gift this Christmas. And I pray this all in his name. Amen.