The history of the world is marked by people giving in to temptation. 

Enticed, ensnared, accused, condemned. 

But Jesus comes and he takes our place, he represents us and he does not give in. 

We can be summed up in Him rather than Adam’s hopeless fate. We can re-start with him. His successes are given to us. 

Who are we as human beings? Capable of such great good and yet so dependent, so lost and so deeply deeply flawed. What is our future? What is our hope?

Christianity says there is a hope for humanity. 

Because God our creator, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth entered our humanity.  And this wasn’t just putting on skin. He became fully human. Everything that is under the skin. God entered our weakness, to share our joy and our pain and to bear our darkness for us. 

This is what the baptism is about. Jesus was baptised into our name so that we could be baptised into his name. Jesus unites himself to our humanity inorder to redeem it. He enters our hopeless situation inorder to lift us out. 

This incident of Jesus’ parents losing their 12 year old son and eventually finding him in the templein Jerusalem sitting at the feet of the teachers is unique to the gospel of Luke. He has a purpose in including it. It is one of the most amazing and intriguing incidents in Jesus’ life and ministry.  It contains some of the most important teaching in the whole of the Bible about Jesus Christ. 

This is the miracle of Christmas: 

That the son of God became human so that humans could become children of God.

Put another way. Jesus Christ came into our family to take us into His family. 

that’s Christmas.

I wonder what you do believe about God? I don’t mean can you recite the creed with faith. I mean what do you believe deep down about God? Who is he to you?

a crucial question isn’t it because what we deep down believe about god will affect everything - our decisions, our behaviour, the way we pray or don’t pray. does god really care about the world? is he a god of mercy? does he care about me? 

we look at the suffering and the injustice of the world. where is he? perhaps when things go wrong in life personally - the loss of a job, or a relatonship, the pain of illness, prayers that for years seem to go unamswered. we are bound to ask: does god see me, does he know me? why doesn’t he help? sometimes a bitterness can grow up can’t it where we stop praying, stop expecting. become resigned to small thoughts about god. 

or perhaps we have got so bogged down in our moral struggles, failed so repeatedly that we believe that god must have given up on us; thrown his hands up in frustration and walked away.. 

well we saw last week that Luke has an aim with his gospel. he wants his reader/us to be certain. 

to be strengthened in faith.. 

and straight away as we enter chpt 1 the resounding message - the word occurs several times - is that god is a god of MERCY/ God cares about the world and he cares about you. you better believe it!

v4 so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. 

Certainty - that’s Luke’s aim 

and that’s immediately difficult 

certainty is a bit of a dirty word isn’t it in our culture. More so than anywhere i would say in Dalston, in Hackney. Certainty - at it’s best is arrogance - a kind of i’m right and everybody is wrong dogmatism. At it’s worst certainty is to blame for the terrible things that we have seen in Paris this weekend. 

There’s no place for certainty. 

And yet there’s a kind of certainty that we all embrace; engage in every day of our lives that i think is closer to the certainty that Luke is talking about here. We’re all certain about some things: that strawberries fresh in summertime taste wonderful; that a swim in the sea is exhilharating; that our babies in church are beautiful and worth fighting for. Lots of things that we’re certain about. they are self evident to us, to our hearts.. 

And that’s the certainty of faith that Luke I think is talking about when it comes to the person of Jesus and the truth of God and the love of God. 

he wants us to grow in that because it will make us people of love.