A child gazes out into the moonlit, snowy night. The yule log crackles and the smell of baking wafts out of the kitchen. The anticipation is almost unbearable as he wonders, "Who will arrive…and when? What delicious treat will be sampled next, and what, oh, what, is inside those gifts?!" "Silent Night" plays, and as the child turns from the frosty glass, he sees the nativity scene, lovingly placed in its familiar spot on the family mantle. Ahhh…the childhood wonder of Christmas! Cookies baking. The glow of the Christmas tree. Your favorite carol. Do you yearn for the innocence and peace and joy found in a traditional Christmas remembered from your childhood? This Christmas, are you Looking Forward to…the WONDER?

This holiday season, people seem to be looking for the true meaning of Christmas. We feel vulnerable. Life seems fragile. Suddenly, gifts, cards, and holiday treats feel more hollow than they did a couple years ago. Because, despite its promise of "joy" and "peace," when the sparkling decorations come down and the rich foods are consumed, holiday "hype" never really delivers on its promise of Christmas Wonder. In the quiet place of their hearts, many people are longing for more that what a gift or tasty Christmas dinner can offer. Because, whether that elusive feeling is real or imaginary, deep inside we all know that focusing on the birth of Christ will give us the deeper meaning that's missing in our holiday season. I'm not making this up! Here is a quote from a major news magazine: "For most people, Christmas triggers an intense search for some dimly remembered Christmas past, a nostalgia for a time when yuletide was more pious and more peaceful, when it was free of gaudy commercialism and focused more on the birth of the Savior than on the 20%-off sale at the department store."

Do you ever wonder where the wonder went in Christmas? The Incarnation, God becoming man, is one of the most spectacular and indescribable gifts God has given to all of humanity. It is central to the core of our faith! It is a mystery beyond any human understanding or explanation. And it is the center of all of our Advent messages! We can take this whole month of December and prepare ourselves to the very last minutia of details, but if the wonder of the incarnation is not in our hearts, Christmas will come and go as just another yearly festival that gives us a break from our work or school.

Christmas for millions is just the "holiday season." Are we losing the sense of marvel at the Christmas miracle? This is the most stupendous and astonishing wonder which could ever engross the human mind - that the eternal, infinite Creator of the universe should enter our human life, and assume our human nature, by being born as a baby of a human mother! A great old Christmas hymn, titled A Great and Mighty Wonder, talks about what exactly is the "wonder" we need to have all through Advent right into Christmas Eve - or right into our Savior's arms, should He decide to return once and for all! In our last Advent message today, I encourage you to anticipate the "wonder of Christmas" and rejoice in the "cure" given to us in Christ, the Babe of the Manger! This "wonder of Christmas" is much more than just a childhood memory - it's here for you today! Are you Looking Forward to…the WONDER?"

That German Christmas carol, A Great and Mighty Wonder, opens with this verse: "A great and mighty wonder, A full and holy cure: The Virgin bears the Infant, With virgin honor pure! Repeat the hymn again: "To God on high be glory, And Peace on earth to men!" Do you ever notice how the media clamps on to the latest "cures" for diseases? They make headlines all the time! No wonder! People are dying and this is the very miracle they are hoping to have happen to perhaps cure them or give them some more quality of life! Well, here's a real cure, friends! Christmas brings us a GREAT and MIGHTY WONDER, a FULL and HOLY CURE! Today we are going to take a look at this amazing "Wonder Cure"!

The first part about this Great and Mighty Wonder, is that it is GREAT! Luke 1:32-33 tells us: "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." This Wonder Cure is GREAT! Jesus is GREAT! This is a wonder! Nothing we have on earth can be this "great" because nothing we have lasts forever! Jesus' reign in our hearts will never end! His kingdom will last forever. And that means we have something eternal to look forward to! That is GREAT! Nothing we have here compares.

The religious and political leaders who were in power at the time misread the events of Jesus' birth. When a woman is to have a baby, she goes to the best hospital she and her husband can afford. They find the best doctors and highly trained specialists. They get the best that money can buy. And they do this not because they feel strong, but because they feel weak. When God's Son was born, He was born in a stable under very austere and unsanitary conditions. It happened this way not because God was poor, but because God was sure of Himself! The leaders misread the signs. The baby born in the stable is not a sign of a weak and ineffectual king. But it is a sign of a Majesty who is secure and knows who He is. It's a sign of love. The leaders at that time didn't know anything about that. And so they missed it. They missed how GREAT He was!

"The best way to send an idea," said Robert Oppenheimer, "is to wrap it up in a person." The theological word for all of that is incarnation, meaning "in the flesh." Jesus was the incarnation of God. Jesus was the way that God sent his "idea" to humanity; there was and is no better way! One of the early church fathers named Ignatius explained that "by the incarnation, God broke his silence." A little girl said the same thing when she said, "Some people couldn't hear God's inside whisper and so He sent Jesus to tell them out loud." The Gospel of John declares dramatically, "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The Word, that living expression of God, tells out loud His truth and sees to it that we are in touch with the power and glory at the heart of Creation. We are brought into the personal presence of the lover of our souls! How great that blessing! How wonderful that gift! How GREAT that wonder!

That Great and Mighty Wonder is also MIGHTY! Isaiah 9:6 says, "And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end." This is a wonder! His name is "Wonderful" and He is multi-faceted in what He will do for us because He is MIGHTY GOD! Nothing we have in this world can counsel us, last forever, govern well, and give us peace without end!

What a paradox that a babe in the manger should be called mighty! Yet even as a baby, Jesus Christ revealed power. His birth affected the heavens as that star appeared. The star affected the Magi, and they left their homes and made that long journey to Jerusalem. Their announcement shook King Herod and his court. Jesus' birth brought angels from heaven and simple shepherds from their flocks on the hillside. Midnight became midday as the glory of the Lord appeared to men. That night was a wonder of wonders and it still is for those who believe!

There truly is WONDER connected with this Great and Mighty Wonder! Our main passage this morning from Isaiah 29:14 says: "Therefore once more I will astound these people with wonder upon wonder." This is wonder itself! We may experience earthly triumphs, victories in battle, technological wonders, but no earthly thing or person can astound us with wonder upon wonder upon wonder! Who in all eternity can do that but God? God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this: the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets! Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the Incarnation!

On that first Christmas morning, the world must have seemed a hard place to Mary. At the end of a weary journey, there was "no room at the inn." The only shelter offered to her was the "lowly cattle shed." I find this a great mystery and a great wonder. Every day science discovers more and more of the complex wisdom of God. Anyone who uses his mind has a much bigger idea of God than our grandfathers, or even our fathers ever had. Yet God has been here on the planet in person. What we are celebrating…is not the feast of jolly old Father Christmas or good King Wenceslaus, or a beautiful fairy-tale. We are celebrating the visit of God. What a WONDER! How marvelous!

That "Great and Mighty Wonder" is also the "FULL and HOLY CURE" we need! It is FULL in all its fullness! Psalm 130:7-8 says, "O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with Him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins." Another wonder! We can say "I'm sorry" and forgive one another. But we cannot redeem ourselves or anyone else. Redemption is only and fully in Jesus Christ. Nothing or no one on earth can make that promise and keep it. Nothing or no one on earth has unfailing love. We fail all the time! We have sinned. We have no hope on our own. But that manger led to the cross. Jesus was born here for a purpose. He would go to the cross and pay for all of our sins by suffering the agony of the death and separation from God that we deserved! And He paid for ALL sins there on the cross! EVERY sin you have ever committed, every failure, was put on his back that day and taken away from you. Your record is clean now! You are completely spiritually healthy now because Jesus brought you a FULL cure!

He also brought you a HOLY cure! Luke 1:35 says, "The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." A HOLY wonder! Yes it is! Because no one is born holy and never will be! We come into this world born in sin, and because of sin we die. Nothing or no one can make us holy except Jesus Christ. Lots of earthly things can make us a better person, be good, kind, etc, but nothing, absolutely nothing but Christ can make us holy!

There is an observatory in California called Mount Palomar, where there's a great telescope that can look out into space and pick out light so far away that it takes one hour of focusing upon that light for it to make even the faintest impression upon a photographic plate! There are tremendous capacities for focus in that telescope! But that is nothing compared to the wonder of the way in which God focused Himself in that baby! Unlike any of us, Jesus was born HOLY. Perfect! He came and lived the perfection we failed at. And that is why God now looks at us and sees us as holy. Jesus is the cure for our lack of holiness! He gave us his!

Finally, Jesus is our Full and Holy CURE! He came to heal the sick - you and me. Luke 7:21-23 tells us: "At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses, and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, "Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me."

A wonder not to be duplicated! We can be amazed daily at the wonders of modern medicine and we should be. Cures are being found all the time. Drugs and therapies are helping people have quality of life. But look at this description of the cure from Jesus' power. It is beyond physical healing, for it says, "the dead are raised!" We cannot bring anyone back from the grave! No medicine on earth has that resurrecting power, only Jesus Christ. And his coming as the Baby at Bethlehem that first Christmas was indeed a "great and mighty wonder," because it was the "full and holy cure" for our spiritual lives! We are sinful, we cannot make ourselves holy, therefore we have no cure. Wonder of wonders, God comes into our world, and in spite of our sin against Him, loves us so much that He gives us his Son to live, die, and live eternally, that we also may live eternally! That is a cure no earthly medicine will ever hope to give!

An old pioneer traveled westward across the great plains until he came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the Grand Canyon. He gawked at the sight before him: a vast chasm one mile down, eighteen miles across, and more than a hundred miles long! He gasped, "Something musta happened here!" A visitor to our world at Christmas time, seeing the lights, the decorations, the trees, the parades, the festivities, and the religious services, would also probably say, "Something must have happened here!" Indeed, something did happen! God came to our world on the first Christmas! Wonder of wonders! Are you looking forward to that wonder? Amen.

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