We are going to be talking about Christmas, and my title this
morning is Christmas. What's the big deal?
And if you know, you know, right?
But we're going to be in Luke 2. And I think everybody's probably
heard Linus read these words. So starting verse one, in those
days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the
world should be registered. This was the first registration
when Cornelius was governor of Syria.
And all went to be registered, each to his own town.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of
Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called
Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to
be registered with Mary his betrothed, who was with child.
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth,
and she gave birth to her first born son, and wrapped him in
swaddling cloth and laid him in a Manger, because there was no
place for them in the end. And in the same region there
were shepherds out in a field, keeping watch over their flock
by night. And the Angel of the Lord
appeared to them in the glory of the Lord, shone around them, and
they were filled with great fear.
And the Angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring good,
tight, good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who
is Christ the Lord, and this will be a sign for you.
You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloth, lying in a
major. And suddenly there was the
angels, and a multitude with the angels, a multitude of the
heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the
highest and on earth, peace among those whom he is pleased.
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd
said to one another, Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this
thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and
worship. And Lord, I just lift up this
time, Lord, And I lift up just what you've done.
And Lord, that we, that we get to spend time with you that you
came to us, Lord, or that you would fill each and every one of
us, Lord, that you would speak through me and to me that you'd
guide and direct this in the season of time that you're just
in everybody's in everybody's thoughts and minds.
Lord, that you, you are an easy conversation to have with people
right now, Lord, in this season that you've given us, and I pray
this all in Jesus name, Amen. So, so then that's the end of
the Bible study. That's why it's a big deal right
there. Sorry.
So when we're thinking about Christmas, it's important and
why it's important. It's, it's really about context
of, of who Jesus is and why he came and what is the whole
picture. But the story of Jesus starts in
Genesis and and that is Genesis 315 is the first mention of him.
And it is I will put enmity between you and the woman,
between your offspring and her offspring.
He shall bruise your head and you shall brew his heel.
And that that he shall, that he is Jesus, right?
And it's called the seed of the woman.
And that seed is Jesus. The first time the Bible talks
about Jesus, here it is talking about the final battle at the
cross, when Jesus said it's finished.
But as is typical with Satan, he didn't understand what it meant.
But he did know that somehow from the woman, her offspring,
we're going to crush his head. So he instantly went after her
offspring, right? So the first thing he did was he
went after Cain and Cain and Abel and they were Eve's first
born sons. And we all know how that ended.
So then God, then Satan's like, ha, ha, I've won.
I've killed one son and the other son can't be the can't be
the good one because he was the murderer.
So I'm good. And when you watch all through
the Bible, every time God gives a prophecy about where the
Messiah is going to come from, Satan attacks that all the way
up to the point where in the Kingdom of Judah and the line of
David that the Messiah has to come out of, Satan has hears God
hears God curse the line of David, that no one from your
line will ever sit on the throne.
And you got to think that Satan as he is inside of time and God
is outside of time. Satan's got to go.
I won because you said he has to come out of the line of David.
And I just had you curse the whole line.
So we're good. And of course, God's plan is
bigger than that. And we'll get into how that
works and why, why Satan can't win, right?
And that it's not even a battle, right?
I always, I compare him to that, that middle school bully that
thinks he knows something, but God is in charge and outside of
time. So God made Adam in his image.
And the point of that was he wanted to walk with him.
He wanted to talk with him. He wanted to love him, right?
He want that, that, that time he came down in Genesis to walk
with him in the cool of the evening.
That's what God wants to do. That's what God wanted to do at
that time is to have that relationship with him.
And at this point in Genesis, Adam had sinned and, and that
separated Adam from God, right? And God, God had to kill an
animal to cover Adam and Eve's nakedness, their sin.
And then he sent them out of the garden.
And everybody always asks, well, why did he punish them?
So guys, this is not punishment. It is, it is consequences.
And when, what I mean by that is when I tell my daughter or my
son, don't stick your hand in the fire or you'll get burned.
I don't punish them when they get burned.
Right now they did get burned, right?
If they stick there, you know, if they stick their hand in a
fire, the punishment, I mean the, the consequence is now
they're burned because they didn't listen.
And Genesis 216 and 17, God had told Adam and the Lord God
commanded the man saying, you may surely eat of every tree of
the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
You shall not eat for that for the day, for in the day you eat
of it, you shall surely die. So God had warned Adam, right?
But it's not a warning like I it's, it's, there's consequences
for disobedience and that he will now die.
And, and Adam from that moment forward was dying.
It was an instant, but it was dying.
So Adam had allowed death to enter, right.
And allowing that death to enter God was just allowing Adam's
choice and the world through Adam's choice.
Now is is fallen right there death has entered the world and
sin through death, right, or death through sin.
And Romans 512 it says it like this.
Therefore, just as through one man, sin entered the world and
death through sin, and thus death spread to all man because
of all sin. And and that's always the, you
know, why did Adam have to sin? Then maybe I wouldn't have
sinned. Well, guys, I, I know my heart.
I would have sinned, right? And, and I know your heart
because it's dreadfully wicked. You know, that's the, the world
we live in that talks about. Well, just follow your heart.
Well, the, the Lord's pretty clear that our heart is
dreadfully wicked and can't be trusted.
So don't follow your heart, follow the Lord it it's really
that simple. So when the Lord sent them out,
it's like telling your child to, I mean, like I just said about
not touching it and, and they got burnt.
But and the Lord says, and this is the part whenever anybody
talks about, well, he just punished them.
Read what he said in Genesis 322.
The Lord said, the Lord God said, behold, the man has become
like one of us, knowing good and evil now, lest he reach out his
hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live
forever, right. Then he has to kick him out of
the garden so that he doesn't live forever because what he's
doing isn't living. And what I mean by that is
there's a CS Lewis actually explains it better, but this is
ghosty. Where we're at right now is
ghosty and heaven is solid. So the Kingdom of heaven is real
and we're just ghosty. A picture of that.
So at this point, God, God doesn't want Adam to live
forever outside of his presence, right?
There's got to be a way for Adam to get back into God's presence.
And God, God, God's plan, because he is outside of time,
was from the beginning of time, right from the moment he made
everything. He knew how this was going to
work out. He didn't.
As we go through this, God did
not say, oh, you sinned. Now let me come up with a plan
to redeem you. He knew the plan from the
beginning, right? Jesus, Jesus was from the
foundation of the earth going to come as a baby, right?
It isn't, it isn't a reaction to our sin.
It was a plan because he knew we were going to sin because our
free will is that important to God.
And what that means is it is so important to God that we have
free will because that way we can freely choose to love Him.
If we don't have free will and He forces us to do anything,
then then I don't truly love him, right?
If I'm forced to, then I'm not loving him.
And Adam, the cure was going to be painful for this for Adam,
but as Adam sin, he put impurity into his life.
He had, he had cancer in his life that that meant that in the
presence of the Lord in his state, the Lord would burn him
up. If you think of sulfuric acid,
and this is everybody knows that you can put sulfuric acid in
glass in like a glass speaker. You see it in science movies and
all that. And it's it's unreactionary in
glass because of its silica content stops the sulfuric acid
from doing anything. But if it's leaded glass, if
there's impurities in the glass, the sulfuric acid will eat the
glass, it will break it down. And as those impurities go up,
the the glass becomes less and less able to hold the acid.
Well, in our case, any sin is that level of impurity to God,
right? He is 100% pure.
So any darkness in US is that out and outside of Christ, we
have no standing to be in his presence.
Even Moses, which I don't have the verse here, but even Moses
asked to see his face and, and the Lord said you would die.
You would die if you saw my face because you are unable in your
current state to be in my presence.
And so it is that Adam's only hope was in death.
So it isn't punishment that he kicked him out of the garden.
It was mercy, Hebrews 927 and 28 says.
And just as it is appointed for a man to die once, and after
that comes the judgement, so Christ, having been offered once
to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to
deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
And in order for Christ to appear a second time, he has to
appear the first time, right? Which as we go through this,
you'll see that that truly Christ is all through the Bible
and but he has to come as a baby.
He has to come as a man. And Jesus came to say that which
was lost, right? He came to came for us.
And that is that John 317 For God did not send His Son into
the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world
might be saved through him. And that's that same idea of
getting kicked out of the garden.
That was not a condemning thing. That was consequences followed
by God's plan to redeem us. Isaiah.
In Isaiah, God shares some of His plan with Isaiah, and it is
Isaiah 714 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.
Behold, a virgin so conceive and bear a son, and you should call
his name Emmanuel. So the virgin birth over 700
years before Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary before we talk
about sorry, So that is that is prophetic, right?
And you got to remember when God taught, when we talk about
prophecies, we talk about what's going to happen or God said, you
know, God prophesied that 700 years later that Jesus, we're
going to be born. A very well.
The trick there is from God's perspective, he doesn't tell you
anything that's going to happen from God's perspective, he's
perspective, he's telling you what did happen, right?
It's why his why his prophecies can be so, so specific and so
clear because God's outside of time.
So he just looks over here and says, so Jesus is going to die
on the cross and there's going to be dogs around then he's
going to be they're going to, they're going to bid for his
clothing. There's going to be, you know,
the reason he can be that specific in prophecy is because
he isn't telling you what's going to happen and then he's
going to manipulate it and make it happen.
He tells you what happened and gives you gives you points on
that. So Isaiah also says this in in
Chapter 9 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and
the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be
called. Wonderful counselor, mighty God,
everlasting Father, Prince of peace, of the increase of his
government and the peace there will be no end on the throne of
David and over his Kingdom to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with the righteousness from time forth
and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts
will do this. So you guys probably all heard
those verses, but have you thought about them?
So Jesus is going to be born. So God is going to be a baby.
And this isn't I'm, I'm looking at it from 2000 years past it
and I can tell you how that works.
Isaiah is writing this 700 years before it and he's writing that
a baby is going to be born called wonderful counselor,
mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
So mighty God is going to be born, everlasting father born.
So no beginning, no end for a baby.
So think about Isaiah writing this down and, and how it's
like, you know, we as we look through the Bible, as we're
reading it, you guys, we get 2000 years of perspective or
4000 years of perspective and we can look back and see all the
things God has done. So the the benefit of that is
when I look in front of my life, I can see all the things God is
going to do because I can trust him to do them.
You know, phase story. The reason she can trust God and
when he says give the property back to just give the property
back is because God has done things in phase life that she
can say this happened. And I know God is God and I know
he has a plan as we're reading our Bible, as we're going
through it. Do you have that kind of
confidence in your life on what he has for you?
And John one one tries to explain how big God is and and
who he is and who Jesus is in the the 1st 4 verses and it's in
the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the
word was God. He was in the beginning with
God. All things were made through him
and without him was nothing was not anything made that was made
in him was life and the life was the light of men.
So in the beginning was Jesus the word and, and that is so
Jesus is the revelation of God and not revelation in the book,
but he, he is the revealed person of the Trinity.
There's the Spirit and the Father, right?
And when, when you see God anywhere in the Old Testament,
you're seeing Jesus, right? And Revelation 9/19/13 just to
point out that to keep the word of God as Jesus, he is clothed
in a robe dipped in blood and the name by which he is called
is the word of God. That's a good Christmas first,
right? He made everything that was
made. And guys, that's the that's so
the the God that made everything that is made came down as a
baby. And I I'm going to I'm.
I'm going to beat that up on why is it a big deal and and Matt
last week kind of stole the Thunder on that.
But the the omnipresent all knowing outside of time, God had
to come down and be 100% God and 100% man.
And that doesn't mean that he, he didn't cheat, right?
He came down and is 100% man. He learned to walk.
So God learned to walk. God learned to speak.
Now I'll explain exactly how he can, how he can be God and man
and set the God part of his his deity aside enough that he can
learn things because God cannot learn anything.
But as Jesus, Jesus didn't pop out of Mary's womb walking,
talking and quoting, quoting the Bible, right?
He, he learned he would, but he was about his father's business
his entire life. Now when you read Isaiah and and
it's really when you go through what the disciples as Jesus was
here 30 years when he was 30 years old and the disciples
confusion on or the apostles confusion on what bringing his
Kingdom in looked like. But you look at 2000 years ago
in a little town named Bethlehem that God was going to come as a
baby is a little confusing to Israel.
Exodus 32, huh? He came as a fire, and the Angel
of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst
of a Bush. He took, and behold, the Bush
was burning, yet it was not consumed.
And then if you skip the verse 5, it says, then he said, do not
come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place which
you are standing is holy ground, not as a booming, scary,
terrible presence in a cloud. You didn't come like that,
Exodus 1916 says on the morning of the third day there was
thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and
a very loud trumpet blast so that all the people in the camp
tremble. That's God coming down to earth.
My favorite 1. You guys have heard it numerous
times because it really is my. This is the conversation we all
have with the Lord a lot. Joshua 513.
He didn't come down as a man of war.
When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked
and behold, a man was standing before him with his with his
drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said
to him, Are you for us or our adversaries?
And he said no, which how often does it anyway?
That's my that's what we want to know.
Are you for me or them? No, you are for me, but I am the
commander of the army of the Lord, and now I have come.
And Joshua fell at his face, fell on his face to the earth
and worshipped and said to him, What does my Lord say to his
servant? And the commander of the Lord's
army said to Joshua, take off your sandals from your feet, for
the place where you stand is holy.
So I just that place where you stand is holy is tying those two
together. This is Joshua is looking at
God, which means he is looking at Jesus, right?
Because no Angel of the Lord is going to stand there and tell
him to worship him, right? Not and it wouldn't accept that
worship. And you can go through the Old
Testament and you can see all the places where angels did come
down and people attempted to worship them and they said they
get up, stop that, right? The Angel is an Angel at no
point thinks they are worthy of any worship.
They are they are servants like us.
But God's going to come down as a baby.
And we look at it, like I said, from 2000 years away and go,
well, yeah, Jesus, he's a little baby in a Manger.
But for Israel, it's it's like us trying to figure out how the
second coming looks and trying to spell it out.
And Israel's trying to figure out how their Messiah comes and
they can't imagine he's actually going to come as a baby, that
that's not a thing. But Matthew 118 to 23 says now
the birth of Jesus took place in this way when his mother Mary
had betrothed Joseph before they came together.
She was born, found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, and
her husband Joseph, being a just man, unwilling to put her to
shame, resolve to divorce her quietly.
But as he considered these things, behold, an Angel of the
Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David.
Do not fear to take Mary your wife, as your wife, for that
which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.
She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for
He will save his people from their sin.
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord has spoken by the
Prophet. Behold, a virgin shall conceive
and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which
means God with us. So that's the tie in with Isaiah
that we talked about. But I would like to point out
the Angel did not say Jesus is going to come and pay for our
sin. He said he's going to come and
save us from our sin, right? Which is that when Jesus came
and saved us from our sin, it is that he is coming to heal the
burn, right? The the he's coming to the fire
was hot. You burned yourself.
I'm here to heal that. And that's why he came and why
he had to come as a baby is because Adam came.
And when Adam had the choice between God or sin, Adam chose
sin. He chose self.
And when Jesus had the choice, Jesus chose God and he chose to,
to die for our sins. But in order to be a valid, A
valid sacrifice, a valid substitution, he had to be not
only man. Because if, if Jesus had walked
the earth as a perfect man who had sinned not at all for
anything ever, if he did that somehow he could have died for
one person. Because he could have laid his
life down for one person. But he had to be God, because
only then did his life could his life cover all people.
Now Adam, Adam could have laid his life down for one person
because sin, because Eve had taken the fruit and eaten it,
and Adam could have taken that punishment until he took the
fruit, right? And that was that's the, the
difference between the first Adam and the second Adam and why
it's important that Jesus came as a baby, as a human.
So Jesus came to lower himself to the level of dirt like I
talked about. That's, that's what Adam was
made out of. And that's when I, I think of
angels, they just have to look down at God's creation and go,
the dirt is up walking around. It's, it's weird.
They're and they're, and they're not real smart.
They're about as smart as the dirt, but because they know who
the Lord of Lord is and the King of kings and they serve him.
And when we make choices that aren't when we know what God
wants us to do and we make choices because we think this is
better, they have to sit up there going and they're not
smart. And but what did it cost God?
What what to get? You mean?
Because if this is just if this is just a bunch of this is just
a game. OK, three gods outside of time,
though, three days in the grave doesn't really matter. 30 days
doesn't or 30 years doesn't really matter.
You know, Jesus died, but that was, I mean God's outside of
time. The difference is guys, is that
Jesus is now Jesus for eternity. And I've had it explained like
this. God the Father came to God the
Son and said, Hey, so I need you to go down to the planet and you
got to picture us. I said we're dirt, but picture
us is a bunch of cockroaches because we don't like
cockroaches, right? We think they're kind of gross
and God the Father says so. But what I need you to do is I
need you to go down to the cockroaches.
But in order to go down to the cockroaches, I need you to
become a cockroach. Sun's like, yeah, I can do that.
Well, before you say yes, there's, there's another,
there's. So from that moment on, you will
always be in the form of a cockroach and that's Jesus.
He's sitting at the right hand of the Father with holes in his
hands, with a hole in his side, right.
And and that's his eternity with us.
He is our, he is our propitiation.
He's our substitution. He's our he.
He prays for us. He intercedes for us, right?
But he does it from the form of he is 100% God, but he
represents dirt to the Father and and that's the big deal,
right? And all it takes for me to to
accept that is to say, as Peter said, Lord, save me and he will
come into us right? Fill us with his spirit.
Revelation 320 says, Behold, I stand at the door, knock.
If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into
him and he with him and he with me and Romans it says, calling
his name, right? And this is guys, this is he
came so that we could when you look at the new in the Old
Testament, right when I, I got my Bible here and I look at the
new in the Old Testament, God was explaining to the Israelites
for that much of the book who he was and what they needed.
And then He was explaining to us and the Israelites and the world
what He has done, not what He's going to do.
There's some about what He's going to do, but this is what He
has done. And it's all very simply, the
whole book from cover to cover is the Lord came down to walk
with Adam in the cool of the evening and then to revelation
his God. God is going to walk with us in
the cool of the evening. And that's his desire, right?
That's why why he came, why he was willing to sacrifice what he
sacrificed for us is so he can spend time with his dirt, with
his people that he made purely so that we could love him with
an honest love. Angels love him out of
requirement, right? And they they are in his
presence and if they when they when they don't love him, they
are castaway from his presence. See see Satan, his and his
demons, right. Angels are are required to love
him. We are not required to love him,
but because of that free choice that we get that give our love
is sincere and it is what he desires they if God desires
anything it is it is that it is your heart truly in love with
him and Romans 10/9. It just says because if you
confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved. Not you might be saved, not it
maybe happens you will be saved, but that is you have to rely on
him, right? You have to believe in him and,
and believe that he came and believe that he cares.
We're going to go through communion here in a minute.
Aunt Sherry and Spencer, you want to come up and just this is
a time, especially Christmas as we're coming into it, to just
dwell on what he's done in our lives, right?
And communion is a symbol of his body that that came as a baby,
but then was broken on a cross for us and his blood that
cleanses us, right? And that is, he did it all to
have that relationship with you. And he's not willing to allow
those imperfections in our lives to separate us from him, right?
He's he's here to heal that burn.
And in doing that, it takes us having real relationship with
him. So spend this time as guys are
passing out the elements and singing some songs, but spend
this time with you and him. And what is there anything
between us now? Is there anything that I need to
get right with you? And then, then after it's passed
out, I'll come back up and we'll we'll take it together.