Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

What is Christmas all about?

There is one answer.

Jesus Christ

Christmas is all about Him.

Its the time of the year when we remember and celebrate that Christ the Savior was born.

That’s why we give each other gifts.

Because Christmas is when when God gave us the greatest gift any of us could ever be given.

Eternal life, grace, and salvation through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

Here’s the BIG IDEA I want you taking away today and carrying with you wherever you go to celebrate this Christmas season.

Jesus Christ was born to save His people from their sins.

That’s what Christmas is all about.

That’s what we are celebrating.

And to do that this morning I wanted to look at 1 verse from the gospel of Matthew.

The very first verse of Matthew.

Matthew 1:1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Usually when most people come to a genealogy in the Bible they just skim over it.

But Jesus’ genealogy, and in fact this single verse of Jesus’ genealogy is absolutely jam-packed with theology that tells us who Christ is, what He did, and what makes Christmas so glorious in the first place.

He is the Christ.

The Son of David.

And the Son of Abraham.

Each of those are loaded with the good news that Jesus Christ saves sinners from their sins.

So let’s look at each one.

And we are going to go through these in reverse order.

We are going to start with how Jesus, as the Son of Abraham, is the promised blessing to all nations.

Number 2. How Jesus as the Son of David is the King who makes all things New.

And Number 3, How Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, who would save all of God’s people from their sins.

Let’s start with point number 1...

I. Jesus is the Son of Abraham Who Blesses the Nations with Salvation

To understand what it means that Jesus is the Son of Abraham, you have to go all the way back to the very first book of the Bible; the book of Genesis.

In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth (Gen.

1:1).

He created everything that was made, including us.

Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Everyone was made in the Image of God.

We were created to reflect the glory of God to love Him and worship Him with all of our life.

But Adam and Eve, the first man and woman God created were tempted by the Devil and sinned against God.

And because Adam is our Father, we all sinned in him.

We all inherited a sinful nature.

We are sinners by birth.

The Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).

And to make bad news worse: For the wages of sin is death (Rom.

6:23).

All of us, every single one without exception, has sinned against God and deserve to die for that sin.

In fact, death proves we are all sinners.

Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

The fact that all of us are going to die proves that we are all condemned in our sin.

And when we die we will face God’s judgment to give an account for our life, and without Christ we will suffer the wrath of God against our sin for all eternity in Hell.

And you might ask, why does God have to judge sin at all?

Why can’t He just forgive?

Because He is holy, and if He did not judge sin, He would not be Holy and therefore He would not be God.

Now all of that is really bad news.

I thought this was a Christmas sermon!

Well here’s the good news.

Immediately after Adam and Eve sin, God curses the Serpent, the Devil who tempted us into sin and in cursing the Serpent He promises to us Salvation.

Genesis 3:15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

This is the first promise of Christ in the Bible.

He is the offspring.

And that promise sets up the whole rest of the story of the Bible.

Death and curse would not be the last word for the people of God.

God would save His people.

He would crush the head of the serpent once and for all through the Messiah, the Christ, the promised offspring who would save His people from their sins.

And that takes us to the Son of Abraham.

If you read the Bible that word, offspring, comes up again and again and again promising Christ.

And in one of the most important verses of the whole Bible, we see this promise renewed to a man named Abraham.

In Genesis 12, God made a covenant with Abraham and promised that in Him all the families of the earth would be blessed, and specifically as God builds on this covenant throughout the book of Genesis that this blessing to all nations would come through Abraham’s offspring ultimately culminating in Genesis 22:17-18.

Genesis 22:17-18 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.

And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

The New Testament tells us this passage was fulfilled in Christ (Galatians 3:16).

He is the promised blessing of all nations.

All the families of the earth.

Why?

Because He is the offspring God promised all the way back in the Garden of Eden who would crush head of the serpent and save us from our sins.

In fact, in Galatians 3 Paul even calls this promise the gospel preached beforehand to Abraham.

So what does all this mean?

That Christ, as the Son of Abraham, is the promised blessing to all nations and that blessing is salvation and the forgiveness of our sins.

We do not earn God’s forgiveness by obeying Him or being a good person.

No amount of good works can wash away even one sin.

We are saved by Grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

God gives us grace as a gift through faith in Jesus Christ.

Faith that Jesus died in our place for our sins and rose again three days later to give us eternal life.

We said earlier that the wages of sin is death.

Well Christ died our death on the cross.

He paid the penalty for our sin; He took our curse so that in Him we might have eternal life.

Or as Galatians 3:13-14 says Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” [THAT’S THE CROSS] — so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham [SALVATION] might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.

If you want to be saved from your sins, you must believe in Christ.

Repent of all of your sins and put your faith in Him.

And God promises to give you the blessing of salvation in the greatest gift anyone could ever be given.

Point number 2...

II.

Jesus is the Son of David Who Makes All Things New

Again we see this theme of offspring in God’s covenant with David harkening back to that promise in Genesis 3:15, so this promise to David is another promise of the Messiah.

2 Samuel 7:12-14 When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

Now we don’t have time to get into all the passages and all the promises throughout all the Old Testament that explain what all goes into this promise of the Son of David.

But suffice it to say, this hope throughout the Law and the Prophets grew and grew and grew into a hope for a King who would ultimately rule the nations, save His people and make all things new.

A King who would conquer God’s enemies and shower everyone in His Kingdom with blessing and rest.

A King who would build God a House, a Temple, where God would dwell with His people and His people could draw near worship God.

This King was a King of salvation, and His salvation and blessing would go beyond the Jews to all the nations of the earth because God promised that He would lead the nations to worship God and teach them God’s Law.

And that He would not grow faint or weary until He had established justice, obedience to God’s Law, in all the earth.

In short, this King would save the world and make all things new just as they were before the Fall.