The Hope of Christmas
Notes
Transcript
Christmas means a lot of things to a lot of people. I don’t have to remind you of how commercialized the holiday has become. All you need to do is ask somebody what Christmas means to them and you will get almost as many answers as there are people. Christmas means nothing without Christ. He is in the name. To celebrate Christmas without acknowledging the Christ of Christmas is not Christmas. It is something else. The obvious major component of Christmas celebrations is the exchange of gifts. This Christmas season, we are going to be talking about the gifts of Christmas. As you saw earlier, today we are unwrapping our first gift, the gift of hope.
The coming of Christ as a baby born in a manger is the gift of hope. For thousands of years, the people of God clung to the hope that a deliverer was coming. Like I said last week, everyone instinctively knows the world needs saving. All you have to do is open your eyes to know the world is not as it should be and we are incapable of fixing it. If we were, surely we would have figured it out by now. But here we are with some of the same problems manifested in new ways, with a cry in our hearts for a solution. This morning, we will trace the line of hope all the way to Jesus to see that hope has come.
Genesis 3 is the story we call the fall of Man. In the first two chapters, God creates the world, creates man and woman, places them in the garden of Eden with two jobs. The first is to exercise dominion over it through taking care of it. Adam and Eve were in charge. They were to work the garden and be God’s representatives to the rest of creation. Their second job was simply to be fruitful and multiply. They were charged with taking care of the garden and making babies. That was it.
In the garden mankind is presented with a choice. For love to be reciprocal, one must be allowed to love freely. God placed a tree in the middle of the garden known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were instructed not to eat from the tree. Doing so would result in death. The serpent, who we know as the Devil, was successful in tempting Eve to take the fruit of the tree and eat it, thus rebelling against God.
The choice ultimately boiled down to this: Trust God your Creator to provide everything you need or abandon trust in him and provide for yourself the thing which you think God does not want you to have. The choice was made to rebel against God in the pursuit of a false promise. The result was that sin was brought into a perfect creation and corruption began in Genesis 3.
But even then God knew and had a plan for the redemption of mankind. Beginning in verse 14 God begins to place curses on all the players involved in the rebellion. He curses the serpent for tempting Eve; He curses Eve for rebelling, and curses Adam for joining in the rebellion. What is interesting though is what God says in verse 15:
And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her seed;
He shall bruise you on the head,
And you shall bruise him on the heel.”
God is speaking to the serpent (the Devil). Enmity means active opposition or hostility toward someone or something. So God is setting up hostility between the Devil and the woman. A cosmic battle is beginning. There is a war between those aligned with the Devil and those who will come from the woman. While the serpent may deliver a critical blow to the offspring of the woman, he will deliver an even more critical blow to the serpent, overcoming him in the end.
This is known as the first gospel. While it is very basic, we can understand that from very early history, human beings are at fault for the chaos and decay we see in the world, but God has a plan for redemption. Notice the personal pronoun He is singular. It is not plural. So the human race will not be the ones to defeat the serpent, but a single man who will come from the woman will. So from the very beginning, there is a promise for a rescuer.
But what I also want you to notice is the time in which this occurs. There is no Israel yet. God has not covenanted with anybody yet but the two in which he has created. So just like through one man sin entered the world and all are cursed, through one man will come ultimate redemption. In fact, the apostle Paul says as much in Romans 5.
Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned—
but then look at what he says in verses 18-19.
So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous.
Since sin began with the first people, the deliverer will be for all people.
The arrival of Jesus brings hope for all people.
The arrival of Jesus brings hope for all people.
As time continued, God chose to call out for himself a people whom he would bring forth this deliverer. As the nations developed, he chose Abraham to be the father of a nation who would serve him. He entered into a covenant with him beginning in Genesis 12.
Now the Lord said to Abram,
“Go forth from your country,
And from your relatives
And from your father’s house,
To the land which I will show you;
And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you,
And make your name great;
And so you shall be a blessing;
And I will bless those who bless you,
And the one who curses you I will curse.
And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”
This covenant is an everlasting covenant. There was nothing Abraham had to do for God to keep his promises. This covenant stands to this day. The covenant was ratified in Genesis 15 and then a sign of the covenant was given in chapter 17. From Genesis 12 onward, God had revealed that the coming deliverer would come from Abraham’s descendants.
The promise continued through the line of Isaac, of Jacob, who was later renamed Israel, and then to his son Judah in Genesis 49:10
“The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
Until Shiloh comes,
And to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Everyone in Israel knew that this promise pertained to the Messiah, the anointed one. The king who would reign over Israel forevermore. So the promise from Genesis 3:15 passed to Abraham, to Judah, and then to David in 2 Samuel 7:16.
“Your house and your kingdom shall endure before Me forever; your throne shall be established forever.” ’ ”
David wanted to build God a temple in Jerusalem. God would not allow it since David had been a man of war. God did promise that David’s son would build it. But within that promise is another that David’s dynasty would never end. There will be one descended from David who will sit on the throne forever.
A problem came after Solomon’s death. The kingdom divided and eventually fell into exile. For a period of 70 years there was no nation of Israel, only a displaced people. But then God paved the way for return as prophesied. It was during this time period of a divided nation and exile God continued to promise a deliverer. One we will look at in depth next week comes from the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 9:1-7
But there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish; in earlier times He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali with contempt, but later on He shall make it glorious, by the way of the sea, on the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.
The people who walk in darkness
Will see a great light;
Those who live in a dark land,
The light will shine on them.
You shall multiply the nation,
You shall increase their gladness;
They will be glad in Your presence
As with the gladness of harvest,
As men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
For You shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders,
The rod of their oppressor, as at the battle of Midian.
For every boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult,
And cloak rolled in blood, will be for burning, fuel for the fire.
For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.
There was coming one who would be called wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, and Prince of Peace. The one to come would be of divine origin. This is how his kingdom can have no end. For his kingdom to have no end, he would have no end. There are literally hundreds of prophecies pertaining to the baby born in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.
The birth of Jesus is hope realized.
The birth of Jesus is hope realized.
We can hope for things and maybe they happen and maybe they don’t. When I was a kid, I hoped that I would get what I asked for Christmas. Some years I did. Some years I did not. I hoped the Astros might win back-to-back Wold Series’ this year. That did not happen. I hope I can afford a new car when mine breaks down one day. Maybe I can, and maybe I can’t. None of those are anything like the hope for a promised deliverer, redeemer, or rescuer. None of those are rooted in a promise made to me by an unchanging God who never lies.
From the beginning of the Bible, God promised one man would come from the woman and crush the head of the serpent. He would defeat evil. Sin would be annihilated. Death would be overcome. Restoration back to the way things were would happen. Do you remember the verses we based our mission statement off of? Gal 4:4-5
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law,
so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
This means that Galatians 4:4-5 is a Christmas text! When the time came, according to God’s plan that cannot be thwarted, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, as prophesied in Genesis 3:15, born under the law, required to obey every command God had given, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. The birth of Jesus is the hope of a divine inheritance.
Hope for eternity, but also today.
Hope for eternity, but also today.
The birth of Jesus is not merely the hope of eternal life in heaven one day. It is also the hope for an abundant life here on earth today. John 10:10
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
You are always going to have trouble in this life. Rich people have trouble. Poor people have trouble. Fat people have trouble. Skinny people have trouble. Beautiful people, ugly people, tall people, short people, regardless of classification, all have trouble. But with Christ, the God of the universe is there to draw near and guide you through the trouble. An abundant life in Christ is entirely attainable. He came so that you can have it.
There is hope for your marriage. There is hope for your relationship with your children. There is hope for your economic status. There is hope for your future. There is hope for mental health state. There is hope for the crisis you face. The gospel of Jesus Christ gives us the strength to persevere in times of trouble. The gospel gives us hope knowing that the God of heaven is near to us in our darkest hours.
Trust in Jesus. Like a lighthouse, Jesus, the light of the world came to show the way back to the Father.