Why HIS Christmas

Why HIS Christmas

Isaiah 9:6-7

December 10, 2023

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I bet if I asked many of us in this room to tell us what is Christmas about, many would say, it was when Jesus was born. While others may take a bolder step and say that it was when Christ came, born in a manger to save us from our sins. Maybe, only a smaller minority would say, Christ was sent by the Father, as foretold, born of a virgin to save lost sinners like you and I.

Are these answers wrong? No, not necessarily. But if we only think and say these answers, it is like building our Christmas understanding and appreciation on a house of cards. It is incomplete. It misses major reasons for the Son along with missing who sent Him. It lacks a full appreciation as to why the manager, why the nativity and the completeness of the plan. Just like these cards, most of how we think of Christmas is built of a weak appreciation of what it is all about.

Like I said two weeks ago, Christmas is far more than just that nativity scene. It is my intent today that we move past hollow thoughts of Christmas to a bigger understanding as to what it is really about.

Two weeks ago we talked about Isaiah 9:6 in detail. We looked at the importance of who was going to be sent by the Father. We talked about how He was going to come and how Christ fulfilled all 44 specific prophecies attributed to Him. When I got done with that sermon however, I was still left with one question that has troubled me for two weeks.

Why did God do it? Why send Your Son Lord? Remember in our study of John, Jesus said that He was “sent by the Father” over 17 times from chapter 1 to 7. I mean, seriously, it isn’t like people openly welcomed the gift so why do it? Ever wonder that? I want to be very clear. I will not be giving you the “why” as we would expect to have answers. I will not be giving you the whys, mights, and the maybes. That is NOT how God works. Instead, we will be learning how Job learned, by getting to know more of God.

The title of today’s message is “Why His Christmas”. Notice, it is not “why Christmas”. The ownership is very much His. So, let’s start to get to know HIM.

I. Understand Him.

Isaiah 9:7 “The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

First, the “this” is referring to what we read in vs 2 “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…and then in verse 6: “For to us a child is born.” The subject of the action of God, is Him sending His Son. The Son who will rule, be called wonderful counselor, Might God and rule on His father’s throne, king David. The “this” in verse 7 is packed with titles and functions. But, the word “THIS” is made up of many more valuable references.

To move past a hollow understanding of Christmas, we have to understand who is doing the “THIS” in verse 7. That title, “LORD” is the one doing this. The word LORD there is Yahweh. The proper name of Israel’s deity[1]. Yahweh is the most reverent name given the LORD by the jews. It was so holy they would not even say or write it out until after the exile in Babylon. Most of the writings in the OT is not Yahweh, rather Adoni or Elohim where it should be rendered Yahweh. Yahweh first appears in Exodus 3.

Exodus 3:13-15:

13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations[2]

Even with this self-description, He was announcing Himself in His covenant character[3]. Meaning, this is a name to describe what He was. It was another description of an attribute of who God is and as all things associated with God, it is HOLY and must be carefully managed.

With two little words “I AM” we see that He is who He says He is. He is saying that He is the LORD most High (Yahweh). Even that is a description of His character. But, is this all that we have?

We learn more about God when we look at other attributes found in His Word. Through the attributes we learn His nature, His plan, and hopefully after today we take our house of cards understanding of Christmas and make it into a solid structure.

1. Aseity: God’s aseity means that he is sufficient to himself, independent of anything outside himself. This notion that He created us because He was lonely, completely false. The Bible teaches God’s aseity by saying that he does not need anything beyond himself (Acts 17:24-30).

2. Sovereignty: All things are worked according to His plan. NOTHING happens apart from HIS plan. He is over ALL things. And NO things happen apart from HIS control. (Eph 1:11)

3. Omnipresent: He is everywhere, and no place is hidden from him. This is why the Psalmist says, “Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence?” or Jerimiah 23:24 says “Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him?” (Side note, this is why me and Santa have problems. “He sees you where you are sleeping. He knows when you are awake, you better be good for goodness sake.” I hate that song and it is a cheap trick by satan to use an attribute of God for His cheap knockoff.

4. Omnipotent: There is NOTHING that He can’t do for His will. He will and does all things according to His nature and nothing is too hard for Him. “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that He pleases.” Psalm 115:3

5. Omniscient: Nothing is too complicated, hard to understand or unknown to God. “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure.” Psalm 147:5. If you want to be humbled, read the last three chapters of Job and remember who you are talking to when you question something that has happened in your life. I challenge you!

6. Immutable: God DOES NOT CHANGE! When “truth” seems like it is a moving target, culture bends, fads come and go, God is steady. Never will He bend to opinion or fads. “For I the LORD does not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob are not consumed.” Malachi 3:6

7. Truthfulness: He is the definition of truth. Nothing in Him is deception or false. This one attribute should draw our hearts and minds to the other attributes. If He alone is the author and holder of truth, should we not chase it with all that we have? “…so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie…” Hebrews 6:18

8. Wisdom: Wisdom is more than just being smart. Wisdom by definition is the LORD. If we define the word wisdom appropriately, it should be measured with the name of the LORD. He has infinite wisdom. Paul writes “to the only wise God be glory forevermore…” Romans 16:27.

9. Goodness: “The Lord is good to all, and His mercy is over all that He has made.” Psalm 145:9. His goodness stretches the world over and yet, taken advantage of and despised. Even in that rejection, He retains His perfect goodness.

10. Grace: Even before Christ, God was full of grace. When the Israelites rebelled against the LORD, He still showed them Grace. “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love…” Exodus 34:6.

11. Love: This one attribute seems to get all the attention for all the wrong reasons. Yes, He is Love! It is a strange and alien love though. People love with strings attached. We love because someone does for us. God loves with extravagant crazy love in spite of us. “So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him.” 1 John 4:16.

12. Foreknowledge: God is above time. He knowingly and intimately places His love on His people from eternity past. “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Romans 8:29

13. Wrath: This attribute we like to forget and gloss over when we read about it. But what Father would there be who is not just? Even in His wrath, His justified execution of justice, we find a key attribute of God. “Now I will soon pour out my wrath upon you, and spend my anger against you, and judge you according to your ways, and I will punish you for all your abominations.” Ezekiel 7:8. Even in His wrath, we see such love as He poured it out on His Son for us. God takes no joy in wrath, but in His wrath, it flows through Grace and is 100% just.

14. HOLY, HOLY, HOLY: Of all of God’s attributes spoken of in the Word of God, this is the most important hardly taught. There is only one attribute that is spoken in the superlative, meaning THREE times used to describe the accuracy of this one attribute. We find the theme throughout the entire text but actually expressed by the angels. “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD God Almighty, and who was and is to come!” Rev 4:8. Back in Exodus the Isralites saw this Holiness on display and couldn’t withstand it. They told Moses, we can’t handle this much Holiness, you go talk to God for us or we will die.

We could keep going but after these, you should see that our house of cards needs to be redesigned. The “this” spoken about in verse 7 is in direct response to the attributes of God. It is not isolated to the manger scene! No! It is because of who He is that we have the manager. Let me continue to prove my point.

I want you to know why I am going over these. A.W Tozer wrote:

Read page vii: Re read that one sentence.

Where we have a manger scene and no reverence of who did it, God is absent from it. Because of our low view of God, our low understanding of His attributes, our faith, our understanding of the Christmas story is nothing more than the house of cards. We are resting on the snapshot of the manager scene and miss the why.

Now that we know who He is though, we can see why He has “zeal to do this.” The reason He has zeal for this is He recognized the problem and the plan to fix it.

II. Understand the problem.

God sees that there is a problem. The issue is that many of us do not see our need for that manager scene. Apart from His action, we would be left blind to this problem to deal with it ourselves only to fail completely. But, in HIS mercy we can see that we have a major issue. It is He who shows us that all of humanity stands at odds with the Father with no hope in their condition.

Please turn to Isaiah 59.

We have identified His attributes but we have our own attributes and they are not so awesome.

a. Our identity (sinners) Isaiah 59:1-3,

Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save,

or his ear dull, that it cannot hear;

2 but your iniquities have made a separation

between you and your God,

and your sins have hidden his face from you

so that he does not hear.

3 For your hands are defiled with blood

and your fingers with iniquity;

your lips have spoken lies;

your tongue mutters wickedness. [4]

Before Christ, our sin is our identity. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah pinpoints that our sin is the reason for our condition. I have often said that there is a debt, a distance, a separation between us and God. Here it is! It is written in ink for us to see. Our sin causes a separation that apart from God’s hand, there is NO bridging that gap. No currency we can offer can possibly cover that span.

Even for us believers, don’t think that this text is not for you. Have you ever thought that your prayers seem unanswered? Maybe it seems as if there is a concrete ceiling over your head? Look at your life! Look at how you are allowing sin in your life. If, as a believer, you have unrepentant sin in your life, Isaiah says that “your sins have hidden His face from you.” Guys, this one line has caused me great conviction this week!

I kept coming back to that one line. It bugged me all week. Church, if there is hidden sin in your life, we should not be shocked that the prayers we offer seem to bounce right back to us and our efforts in all aspects of our lives seem shallow and empty. For the believer, this better be a wake up call! We, as believers, can NOT hold onto hidden sin. We are to murder it. Slay it. Kill it. STOP it! Do what it takes because it keeps His face from you!

The Lord said that if your eye makes you sin, gouge it out. He is saying, take drastic steps to get rid of the sin in your life!

He also sees our true passion.

b. The cost (distance 59:2, Chase sin 59:7, Blind 59:10)

“but your iniquities have made a separation…” and then look at verse 10:

“We grope for the wall like the blind; we grope like those who have no eyes; we stumble at noon as in the twilight among those in full vigor we are like dead men.”

The cost of sin is greater than we can imagine. Oh, we may want justice, but it is far from us. We may hope to be in the light, but there is no light in us. We may hope for connection with God, but our actions and hearts have driven righteousness from our eyes. We may even say we want to turn from our sin, but in reality, we want freedom from guilt. I am painting a dark picture I know.

BUT, There is an answer! And praise God, He, in His perfect attributes KNEW the need, the problem and acted. HE providentially planned an answer for this sin problem. It was because of this problem that God “saw that there was no man and wondered that there was no one to intercede.

God looked down and saw that no one was there to be an advocate, a payment to justify or make the problem of sin go away. The word “wondered” in verse 16 was not God scratching His head saying “oh man, I that surprised me.” The NIV has it right when the word “wondered” actually means that this condition “appalled” Him.

But, the Hebrew actually pulls that entire sentence together. By using the word “appalled” or “wonder” it actually was a word picture of God looking out over a vast and deserted desert and seeing no one. It’s an empty and overwhelming picture of desolation without hope. Not ONE single soul worthy!

In that emptiness and wonder, God acts. Because of who He is, He chooses to act. He steps into the desolation and provides an answer! And this is where we jump into the “why” of Christmas. I want us to get this last point. We have to understand HIS Christmas.

III. UNDERSTAND HIS CHRISTMAS

HE saw and brought for HIMSELF, salvation. What mercy, grace and love is this that He saw people who hated Him and instead of striking them down, He acted. It was Him who acted first to provide an answer to the problem of sin! Now, with this understanding of Who God is, and our problem, we can start to see the why. God knew we could not fix this issue of sin, so He acted. Now that He acted, we now have some answers to why!

a. His action is an answer to our sin! (59:16-20)

16 He saw that there was no man,

and wondered that there was no one to intercede;

then his own arm brought him salvation,

and his righteousness upheld him.

Look at how Isaiah writes this. His own arm (He did not delegate this, and personally did this action in His full strength brought to the human race HIS salvation. He brought mankind salvation in the form of a child to be born in the city of David to the virgin, a perfect payment and justification of the sin of the world.

Then, HIS righteousness upheld him. Notice, it was HIS righteousness placed on the one to come.

17 “He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on His head; He put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrapped himself in zeal as a cloak.”

Does this list sound familiar? It absolutely should! Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:13-17:

13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,[5]

There are a lot of similarities EXCEPT for one very important one. Look back at verse 17 “He put on garments of vengeance for clothing and wrapped Himself in zeal as a cloak.”

Church, this is a garment not afforded to anyone EXCEPT the Prince of Peace. The ruler of the world and the rightful king of kings. The word there for “zeal” is the same “zeal” from our key passage in Isaiah 9:7. The word zeal there means: Used of both noble and morally justified zeal and of ignoble passion and jealousy.[6]

The cloak or mantle is a royal garment. Only the king gets this and it is a sign that Christ is the only one who can enact the vengeance JUSTLY. It is a garment of His office as supreme ruler and king.

If we look at these words in verse 17, we see an excitement of a king getting ready to come onto the scene. God the Father has dressed His Son to take the rightful place in history. His zeal is fully ready to execute the plan of salvation through HIS son for humanity because of who He is not because of who we are. He is actively engaging in Humanity because that is His nature, His attribute to Love so deeply to offer the ONLY option to cure the problem of sin.

This action, this love makes a perfectly HOLY God in all of the listed attributes as approachable as a son is to a good earthly father. Because of Christ, we can come to the HOLY of HOLY, the Ancient of Days, the all knowing, all powerful, all seeing, all just, all good and etc. and say, ababa (daddy), forgive me, I am a sinner. Have mercy on me, a sinner. This single act of sending His Son in a manger makes it possible for us to be numbered as adoptive children.

Romans 8:14,17

14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”[7]16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ[8]

This is the WHY church! Is the manager awesome? Sure it is, but it is only a snapshot of the bigger plan. The depth of the plan is far beyond in a manger and the little drummer boy song. This plan goes so far and so wide.

THE UNBELIEVERS ASIDE:

Unbeliever, I look at this house of cards and think, it is a sad state to go into eternity thinking you have it all figured out only to find out that you really don’t. The issue with a house of cards is this, soon reality sets in and it all comes crashing down. You can continue to lie to yourself that there is no hell but you know in your heart that man is built with a knowledge of eternality. I have one question, is your eternity built on a house of cards? Are you willing to make that bet? Or, is it built on the Rock?

Now, are you ready to give up on the house of cards you have been relying on or would you like to exchange it for a plan of salvation that the God of the universe has to offer. He has made this plan for sinners like you. He knew you could not fix your sin yourself. Even if you could, you would not choose to because it’s not your nature. So, instead of pouring out the justified payment for your sin on you, He put that penalty on His Son. The only righteous being to ever walk this planet. He sent His son, born of a virgin, meek and mild, in a dusty, dirty filthy manger as a baby to save the world that hated Him.

As He willingly went to the Roman cross to pay for your sin, He said, “I am the way of the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through me.” He also said, if anyone believes that He is Lord, they will in no way be cast out. Now, I’m telling you, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Repent from your sins.