This Is Christmas
Notes
Transcript
Christmas in Genesis
Not too often do we turn to Genesis for the Christmas story.
Inside of the story of the beginning we find a major reason for this season we are celebrating.
Certainly we can look at the actual arrival of our Savior in the NT. In its most simple statement the reason is Jesus came to ransom His prized possession.
Never the less, the story has a complexity that we would do well to understand.
In this story we see a time in which there is a fall, and an example how love covers a multitude of sin.
A story that from the beginning tells of a love so great and so vast that when it burst on scene it changes the course of human history past, present and future.
Christmas a story of perfect love.
Christmas a story of perfect love.
Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.
Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:
The challenge in for Christians especially in this season is to show LOVE
Not willing to expose others to suffering shame and guilt but to love so great that the person is restored and turned back to the Lord in an act of reconciliation
More so in this season where there is transgression with others, where there is hurt, where there is shame, where there is guilt… see how the Lord in the Christmas story exemplifies perfect love.
The Fall
The Fall
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Eve eats and presents her husband with an option
eat and in so doing become just like me or;
dont eat and live with out me
Adam had spent time alone; He had lived in a space of desiring to be with someone that the Lord Himself had to make him an ideal partner
In the Fall he makes an informed decision
he was not oblivious to the consequence, he is well aware he will have to die if he wants his beloved to be with him
As her husband decides it best to not live without her and eats with her.
The cover up begins. He became like her to not allow her to be left alone.
The Cosmic Dilemma
The Cosmic Dilemma
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 in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
For God to remain a Holy God He cannot violate His word.
Eating of the tree means death…there is no two way about it.
Adam covers Eve…but who will cover the man that represents all of humanity?
Covenant with Humanity
Covenant with Humanity
The reason for His birth into humanity is found here.
The God we serve remains a holy God that must keep His word.
Love covers a multitude of sin and Jesus is unwilling to lose His beloved creation.
And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
The Promise
The Promise
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.”
The seed of the woman
would not need the genetic material of a human man
tells of the virgin birth to come
There will be a hurt that will occur to this child
This child would crush the head of the serpent.
We see Jesus even in the fall of humanity
Christmas Story Fulfilled
Christmas Story Fulfilled
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
Fast forward to the reason for the day we celebrate
Mary conceives a son; with only one set of human dna as the other side is given from the Spirit of God
There in the midst of all humanity the anointed one who will Save the world arrived.
The one who came because of love…Son of the most High, Wonderful Counselor, God with us Emmanuel.
Our Jesus… who loved so perfectly so passionately that He is unwilling to allow us (humanity to die the death we deserved.)