Christmas for the Skeptic (Part 1)

Introduction

Christmas time is a season that everyone loves. The gifts, the singing, the lights, the parties. Only a grinch or someone really hurting could hate the holidays. But when you dig down into what it is that we are actually celebrating it can seem like it is just a little too much to believe. I mean doesn’t it sound a little like a fairy tale. You have a magical baby, born in some magical way that would foretell his future destiny, angelic beings in shinning light appearing to some shepherds on a hill side. An evil king tries to kill this magical baby; so his parents flee into Egypt until later when he comes back as a little boy. One day when traveling to the temple, this magical boy reveals his wisdom by teaching the priests some truth they had not even thought of. Can anyone too old to believe in Santa really be expected to believe all of this?

Many people actually do not believe that Jesus was a real person. About 40% of those in the Uk are in doubt as to whether he was real or not. I imagine many in America if they were honest would find themselves in the same boat. Even as a Christian, I think we sometimes think of Jesus as a fairy tale. The evidence is seen in the fact that he doesn’t make much of a difference in our lives. If we truly believed, wouldn’t that change everything we do?

As I mentioned last Sunday, my goal this Christmas is to strengthen our belief in Jesus Christ. After all, if the bible can be trusted to tell us about Jesus and His birth, shouldn’t it be trusted to tell us to live. I want to encourage you today, that the bible is completely true and worth taking seriously.

Probably the most fanciful sounding piece of the Christmas story is the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Let’s take a look at the Christmas story to see this part of the story:

Luke 1:26–37 (KJV 1900)

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.

This is an important part of the Christmas story: the promise that a virgin would give birth to a child. Notice in the text in vs 27 it clearly says she was a virgin. In vs 31 she would conceive in her womb and in vs 34 Mary asks the angel How can this be since I have never had a physical relationship with a man? For the sake of the children in here, it takes a mommy and a daddy to have a baby, but Mary would have a baby without a daddy. The angel explains: The Holy Ghost will come upon you and you will conceive. Sounds pretty impossible right. He concludes the promise with these words with God nothing shall be impossible.

How can we expect people to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin? It is impossible right? I want to give you some reasons today for why we can and should believe in the virgin birth.

Fulfilled prophecy

Believe it or not, this story about the virgin birth wasn’t something the gospel writers just came up with to make the birth of Jesus sound spectacular. A virgin birth was actually foretold nearly 740 years before the events. Isa 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, And shall call his name Immanuel.”

During the days of Ahaz a wicked king of Judah two neighboring king Rezin and Pekah of Damascus and Isreal decided to take advantage of the instability of the region at the time to attack Judah. Ahaz tried handling things on his own by making a treaty with Tiglath pilsear of Assyria. But God sent the prophet Isaiah to give Ahaz a sign that God would deliver them. The sign promised was this birth of a virgin born child.

The birth of this child was to be a sign. The sign was offered specifically to Ahaz, but who was this child? Some have suggested the following options:

Hezekiah, Ahaz’s godly son; however, Hezekiah was 9 years old by the time Ahaz even became a king.

Another of Ahaz’s children. The implications of the Hebrew word for virgin rule out these options.

Isaiah’s son Maher-shallal hashbaz- Isaiah had already had children with his wife before this point.

an unknown child- We do not know who the specific fulfillment in Ahaz’s time would refer to, but seeing that this Ahaz rejected the sign and God was giving this sign to the people of Judah; it is possible that it refers to Jesus. Even if it was fulfilled by some child at this time, prophecies often had a near fulfillment that foreshadowed a greater fulfillment later on.

Consider this evidence that the prophecy speaks of more than just a mere child during the days of Ahaz.

The child would be born of a virgin. Jews have often denied the virgin birth of the Messiah by pointing out that the word for virgin here is not the normal word for virgin betulah in Hebrew. The word here is almah which literally speaks of a young woman of marriageable age. So why does our bible translate this word virgin. The Hebrew word almah can speak of a virgin and in fact often did refer to a virgin because unmarried women were most often virgins. Although almah does not always mean a virgin it never refers to a married woman. Nearly, 300 years before the birth of Jesus, Jewish rabbis got together in Alexandria to translate the Hebrew OT into Greek. This translation known as the LXX was the commonly used bible at the time of Jesus and the Apostles. Early Christianity used the LXX because it had wide readability across the Roman empire. When the Jewish rabbis (who were before Jesus time and so had no interest in skewing the translation to support Christianity) chose to translate the word almah as the Greek word parthenos. This word also means a woman of marriageable age, but there is a strong emphasis on chastity and virginity. While exceptions to the rule can be found, those exceptions do not discount the rule. Think of this illustration:

We all know that gravity is a law of nature and yet we see birds who seem to be able to fly in the air flaunting the laws of gravity. The exception seems to discount the rule, however, what we don’t realize by mere observation is that gravity is one of those forces that act on the bird allowing it to fly. The exception does not discount the rule it merely shows that we are missing some information.

b. The second piece of information showing that this child would be something more was the name given to him: Immanuel. The name Immanuel means “God with Us” and it speaks to more than just a mere human child. Jesus Christ was God with us. 1 Tim 3:16 “And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.” John 1:1-3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” John 1:14 “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” Col 2:9 “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Mankind needs a redeemer; they needed God to rescue them. Jesus Christ was God stepping into creation to save mankind from their sin and its consequences. Literally, God lived among us in a human body.

c. Matt 1:22-23 “Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” Matthew quoting this passage claims that it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. This passage makes it clear that the prophecy was intended to be more about Jesus than any human child born during the times of Isaiah. It looked forward to a day when a miraculous virgin birth would bring the Messiah into the world.

Historical evidence

Matt 1:18 “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” Luke 1:35 “And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

Matthew in writing his gospel was a man who had lived with Jesus and come to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. As far fetched as it all would have sounded to the common Jewish man at the time, Jesus was God with us. Most likely Matthew got his account from Joseph. Luke on the other hand most likely got his information from Mary thus giving us two separate eye witness accounts of these events. Matthew was so convinced of the truth about Jesus Christ that he was willing to die for that truth. According to tradition Matthew was killed in Ethiopia while preaching there.

Luke though not one of the Apostles says that he based his writtings of both Luke and Acts on the witness of eyewitnesses. Luke 1:1-4 “Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word; It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.”

The Virgin birth was one of the central debates of the early Fundamentalist debates with Liberalism in Christianity. It is a central doctrinal belief to Christianity and I find it hard that a true believer in Jesus could doubt it truth. This is why we call it one of the fundamentals of the faith. Liberals claimed that the virgin birth was a made up story later on by people who esteemed Jesus so much. It must be remembered that these same liberals did not believe Jesus was God. So was this story just made up.

Matthew and Luke both wrote within one generation of these events. Eyewitnesses were still alive who could argue that they got something wrong if they had lied. Many of the Apostles were still alive to deny these writtings if they did not actually reflect what the early church believed.

The Apostles Creed in its form today was written in the 5th century but it embodies tradition that was passed down from earlier times. The Apostles creed claims “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary”.

Ignatius who lived from 110 AD merely 20 years after John wrote revelations preached the virgin birth multiple times.

Justin Martyr who dies in 165 Ad preached it.

A host of others from this same time period preached this message.

What I am saying is that it was not just some fictional story made up by people after many years. According to Anthropologists, mythological development takes a minimum of 2-3 generations to develop. The people who lived at that time have to have died out.

The reality of miracles

The real reason people do not believe in the virgin birth comes down to unbelief. They cannot believe that such a thing could happen. It would be like believing in Enchanted castles, goblins, fairies and Santa Claus. At the root of this unbelief is a lack of faith in the miraculous. This was the root cause of liberalism in Christianity and it still prevails in many circles. But let me ask you this is it harder to believe in a virgin birth or a God who created the world. If God has the power to create everything that you see here today and the world around us; isn’t it logical that he could create a body for Christ by a miraculous virgin birth.

Gen 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Some deny the creation, but we must ask ourselves how did this world get here. Why is there something rather than nothing?

Stephen Hawkings, a famous atheist claimed to have an answer:

Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing… Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Hawking was claiming that the laws of the universe caused something to come from nothing without God to create it. The problem with this is that Hawkings argument depends on eternal, unchanging laws that just exist on their own. In essence he has changed God out for the laws of God. Further, if there are laws one must ask themselves where those laws come from. Laws come from a lawgiver. This lawgiver must be moral since the laws of conscience reveal morality. He must also be interested in mankind since he gives laws that govern our existence.

The bible presupposes the possibility of miracles just like the virgin birth because if God could create the universe and do all the things that the bible records, then he could do this as well. It would be irrational not to believe in the possibility of the virgin birth. Luke ends his account of the promise of the virgin birth with these words: Luke 1:37 “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”

Conclusion

I have two applications today as I try to have whenever a topic like ours is covered on a Sunday:

The truth of the virgin birth is not irrational or impossible to believe; rather it is perfectly logical within the christian worldview. But this event is important, because it signalled God stepping into our world to save mankind. We can look up at the sky and see the creation this all-powerful God created, but we can look at the virgin birth and know that that same God cares for you and me. This is the truth of the virgin birth John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Right now if you have never placed your trust in Jesus Christ to save you, you are perishing. You will die and go to hell, but God loves you. He stepped into the world through the virgin birth to rescue you. You do not have to face eternal death because he offers you eternal life. The story of Jesus is unbelievably good news, but better than that it is true.

Christian, do we truly believe the virgin birth of Jesus. If we believed what we say we believe wouldn’t that change how we live? Wouldn’t we want to live our lives serving and loving this Jesus. If this is true, we should defend it against the lies of the world. I challenge you to be grounded in your belief of the virgin birth today and let that truth change the direction of your life. Some of us, live in such a way that no one would ever know Jesus was our savior and that is sad.

Let’s stand this morning, heads bowed, eyes closed for a time of invitation. If you do not have a relationship with this Jesus while the paino plays please come talk to me and we can show you how you can. Christian, maybe take some time to rededicate your life to living out the truth of what you say you believe today.