The Birth of Our King

Introduction:

Three weeks ago we looked at the reason Jesus came and last week we talked about what His coming meant for the people back then.

Today, on Christmas Eve, we are going to look at what His coming means for us today and tomorrow.

People all over the world will celebrate Christmas tomorrow morning.

I would say that the majority of people will celebrate tomorrow with family gatherings,.

Close to 90% of Americans will celebrate Christmas tomorrow.

Only about 40% of those people do so for religious reasons.

That means half of the people who take part in Christmas tomorrow morning do so to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ.

For us who celebrate Jesus being the real reason for the season, we can still have a great time celebrating with a tree, decorations, gifts, family, and food.

We do these things knowing that the only reason we are here to do these things is because our savior was born over 2,000 years ago.

Our king, God in the flesh, and creator of everything choose to be born in the lowliest of conditions.

Why would He do that?

The entire life of Jesus was, not for Him to be served by others, but so that he could serve everyone around Him.

If anyone who questions the reliability of Jesus and the Bible would think, “If this was all made up why would this God be born in a barn?”

If I was going to invent a story to get people to believe me I surely would’t use the script that we read.

We who celebrate Christmas because Jesus was born do so knowing that we have a new life because of Him and we have a new reason to live life.

"The very purpose of Christ's coming into the world was that he might offer up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of men. He came to die. This is the heart of Christmas." -Rev. Billy Graham

Jesus is the reason for the season because we recieved the greatest gift that we ever will receive when we accepted Him into our hearts.

When I choose the free gift of salvation from Jesus, I recieved life.

That is not something money can buy.

I love Christmas, but in 2 days it will be over.

I want to tell you that after Christmas is over we can still celebrate the birth of Jesus everyday of our life because we are not doing it for all the reasons the world is.

We are celebrating because we know that the birth of Jesus meant life for us.

Point 1: Jesus came into the world to bring us new life. Open to Luke 1:26-38

Luke 1:26–38 NIV

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” 34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” 35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.” 38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

When we begin to look at miracles in the Bible the Virgin Birth is not always mentioned in the sentence as the parting of the Red Sea or Jesus walking on the water, but it alone is as powerful of a miracle as raising a dead person back to life again.

A woman that is a virgin cannot get pregnant.

The virgin birth is important because it proves that Jesus was fully man, from the line of David, and also fully God.

The virgin birth is one of the miracles that separates Jesus from all the other false gods that are worshipped today.

I want to look today of how Jesus’ coming into the world gives us a new life and identity, but I want to look at this through the life of Mary.

If we can for a minute place ourselves in the shoes of Mary.

She is a young girl living in the very small town of Nazareth which was also a very insignificant town.

Remember, what Philip told Nathaniel in John 1:46, “We have found the One that Moses wrote about in the Law and the One who the prophets wrote about, Jesus of Nazareth.”

Nathaniel answered, “Nazareth, can anything good come from there?”

Mary was a virgin and she had not been married, so many Bible scholars believe that she was probably 14 years old or so.

Craig Keener, in his IVP Bible Background commentary, points out that since Mary was so young, a woman, not married, or not pregnant, she basically at that time had virtually no social status.

She had no value or purpose at that time and was probably looked down upon.

The angel appears to her and says, “Greetings, you are highly favored. The Lord is with you.

Can you imagine for a minute how that probably made her feel.

Maybe you remember a time when someone said something to you that made you feel really good.

I always had a good relationship with my father, but I remember the first time, about when I was about 35, that he told me that he was proud of me.

That made me feel really good.

Mary most likely had never heard anyone say anything like this before.

Mary had not heard of anyone hearing from God in 400 years and he spoke to her that she was highly favored by God.

Mary joined the list of people like Abraham, Noah, Joseph, Daniel who were favored by God.

This got me thinking about the impact that this event had on someone like Mary.

This single event took a young girl from a town that was barely on the map and gave her a new identity.

She went from a little girl with no social status or value to the birth who birthed the savior of the entire world.

Mary went from a nobody to one of the most important woman in the history of the world.

Jesus being born in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago may have changed the lives of so many people back then, but His birth continues to change the lives of so many today.

In Matthew 1, we can read of this story from Matthew’s perspective.

He adds the detail of the Angel appearing to Joseph and telling him that they are to give the baby the name “Jesus” because He will save His people from their sins.

Jesus is the Greek form of the name Joshua which means “The Lord Saves”.

There has never been, nor will there ever be, a person born that has had such an impact on generations after them.

Lee Strobel said, “We have to ask, Why is there no other first-century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why isn’t there a John the Baptist movement? Why, of all first-century figures, including the Roman emperors, is Jesus still worshiped today, while the others have crumbled into the dust of history?”

We are celebrating a birth that has happened over 2,000 years ago.

When was the last time that any of us had celebrated the birth of our great Grandparents?

And that was only a few hundred years ago.

We celebrate the birth of Jesus because even though He was born so long ago, He still lives and is at work today.

2 Corinthians 5:17 “17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

I celebrate Christmas because the birth of Jesus points to my salvation and new life in Him.

You would not want the old Tom here at the church, but because of Jesus I am a new creation, a new person.

I once was lost but now I”m found and have a new identity in Christ.

Point 2: Jesus brought us a new reason to live life.

Even though Mary carried Jesus inside of her and gave birth to Him, what we know about her after that paints the picture that she was a humble person.

Jesus references her at the temple and then at the wedding in Cana in Galilee, we see her at the cross with Mary Madeline, John, and a few others.

The last place that we read about her is in Acts 1 with the 120 in the upper during Pentecost.

According to church tradition, many believe that Mary followed John to Ephesus where she was part of the same church that Timothy led and possibly lived out her life there.

No one knows for certain, but one thing we do know is that we have no record in the Bible or from any of the outside sources from any historians from that time that says Mary desired to receive praises from anyone.

She was not condemned by Jesus for running around saying, “Jesus that healed you, that was my son. An angel of the Lord appeared to me and said that I was highly favored by God. Don’t forget about me.”

The humble spirit that she had to have had must have been huge.

I heard someone say once, “A day is coming when spirit-filled believers will walk into an ICU of a hospital and everyone in there will be healed and that person will walk out the back door without inviting everyone to church or to follow them on their ministry page.”

Church, God desires to use a person that is humble in heart.

When we were of the world we strived to have the spotlight on ourselves to make a name for ourselves, but now our desire is to put the spotlight on Jesus.

Mary birthed Jesus and she remained humble.

Jesus, God in the flesh, lived His life as a humble servant who cam to serve others rather than to be served.

This passage in Luke 1 says that the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary and she will become pregnant.

Mary’s response in verse 38 is, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be as you have said.”

Did you ever think that Mary had the option of saying yes or no to the call, but she said yes.

Her yes changed her life and the world forever.

I believe that when we say yes to the Lord’s calling inn our lives we open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit birthing something in us that could change the world.

On the day of Pentecost, 50 days after the Crucifixion, the 120 were filled with the Holy Spirit which empowered them to change the world.

They all said yes to Jesus’ command to wait in Jerusalem until they recieved that power.

Even before that, the disciples said yes to leave their careers as fishermen and tax collectors to follow Jesus.

Jesus’ ministry started with them and continues through us.

Conclusion:

What we will be celebrating tomorrow is not the “Holidays” but Christmas.

It is more than just another holiday, but the decision by God Himself to step down out of Heaven on the same earth that we are on now.

It all began by God choosing to come through a young virgin girl that said yes which changed her life forever and the course of human history.

This Jesus that we celebrate being born brings us the best present we could ever receive which is eternal life and a purpose to live.

The birth of Jesus, which eventually lead to His death and resurrection, gave Mary hope and life, not because she was His mother, but because she believed who He was and accepted Him.

We know that the only way to the Father is through Jesus, so Mary needed salvation through Jesus just like we do.

I’m sure if she was here today she would say that the child she birthed changed her life and He is the One to be worshipped, not her.

It does not matter if you been in church your entire life, you still need to make the decision to accept Jesus.

Jesus is the Reason for the Season and the Greatest Gift We Will Ever Receive.