What Was Required

Introduction

In this room tonight, we have planners and we have non planners.

For the planners, all of the parties, gifts, etc. took a good portion of your time and effort and sanity. You are thinking about the MILLIONS of things that still have to happen.

For the non planners, Christmas is a surprise to you as much as anyone, and you get to just take it in all in as it happens.

When we think of Jesus and his birth, we don’t often contemplate the perfection of the plan that God set in place.

Luke 2:15–20 ESV

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Explanation

The one who would come needed to fulfill many things.

One who would fulfill the prophecies of the prophets concerning the messiah.

The mathematical probability of Christ fulfilling the OT prophecies is the same as filling a swimming pool the size of Texas that’s six feet deep, flipping a quarter in the swimming pool, and drawing out the same quarter.

Christ is the one who would fulfill all of it!

The Scriptures tell us Christ came in the fullness of time. He came at the exact right time.

One who was fully man so that he would be able to pay that man had incurred due to sin.

A sacrifice was needed on behalf of mankind. Only the death of man could atone for what sin had wrought.

Christ was fully, completely man. The appropriate sacrifice for the sins of man.

One who was fully God so that in his infinite nature the fullness of the wrath of God could be paid.

Christ’s infinite Godness took the penalty for all of man.

How could the death of one man atone for all? Because he was not simply man… He was God.

And Christ as God is worth more than all of humanity combined.

One was reflected the love of the father by all people by dining and sitting with sinner, prostitutes, and tax collectors.

Christ was born in a manger.

Our modern nativities neglect the earthiness, the smell, and the inappropriateness of the barn in which Jesus lived.

Christ did not come for the rich or royal. He came for those who are downtrodden, hurting, and broken.

Tim Keller // Over and over again, God says, “I choose Bethlehem over Jerusalem. I will always choose the people others have forgotten and the people nobody wants.

One who would obey the will of the father and go to the cross even as he asked the father if there was any way that the “cup” could pass from Him.

Hebrews 12:2 “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Christ went to the cross knowing the full weight of the pain he would endure.

Invitation

When you look at the manger, I hope you see the blood, sweat, and tears of the Son of God. And I hope you see the perfection of the plan of our Heavenly Father.

When we take of the Lord’s Supper, we remember exactly this truth.

God planned our redemption.

Jesus is our redemption.