Coloring Book Christmas

Intro:

What a great day! and on top of all of this we get to start our Christmas series

Now some of you that gets you excited

Some of you aren’t sure you’re gonna come back if it’s just gonna be Christmas stories

But here’s what I’ll tell you, this won’t your typical Christmas series

Really the whole point of this series is to look at the Christmas story in a whole different way

Because let’s face it, we are all familiar with the Christmas story.

You don’t have to go to church much, you don’t have to be a Christian, you don’t even have to believe Jesus existed and you still know the story

And that can be said of quite a few stories in the Bible

Many of us grew up learning these famous stories from the Bible: Noah’s Ark, Daniel and the Lion’s Den, David and Goliath, Jonah etc. In fact, if you were to close your eyes right now you could probably conjure up some type of image associated with each of those stories.

Maybe you learned it during Sunday school or Vacation Bible School

Maybe it was from a children’s Bible that grandma read to you before bedtime

And I think for many of us, those stories are linked to images in our minds

We can recall pictures of cute, fluffy animals on Noah’s ark

Or a young shepherd boy about to slay a large, but animated Goliath

We picture the manger in the barn but we forget everything that happened before and most of what happens after

We have funneled all these Bible stories through our own lens and remember the good parts, the smiling giraffe sticking it’s head out of the ark

Story of picking a bad movie for summer movie nights

IMO the church has done a great job in recent history of laying a foundation for Children

We have pictures of cute, fluffy animals to remind us of Noah’s Ark

However, we have not done a great job of continuing to tell the story

So I want us to close our eyes and picture the nativity scene

What do you see?

Like this? Show picture

When we view the Bible through the lens of a Coloring Book we fail to see how it relates to our adult world..

We’ve laid a great foundation for our kids, but if we never outgrow our coloring book Christianity we leave ourselves susceptible:

Susceptible to the argument “The Bible is just a book of fairytales.”

Missing the theological implications of this story (what these stories are really about - what they teach us about who God is)

Which leads to

A separation of faith and practice (“The Bible is for kids and irrelevant to my adult life”)

But our goal is to move past the Coloring Book images that we often associate with Christmas and instead to see what this story teaches us about Jesus

As we read the Christmas story in Matthew 1 see how your mental image compares to the biblical text.

Text: Matt 1:18-23

Matthew 1:18–23 NIV

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

pray

How did that compare to the picture in your mind?

I mean, Matthew didn’t even mention a stable at all.

But that’s just one account. “But what about Luke’s Gospel?”

Luke 2:1–7 NIV

1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.

But wait…

Where are the barnyard animals?

The cattle that are lowing?

The sheep and donkey lying next to baby Jesus?

Where’s the innkeeper who so rudely turned Mary and Joseph away at the door?

If we’re being honest, what we just read can seem somewhat hollow or less than compared to our “ideal” Christmas

And yet, this is precisely the danger of Coloring Book Christianity

We know details of the Christmas story (influenced by our favorite holiday movies, songs and traditions) but maybe we’ve missed the very point of the story to begin with.

So, let’s go back to Matthew’s account

What he’s trying to tell us is more important than barnyard animals and cozy mental pictures.

Matthew 1:18–19 NIV

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

First of all…

For all the people who think the Bible is a children’s book full of a bunch of fairytales…

These two verses sound more like the end of season 1 of your favorite Netflix show (I’d say Halmark movie but they aren’t that creative) than it does a children’s story

A man and a woman are engaged to be married

The guy finds out that his fiance is pregnant and the baby isn’t his

So he secretly decides how to end their engagement

Is this Netflix or the Bible?

Matthew 1:20–21 NIV

20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

What happened to convince Joseph that Mary had not been unfaithful to him?

Something significant had to have happened to convince Joseph to stick around (an angel appeared to him)

“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” (Matt. 13:55)

More importantly, this angel reveals to Joseph the significance of this child

This isn’t your average child or average pregnancy

God has a very specific purpose for what has happened

“He will save his people from their sins”

Matthew 1:22–23 NIV

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

Rather than focusing on innkeepers and animals, instead Matthew emphasizes that Jesus’ birth has been a long time coming

This child that was to be born was the fulfillment of years of prophecy

From Gen 3 when sin enters the world and there is one promised to come from the woman that would crush the head of our enemy

to Matthew 1 begins with a list of names that neither interest us nor can we pronounce

However, they show in great detail the connection between Jesus and Abraham

Why does that matter?

Because almost two thousand years before that first Christmas night God had promised a man named Abraham that he would become a great nation and “all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen. 12:3)

Not only does this lineage show the relation of Jesus to Abraham but also of Jesus to David

Why does that matter?

Because a thousand years before Jesus was born God promised “that a descendant of David would reign over the people of God and establish an eternal kingdom”

The birth of Jesus fulfilled God’s promise that He would send a Messiah

But not just any Messiah

This Messiah is Immanuel; “God with us”

This is the central message of the Christmas story

That God Himself has come to us in the person of Jesus

Born as a baby

Laid in a manger

But that He is no ordinary baby

He is God with us

Jesus’ birth might be less than you picture but it’s more than you can see

You have a picture of the nativity scene and Jesus’ birth and then there is what the Bible tell us and if we are honest we prefer our version

But our version

But, What we celebrate at Christmas was the result of years of built up hope and anticipation.

From the Garden to Abraham, from Abraham to David, From David to Bethlehem this story was God’s plan from the very beginning.

A plan to save us from our sin